Our first observation about Jesus’ resurrection is that Jesus resurrected with a physical body as we discussed in the last post.
The second observation is that his disciples did not believe Jesus resurrected when they heard of it from the first group of eyewitnesses.
The gospel of Luke tells us that when the women who just saw the risen Jesus told Jesus’ apostles what they saw, the apostles “did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense”.
In the same chapter of Luke, it was described that the risen Jesus appeared in front of the apostles shortly after he appeared to the women. What was the apostle’s immediate reaction? The Bible says, “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost”. Jesus then comforted them by assuring them that he had flesh and bones, not a ghost. He even ate before them to show them he was the resurrected physical Jesus.
In the gospel of John, we learnt that one of Jesus’ apostles, Thomas, was not with the other disciples when Jesus appeared. When the others told him that Jesus appeared, he said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Thomas made it quite clear that he did not believe Jesus resurrected. Jesus later appeared to Thomas and the other disciples, and asked him to reach out his hands and put it into Jesus’ side.
Therefore, we see that the apostles did not believe the resurrection at the beginning. However, more and more people saw the resurrected Jesus later on. As mentioned before, the apostle Paul wrote in the book of Corinthians that Jesus once appeared to five hundred Christians at the same time. Paul said most of them were alive at the time of his writing. When did Paul write the book of Corinthians? Biblical scholars tell us that it should be around 50 A.D. However, with a detailed analysis of Paul’s language used in the book of Corinthians, scholars believe that Paul quoted from an even earlier description of Jesus’ appearances. That earlier description, in the format of a Christian creed, has to be circulating before 50 A.D. for some time. Most people believe it had to exist around 30 A.D., just a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion.
Some people say that Jesus’ appearances were not real. They claim that the apostles “believe” they saw the resurrected Jesus, but actually these are illusional visionary experience. In other words, the disciples experienced “hallucination”.
Is it possible that all Jesus’ appearances as recorded in the Bible are hallucination? What is hallucination anyway?
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