To my knowledge I’ve never really heard this argument, but it’s more convincing to me than the arguments against the authenticity of Jesus’s resurrection. Like the conspiracy theory and stolen body theory. The theory I have come up with is based off the movie the prestige. You have one of the characters in the movie doing a magic trick and it’s very convincing because the man is supposed to teleport and he looks exactly the same, not using a double. It’s revealed that the character is actually two people and they are twins and together they lived one life.
Neat movie btw. I recommend it a lot. However, I am surprised this idea hasn’t come up before as a counter besides the fact it sounds kooky and yet seemingly has less logical holes than ones I have heard. The main counter I see is the fact that if this were true, the body still would have had to have been stolen and that means getting past the Roman guards and everything. And my theory could say that the disciples never knew, or that they were in on it as well. One of the Jesus twins would of course had to have been willing to let himself be tortured brutally and then crucified which would have been unbelievable dedication, but not necessarily impossible. And now that my mind is wandering, perhaps when one of them was Jesus, the other one was disguised close by. Possibly one of the disciples and they took turns.
This is just an idea floating in my head. And it’s not really convincing to me. But it’s still nice to have arguments against theories whatever their level of validity is. And this theory of course cannot dispute the miracles that Jesus did. However, most atheists simply just laugh those off as stories made up by the disciples and whatnot. However, the one thing they have a hard time disputing is the resurrection itself. The chief miracle of Jesus.
There are plenty of alternatives to Jesus rising. The tomb story was made up and Jesus rotted in a shallow grave. Or Jesus was buried in a common grave and the followers of Jesus didn’t know where it was. Or Jesus was buried in a common tomb with multiple people and it would be hard to identify which body is his (Goodacre wrote a recent article on this). Or maybe the body of Jesus was misplaced or taken by family and people thought the tomb was empty. Maybe sorcerers wanted the body of a renowned miracle worker and healer for its powers and stole it.
Historically, I think burial in a tomb is more probable than not but Mark gives Jesus a kingly burial reserved for really rich people like King Herod with that “rolling stone.” I think there are other embellishments in our first account such as Pilate releasing who he did but we also do have women at the tomb, Joseph of Arimathea who seems to come from nowhere and go nowhere…
It’s very difficult to prove a man rose from the dead from a tomb story in a text that shows up in the written record 40 years later. Jesus definitely was crucified and many of his earliest followers thought he rose from the dead. Many of them believe he appeared to them as well. But that doesn’t mean he actually did. Just ask all the Protestants who deny Marian apparitions that can be much more strongly attested–including some in more modern times.
Even Paul’s claim of 500 is technically beyond corroboration and is second-hand hearsay. One does not need to disprove second-hand hearsay on historical grounds. A skeptic could just say it’s hearsay by someone who believed Jesus appeared to him as well and I am not obligated to accept it at face value. How do you even go about in convincing someone second-hand historical testimony very much with the grain of the author’s beliefs that is beyond corroboration should be accepted?
The indisputable facts:
Jesus was crucified.
Many of his earliest followers thought he rose from the dead
Many of his earliest followers believe Jesus appeared to them.
More Likely than not but not indisputable or strong enough to anchor faith:
Jesus was buried in a tomb visited by women and his body was not there.
The transforming and risen Jesus is still alive and saving people to this day. For me, that is what anchors my faith, not historical apologetics. If you want to historically prove the resurrection, it’s mainly the choir that is going to find what you say convincing. History works in terms of probability. What is more probable…a man rising from the dead or his body being misplaced or stolen and people thinking he did? Then the hallucination train stars by people who were grief stricken and had their whole world turned upside down in an instant. How do you even gauge the probability of each? Miracles by default are the most improbable of events. Using history which assumes methodological naturalism is not going to reconstruct. them. Historical reconstruction tries to determine what is most probable. Events that are improbable are difficult to reconstruct. It’s like using a metal detector to find plastic on a beach.
It is very difficult to have a Jesus twin do the things that the resurrected Jesus is recorded as doing. Especially the Ascension! And what happened to Jesus-2 later? Thomas was invited to place his finger in the wounds of the resurrected Jesus, and this was sufficient to convince him. No, I don’t see how this can work.
