Showing posts with label Resurrection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resurrection. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Hallucinations and the Resurrection of Jesus

I've been doing more thinking about the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus recently, especially after a video call with a world expert on this, Mike Licona.

An aspect of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, that I hadn't thought about in detail until recently, is how feasible the theory of hallucinations are as an explanation for the "resurrection appearances" presented in the gospels.

Previously my main consideration was that the empty tomb and other aspects need to be explained, which hallucinations don't deal with. But are hallucinations useful, or even the best explanations for the records of Jesus' disciples accounts of seeing (and talking to) a "Resurrected Jesus".

Since the video call with Mike Licona, I have bought his book "The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach". Written primarily at an academic level and at 700 or so pages, I haven't managed to read all of it. He does consider in detail, and pass through a 5 fold test a number of hypotheses, some of which include hallucinations and/or delusions (and similar) to account for some of the historical bedrock, the "historical facts that are regarded as virtual indisputable".

I won't give an overview of the book here - that would be a large enough task - though I may some time (once I have read all of it!). But recently I came across an article by John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, who asks the question: "Eliminating the Impossible: Can a Scientist believe the Resurrection?" Lennox also engages "hallucination theories", and provides a number of more succinct points against them.