Jesus’ disciples claimed that they saw Jesus resurrected with a physical body. Can we trust them? Some people say that these people “believe” they saw a dead man come back to life, but actually they just “hallucinated”.
What is hallucination?
Hallucination is a false perception of objects or events involving our senses like sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. It seems real, but they are not. Abnormalities in the brain cause hallucinations.
Proponents of hallucinations claim that around the time of Jesus’ death, there was a widespread belief that the kingdom of God was coming to Israel, and the dead would be raised. Consequently, Jesus was believed to have been raised from the dead. These skeptics believe that the details of the resurrection story, including the empty tomb and the details of touching and seeing the risen Jesus were added later to reinforce the invented resurrection story. Some of these critics claim that a hallucination happened to one of the disciples, perhaps Paul, and then just spread out. It was so contagious that in the end, such “appearance” happens to more than five hundred people.
Do these claims sound reasonable to you? Perhaps you may find them not unreasonable, but I hope it is clear to you that these are speculation without any proof. They deny the supernatural event of resurrection, but they provide no evidence to support their claims. In fact, they did not realize that Jesus’ resurrection is very different from what people believed by then about the raising of the dead at the end of human history.
Actually, hallucinations can hardly explain the appearance of Jesus as the gospels describe. There were many, not one person, saw Jesus. Many times, there are many people saw Jesus not individually but together. These people saw Jesus not just one time, but several times. Jesus’ disciples not only saw him but touched him and talked with him. Most hallucinations last a few minutes or seconds, but the resurrection appearances hung around for forty days. Furthermore, hallucinations cannot explain the emptiness of Jesus’ tomb.
I think an important point we need to understand is that group hallucinations do not have good scientific support. Hallucination is an internal mental event, and it would be extremely unlikely for multiple people to experience the same hallucination. For a group of people to experience the same hallucination is like having a group of more than three people to share the same dream. Is it really possible?
Hallucination may come to elderly who deeply thought about their deceased loved ones. Do the disciples fit such situations? Recall as we discussed in the previous post that not only did the disciples not expect Jesus to resurrect, they did not even believe it at first.
Both the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ appearances, and the physical and mental conditions of the disciples who witness resurrection make group hallucination quite impossible to be the explanation of Jesus’ appearances.
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