Whats interesting there is the claim that Islam believes that the crucifixion was some magic trick that didnt really happen. Given the historical records we have outside the Bible on the crucifixion, and the fact that Muhammad didnt exist or write the Koran until after 500 A.D, clearly Islam’s claim there is false…which casts a heck of a shadow over the credibility of that book.
Vinnie, this is a very good post. I would appreciate your thoughts on the proofs we have that Jesus existed, let alone the crucifixion. Josephus? I’m not sure how serious that is, either.
Even Josh McDowell wrote that we have to be so careful–we can run into so much circular reasoning if we assume that the Bible is true. It reminds me of Lewis’ Trifecta–the Bible didn’t give us any other options because the writers did not intend to–of course!
I am a Christian, but as George MacDonald wrote, “You doubt because you love truth.” It is so important to be attentive to the truth.
Yes. As you wrote, history tells us that the followers of Jesus believed in what they told - their lives and fates is a testimony. Yet, it remains past history, unless the living Jesus acts today.
Many convert to Muslims during this year. Many turn to Jesus and become Christians. Is there a real difference between converting to Islam and becoming a Christian?
If there is no difference, then we do not have evidence for a resurrected Jesus that lives today.
My claim is that the difference is not just in the number of persons changing their beliefs or religion. It is in the acts of God, what happens in the name of Jesus. It is in what the Holy Spirit does today. Sometimes it may be something we call miracles. More often it is the transforming power of God that acts within those that He saves: giving a new life and hope.
Yesterday, a mother told how she had been in a hospital in Bangkok with a seriously sick baby. She was there without any network of relatives or friends, not even understanding what the nurses were telling. The health of her baby boy was deteriorating and she feared that the boy was dying. The only thing she could do while holding the boy and crying desperately was to turn to Jesus. At that moment something suddenly happened. She said it was like it often is when God acts, things chance instantly. It is like stepping from darkness to light, from death to life. Desperate anxiety and sorrow was replaced by internal peace and the feeling of the presence of God, the sick baby suddenly looking healthier. From that moment, the boy started to recover.
This was just one story among others and there was no more evidence for this than for the stories of the other followers of Jesus. Yet, what has happened in the name of Jesus is personal evidence of the resurrected Jesus for those who experienced them. This kind of experiences do not just make people Christians, it can change their whole life internally, so that this internal change becomes visible for others through their acts. It is quite different than the attempts of people to adapt to an external pressure from a newly adopted religion or social context.
Actually there were multiple versions of the Quran and as I recall the first complete one didn’t exist until almost 800 A.D. In fact there are at least a dozen different versions that can be found today.
Sometime in the late 1970s I read a book by a sociologist who had become a Christian due to his research. He’d found that most of the growth of Christianity could be explained sociologically, but that there have been growth events that just don’t fit, i.e. have no human explanation. It was those events without human explanation that brought him to become a Christian.
And those who witnessed them! I still recall the awe we all had when a gal in college who was too sick to be even out of bed insisted on going to an evening Eucharist service, and when she came back from receiving the cup she was completely healthy! At the same time I was full of joy and my mind was saying, “Things like this don’t happen”. To me, things like that are more potent – it’s the miracles no one asked for, the events our minds object to, that really make an impact; miracles people sought could be ‘explained’ by wishful thinking in too many cases.
There’s a book about a claimant to be Christ returned where the Peter figure dies and is supposedly resurrected, where it turns out there’s been an identical twin in the wings all along unknown to everyone except ‘Peter’ and "Christ’. It’s a great read, but it bothered me that in modern times it would be nearly impossible to pull off – though if it could be done, many people would fall for it.
I don’t think historical reconstruction works in terms of proof but probability. As for Jesus existing we have to qualify the question:
Do we have good historical evidence a person was born of a virgin, walked on water, controlled the weather, multiplied food, raised people from the dead, performed countless other supernatural miracles along with himself rising from the dead? I would say no. That does not mean this did not happen.
