Okay now for the main objection. The resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus really rose from the dead as He predicted, then full stop. Jesus is who He said He was. He is the incarnate God. Period.
There are many inventive alternative to the resurrection. For example.
- Stolen Body
- Wrong Tomb
- Evil Twin
- Hallucination
- Conspiracy
The stolen Body theory was even recorded in the Bible for us. But to somehow assume that the disciples who scattered and cowarded, would storm the tomb and carry away the body to preserve a lie, then willingly die for it. Come on. A bunch of fisherman and rabble, over take a Roman guard, all undetected by others.
There are others, in fact if you want to know more look for these books. I read both of these in my class on defending the resurrection. Holding’s book titled Defending the Resurrection and William Lane Craig’s book The Son Rises. Or you can look up books by Gary Habermas or Michael Licona. A lot more theories and defenses than we are talking about today. I took a full course on just the resurrection in seminary and it was considered a introduction class only.
The wrong tomb theory is perhaps the most ridiculous of these alternative theories but it is still popping up in today’s conversations.
First the Bible account is clear on two aspects. Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus both members of the Jewish ruling council. They were willing to become unclean for the most important Jewish festival in order to bury Jesus. These must have been devout followers. They were willing to be known as followers of Jesus even after His death.
And the women were at the crucifixion and followed them to see where Jesus would be laid to rest. So, there were people that knew were Jesus was put.
The Romans no doubt new where He was buried, the Sanhedrin knew where He was bured. This is why they asked for a guard to be placed.
Also, if you wanted to end the talk of the resurrection, then why not just march people out to the tomb. See there is the body, no resurrection. But they didn’t.
This is simply not a viable argument given the historical accounts inside and outside of the Bible. Enough of this one.
The evil twin theory. I have to admit I started laughing when I read about this the first time. Evil Twin come on. This is a whole other level of ridiculous but it is still popping up in today’s conversations.
So what is the argument.??? Not much. They use the fact that Jesus’ followers did not recognize Him after the resurrection. The theory goes that someone resembling Jesus assumed his identity. But this is pretty farfetched. To know enough about Jesus the have a believable impersonation. So good to deceive the disciples. Yes you can imagine this but in reality is simply not possible. So this one is just stupid.
The hallucination theory. This one is really more supernatural than the resurrection story itself. Some how over 500 people had the same simultaneous hallucination. Or people in several locations had the same hallucinations or similar hallucinations. Because of the grief and wishful thinking, they all invented this idea in their heads at the same time. And everyone agreed it was really true. Beyond the obvious problems with group hallucinations. Hallucinations are usually more like memories or imagination of event you expected or knew of. There is no evidence that the disciples expected the resurrection, even though Jesus told them in advance. There is nothing in the Jewish culture that would have lead them to imagine Jesus would be resurrected outside of the final resurrection of the dean at end times.
There is no similar occurrence of group hallucination at this scale anywhere in history. And the few so called group hallucination events are very vague and include no details that were not prior knowledge to all involved. No new information. While this sounds very scientific, it has no science to back up this inventive explanation.
This is the end of How to Defend your Faith Session 9: Historical Jesus & the Resurrection (Part 3 of 4)
