DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD/ PART NINE

                                      DID JESUS RISE               FROM THE DEAD?

   PART NINE

  (copied from 
   Y-Jesus.com)


Were the Disciples Hallucinating?

People still think they see a fat, gray-haired Elvis darting into Dunkin Dounuts. And then there are those who think they spent last night with aliens in the mother ship being subjected to unspeakable testing. Sometimes, certain people can "see" things they want to, things that aren't really there. And that is why some have claimed that the disciples were so distraught  over the crucifixion that their desire to see Jesus alive caused mass hallucination. Plausible?  

Psychologist, Gary Collins, former President of the American Association of Christian Councillors, was asked about the possibility  that hallucinations were behind the disciples radically changed behaviour. Collins remarked:

"Hallcinations are individual occurrences. By their very  nature, only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They are certainly not something that can be seen by a group of people."

Hallucination is not even a remote possibility, according to psychologist Thomas J. Thorburn, 
"it is absolutely inconceivable that ..... five hundred persons, of average soundness of mind, should experience all kinds of  sensuous impressions - visual, auditory, tactual and that all these ... experiences should rest entirely on hallucination.

Furthermore in the pyschology of  hallucinations, the person would have to be in a frame of mind  where they so wished to see that person, that their mind contrives it. 

Two major rulers of the early church, James and Paul, both state forcefully that they encountered a resurrected Jesus, neither expecting or hoping for the pleasure. The apostle Paul, in fact, led the earliest persecution of Christians, and his conversion remains inexplicable except for his own testimony that Jesus appeared to him resurrected.

The hallucination theory then. appears to be another dead end. What else could explain away the resurrection?     

From Lie to Legend

Some unconvinced skeptics attribute the resurrection story to a legend that began with one or more persons lying or thinking they saw the risen Jesus. Over time the legend would have grown and been embellished  as it was passed around. 

On the surface this seems like a plausible scenario, but there are three major problems with that theory.

    *  First, legends simply do not develop while 
        multiple eyewitnesses are still alive to refute          them. One historian of ancient Rome and             Greece,   A.N. Sherwin-White, argued that           the resurrection news spread too soon and             too quickly for it to have been a legend.

   *  Second,  legends develop by oral tradition            and do not come with contemporary                      historical documents, that can be verified.            Yet the gospels were written within three                decades of the resurrection.

   *  Third, the legend theory does not adequately         explain either the fact of the empty tomb or
       the historically verified conviction of the 
       apostles that Jesus was alive.


   Therefore the legend story doesn't seem to hold up  any better than other attempts to explain away 
this amazing claim. 

Furthermore, the resurrection account of Jesus Christ actually altered history, beginning with the Roman Empire.   How could a legend  make such an enormous  historical impact  within such a short time period? 


next post tomorrow  18th June