Contents
Introduction
I believe that a naturalistic account can be given to explain the bodily resurrection of
Jesus described in the Bible. In brief, I believe that someone other than the
disciples stole Jesus' body from the tomb to keep the disciples from venerating or
stealing it. When the body failed to turn up, the disciples made up stories about Jesus'
post-crucifixion appearances. That is, I endorse the Liar Theory of the Resurrection.
Furthermore, I can provide a motive to explain why the apostles lied, and I can answer
objections to the Liar Theory based on the apostles' sincerity, the need for a large-scale
conspiracy, and the high quality of the apostles' characters.
A Modern Day Analogy
First, consider the following scenario: Suppose I meet somebody who tells me that she
saw Bob Dole skateboarding down Capitol Hill. I would think her story was a little
weird, but if she was a friend or I thought she was a credible source, I'd probably believe
her. Maybe Senator Dole was trying to score hip points with the media or get in touch
with today's young people.
Now, imagine that the same person told me she saw Mr. Dole not merely rolling down
Capitol Hill on a skateboard, but doing complicated skating tricks--ollies, rail slides, hand
plants, etc.--with a gang of local skaters, all the while cursing and
saying things like
"Dude, that was bogus." If she was the only one that told me such a story, I probably
wouldn't believe her. But if four or five people came together and corroborated her story
or there was an article in the Washington Post about the incident, I might buy it.
Especially if the eyewitnesses were trustworthy, I might be convinced that Bob Dole has
a hidden talent and lives a secret life as a skater.
Finally, suppose that someone comes and tells me that Dole was flying down Capitol Hill
30 feet in the air on a skateboard traveling 40 miles an hour. I wouldn't believe this if
just one person told me, nor would I believe it if four or five credible witnesses told me.
Quite simply, I would think they were lying. The same explanation (that the alleged
eyewitnesses lied) applies to the Resurrection.
15th Chapter of First Corinthians
Apostle Paul's claim in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians that Jesus appeared to 500
brethren at one time doesn't strengthen the evidence for the Resurrection. In fact, it
weakens the apostles' case and makes their claims seem highly suspicious. In the final
scenario involving Senator Dole, suppose that four or five people insisted that a huge
crowd had seen the incident in which Dole flew down Capitol Hill. Wouldn't it seem
suspicious that no one else from the alleged huge crowd surfaced to write or talk about
what they saw?
Similarly, all the evidence for the Resurrection is based on the written accounts of four or
five men that vaguely refer to hundreds of other unnamed eyewitnesses. Surely, anyone
who witnessed the risen Lord would be moved by the miraculous nature of the event to
write down their own account of the Resurrection or at least pass it down orally. Yet,
today we have no records of any such written or oral accounts by people other than the
apostles. What did Mary Magdalene ever write? What did Joanna, one of the women
who went with Mary to the tomb, ever write? What are the names of the 500 people
Jesus appeared to? A reasonable explanation of the lack of first-hand eyewitness
testimony outside of the disciples' is that the disciples were lying and fabricated stories of
post-crucifixion appearances by Jesus to the masses to give their claims more weight.
Certainly at least one other person in the crowd of 500 would be moved to record
his experiences. Instead, we have a few primary sources that claim to speak for a lot of
other eyewitnesses who are kept at a hazy distance.
Inconsistencies
Inconsistencies between the gospels in their treatment of the Resurrection give more
reason to suspect that the apostles lied. For example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke claim
that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb the first day of the week, and while she was there
she saw an angel who had rolled the stone away. The angel announced that Jesus was
not there, that he had risen from the dead. According to Luke's account, the angle said,
"Don't you remember that while he was with you, he told you that he would rise from the
dead?". And, according to Luke's version, when the angel said this to her, Mary
remembered that Jesus promised her he would rise from the dead. But, according to the
book of John, Mary went to the tomb, found that it was empty, and ran to Peter and the
other disciples, informing them that "They have stolen the Lord's body, and I don't know
where they have laid him." So which was it? Did Mary know that Jesus had risen from
the dead as he had promised or was she upset because someone had stolen the body and
hidden it? Contradictions like these among the gospels give the impression that the
disciples were lying and couldn't get their story straight.
