Opinion | Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?

What do you make of the Resurrection stories? What do you think happened? I think it’s absolutely the case that some of his disciples afterwards thought that he had been raised from the dead. My sense is that some of them thought they saw him alive afterwards. I don’t know how many people had the visions. I don’t know whether there were groups, where there were a few individuals. Eventually they convinced the others, and people came to think that Jesus was raised from the dead. They started proclaiming that; they convinced people of it. And that’s the beginning of Christianity. Now, if you’re a Christian, that’s perfectly fine, because you can just say, well, yes, he did appear to people. If you’re not a Christian, it’s also perfectly fine. You can say, “They thought they had visions of Jesus.” You don’t have to have an explanation. It could be a mistaken identity. It could be a dream. It could be, there are all sorts of people have visions. It’s probably not a mistaken identity. I mean, that seems that you just see Jesus’ cousin who looks like him and you think he’s alive again? A couple of years ago, I was giving a lecture in Michigan, and there was a guy in the third row who I thought was my dad. Right. My dad had died 15 years before that. So it’s just like, “Oh my God!” I think it’s pretty clear. Paul, Paul believes he saw Jesus. We don’t know how he would have identified Jesus. He didn’t know Jesus during his lifetime, but he saw something he said was Jesus. I think Peter claimed to have a vision of Jesus. I think Mary Magdalene probably did. But that’s the other interesting thing, is that all of the Resurrection narratives are filled with doubt. In the Book of Acts, one of the strangest verses in the New Testament is Acts 1:3, where it says that Jesus spent 40 days with his disciples, proving to them with many proofs that he was alive. And you think, how many proofs does he need? And how many — Yeah — And why does it take 40 days? But that is the interesting thing, is that in all of these accounts, you have these doubt traditions. What are those doubt traditions about? Aren’t they about the fact that people do not normally rise from the dead? And so the normal human reaction is the doubting Thomas reaction to say, let me touch him. It would be. But if you’re sitting here in front of me, I’m not doubting you’re sitting here in front of me. Well, if your father, your late father, was sitting here in front of you, you would doubt that he was sitting there in front of you — The point is that he wasn’t — Right. I thought he was. Right. So if he had spent 40 days with me, he wouldn’t have to be doing tricks to prove to me he was alive. And so my point is — I feel like if — my father is still alive — I feel like if my father died an awful death of crucifixion, and then he started appearing to me, it would take a long time before I was ready to believe that he was really there. You might think that but in fact, there are a lot of psychological studies of visions, especially of recently deceased loved ones. And virtually everybody who has it is sure it happened.