Of course, minor inconsistencies are a common feature of legitimate eyewitness reports.
However, the inconsistency between Luke's account and John's is not minor. Mary's
state of mind would be very different if she thought Jesus had risen from the dead than if
she thought his body had been stolen. In the first case, she would be filled with joy; in
the second, she would be angry and upset. These are two very different emotions and
would be easily distinguished by anyone who saw her. Although the inconsistency
between Luke's account and John's does not completely erode the credibility of the
disciples' eyewitness accounts, it does call their accuracy as historians into question and
demand explanation.
Motive
"But," my opponent might ask, "why would the disciples lie? What was their motive?".
First, the disciples may have been trying to save face. It would be rather embarrassing for
the disciples if, after they followed Jesus around and devoted their lives to his teachings,
Jesus died and that was the end of it. It seems quite possible that rather than admitting
their mistake, the disciples would choose to create stories about the Resurrection that
would conform to prophecies about the Messiah. Being religious Jews, they would have
been acutely aware that God would frown on their blasphemous stories. However,
otherwise God-fearing people have been know to sin when their reputations were at stake.
Second, the disciples may have lied to fulfill powerful psychological needs shared by all
people. The Resurrection described in the Bible seems less like an account of
historical facts than an expression of Jungian archetypal patterns based in human
psychology. The archetype of a virgin-born, miracle-working, crucified, resurrected
savior-god was nothing new at the time of Christ. For example, Osiris, Quetzcotl,
Sakkhia, Krishna, Dionysus, and Tammuz all led lives similar to Christ's except they
weren't crucified because crucifixion had not yet been invented at the times when they
supposedly lived. In their accounts of the Resurrection, the disciples may have been
expressing deep-rooted psychological needs that are part of what Jung called our
"collective unconscious."
Psycho-social forces that favor conformity could also explain why the new Christian
religion spread so rapidly. For example, studies of UFO hoaxes have produced
remarkable agreement among observers regarding things which the hoaxers knew weren't
present (David I. Simpson, "Controlled UFO Hoax: Some Lessons," Skeptical
Inquirer, vol. 4, no. 3, Spring 1980, pp. 32-39). Hence, it is possible to give a
naturalistic explanation of widespread observations of "spookiness" without resorting to
the notion of a collective hallucination.
The Apostles' Sincerity
One objection to the liar theory that my opponent might raise is that no one, not even
hostile authorities, ever claimed that the apostles didn't seem sincere or that they later
recanted their testimony. However, the fact that the disciples wore the face of sincerity
doesn't imply that they weren't lying without the added premise that they had high moral
characters and weren't being two-faced. I will deal with the claim that the disciples
wouldn't lie because they had high quality characters later. For now, I think it's safe to
say that sometimes even notorious liars seem quite sincere. For example, O.J.
Simpson seems sincere in his claim that he is innocent and he hasn't recanted his
position, at least not yet. But O.J.'s outward sincerity doesn't mean that he didn't
commit the murders. In fact, I'd say that overwhelming evidence points toward the
conclusion that he did commit the crime he is accused of.
Need for a Large-Scale Conspiracy
A second objection to the liar theory is that it would require a large-scale conspiracy.
Yet, the entire controversy hinges on the testimony of only four or five men. It's quite
possible that the hundreds of witnesses alluded to by Paul never existed. It's not very
hard to imagine that four or five people could get together, make up a story like the
Resurrection, and remain reasonably consistent in their accounts. Nor is it hard to
imagine how the movement acquired a life of its own once it gained momentum.
Moral Character of the Disciples
Finally, as a third objection to the liar theory, my opponent might claim that the high
quality of the disciples' characters makes their story more convincing. According to this
objection, by all other considerations, the disciples led impeccable lives and were morally
upright, intelligent men. Therefore, they wouldn't lie, especially on such an important
issue, and their testimony should be accepted as truth. However, there is good reason to
doubt the moral character and credibility of the disciples. First, the portrait we have of
the disciples is too good. For 2000 years, it has been in the Church's best interest
to quietly obliterate any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the disciples. As a result,
we are left with a one-dimensional picture of the disciples as saintly truth-tellers. The
same process is behind the glorification of the Founding Fathers in America. Much is
heard about Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson's intelligence, upright character,
and vision. Little is heard about their acts of adultery or slave-holding practices. While
the apostles probably weren't rogues, they weren't perfect either. All we know about
them is that they were good writers, and their literary skills imply nothing about how
much stock we should put in their alleged eyewitness accounts of the Resurrection.
Furthermore, the personal importance of the issue of Jesus' death and resurrection for the
disciples would make them more, not less, likely to lie.
Thomas
An even better reason to doubt the integrity of the apostles' testimony comes from within
their own ranks. According to the 20th chapter of John, when Jesus appeared to the
apostles on the night of his resurrection, the apostle Thomas wasn't there, and Thomas
said, "Unless I can see him myself, unless I can touch the wounds with my own hands, I
will not believe." Thomas knew the apostles personally, and yet he would not believe the
extraordinary claim they were making. In other words, Thomas did not trust the mere
words of the other apostles as satisfactory evidence that Jesus had risen from the dead. If
Thomas, who was intimately acquainted with the other apostles, thought hat they were
lying, why should anyone believe them, especially anyone living 2000 years later who
doesn't know the apostles personally?
Argument from Prophecy
Christians often use the Argument from Prophecy to buttress the Argument from the
Historicity of the Resurrection. They claim that aside from purported eyewitness
accounts of the Resurrection, Jesus was who he said was because he fulfilled over 300
prophecies about the Messiah. For example, the 22nd psalm seems to predict Jesus'
crucifixion and the 53rd chapter of Isaiah seems to refer to the life of Christ. However,
Jesus was intimately familiar with these prophecies and may have purposefully set out to
fulfill them. By way of analogy, suppose someone had predicted the Oklahoma bombing
20 years ago. In fact, the fictitious book The Turner Diaries strongly foreshadows
the event. It is not hard to imagine how someone would take it upon himself to make the
prediction come true. Furthermore, militia groups across the nation are now claiming tht
the bombing was conducted by the CIA to justify a campaign to take away the guns of
hate group members and saying the predictions of a federal crackdown and ensuing war
against the government are coming true. Few people would agree that the author of
The Turner Diaries was a prophet who foresaw the Oklahoma bombing. A more
reasonable assessment of the similarity between the fictional events in The Turner
Diaries and current headlines is that Timothy McVeigh purposefully set out to make
the predictions come true and his militia group supporters twisted the facts of the
bombing to more closely fit their vision of the coming civil war. Predictions have a
tendency to be self-fulfilling. It seems possible that Jesus purposefully fulfilled some of
the Old Testament prophecies while he was living. Then, after he was killed, the apostles
may have exaggerated or distorted accounts of Jesus' life to fit more of the predictions.
By way of a similar analogy, suppose I wrote a book and it turned out that the main
points of the plot were the same as another book that had been written many years earlier.
The reasonable conclusion would be that I had somehow known about the earlier work
and plagiarized, not that I had arrived at all the major points of the plot independently.
Similarly, the fact that Jesus knew about the ancient prophecies that his life paralleled
seems highly suspicious and points toward the conclusion that Jesus fulfilled the
prophecies by design.
In response to the claim that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies by design, my opponent might
point toward the apparently remarkable coincidence that Jesus lived during a time when
the practice of crucifixion allowed him to fulfill the prophecy "they pierced my hands and
my feet" that appears in the 22nd psalm. It may have just been a lucky break for Jesus in
his task of prophecy fulfilling that crucifixion had been invented and was in vogue during
his lifetime. A better explanation would be that the Romans, who were also aware of the
Old Testament prophecies, were inspired by the line "they pierced my hands and my feet"
to devise a new form of torture. In other words, the Biblical prophecies may have led the
Romans to invent a new and painful way of killing people that involved piercing a
person's hands and feet. This explanation avoids the need for an appeal to mere
coincidence, and it is not that far-fetched. After all, the development of new technology
today is often spurred by works of science fiction that make predictions about the future.