Do we have good historical evidence that a man named Jesus lived in the first third of the first century, had parents named Jospeh and Mary, was a Jew from Nazareth that started a movement which made others see him as a teacher and worker of wondrous deeds and that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate’s tenure? Absolutely and that is what the vast majority of all historians believe.
Jesus not existing is like like imagining a crater without a meteorite. Where did all the sayings, miracles, parables and sources of information about Jesus come from? Even granting Markan priority, there are still other sources within the Gospels and the the Gospel of Mark alone is enough to satisfy any doubt Jesus existed, It definitely has a host of material that appears to predate the gospel itself (pre-Markan sources) Some of it is very questionable as a creation. As an example, a Jewish messiah getting crucified by his enemies (Paul points this belief out as folly and foolishness to the world), Jesus being from Nazareth (can anything good come from Nazareth). Its hard to imagine purposefully inventing the source of your own shame.
Ill give you the simplest argument for the brute historicity of Jesus (without assuming he did or did not do all the stuff in the gospels):
The Gospel of Mark calls James the brother of Jesus. (Mark 6:3)
The epistle to the Galatians calls James the brother of the Lord (1:19)
Josephus’s historical work Jewish Antiquities mentions James as “the brother of Jesus who is called Christ”.
Note the strength here:
We have tri-fold multiple independent attestation of both source (Mark, Paul, Josephus) and form (gospel, epistle, history).
One of these sources is a non-Christian.
One of these sources is written in the 50s by someone who claims to have met James. At least this much is contemporary primary data–a first hand account.
In Josephus this is the shorter reference to Jesus, not the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) which has clear Christian interpolations.
Josephus was wealthy and a general in the Jewish-Roman war. He clearly would have access to good information about James when he recounts how he was stoned to death by Ananus, the high priest at the time, for violating the law.
How much more evidence do we need to believe that a Jewish guy named Jesus lived in the first third of the first century with a brother named James? Reconstructing exactly what Jesus said and did is another matter.
Normally people would point out both Tacitus and Josephus mention Jesus’s crucifixion along with the Gospels (even if all stem from Mark). Paul also seems to know Jesus was crucified. This is ultimately embarrassing to early Jewish followers of Jesus and not likely to be invented.
Some skeptics try to claim the entire TF is fabricated which is not the consensus opinion of historians and they claim. Tacitus writing in the early second century was just repeating what Christians said at the time and didn’t really know much at all about Christians or Jesus. Furthermore, they claim there is some grand conspiracy in the epistles and a complete lack of I information about Jesus in them.
Whereas most historians think Jesus was a mythicized, the Jesus mythicists thinks he was some cosmic Christ historicized by Mark and everyone else. Apparently, Paul believed in this non-human cosmic Christ. Every reference you pull out will be reinterpreted, labeled an interpretation or harmonized away from historicity. It’s a house of sand built on silence, what authors didn’t write instead of arguing from the positive evidence that is actually written down.
Take this verse: Galatians 4:4-5 .4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.
That seems cut and dry to me. But no, says the Jesus mythicist. This is the style of arguments Jesus mythicists make:
Contrary to what is often asserted, Paul never says Jesus had an actual “woman as a mother.” He says Jesus came “from a woman” but then says we are all born of the same woman. This “woman,” Paul says in Galatians 4, is an allegory for the physical world of flesh, not a person. He thus appears only to mean Jesus was given a human body of flesh to die in, a body subject to the physical world order. He does not say where this happened. Nor that it involved a birth. Or an actual woman.
I don’t buy it. The evidence for the historicity of Jesus of Nazaerth is very strong and it is strong that Paul actually knew and met with original followers of Jesus.
As taught by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, I believe in a physical/bodily resurrection to a spiritual/supernatural body and not to a physical/natural body. Thus the resurrected Jesus does not obey the laws of nature (appearing in a room without using the door) and is difficult for people to recognize at times. He comes to His disciples with wounds unhealed, eats, drinks, and speaks with them before disappearing from the world completely. It was not like a dead ghost, but also not like a someone revived so they can live among people once again.
No I do not believe there was any magical violation of the laws of nature. Nor do I believe the dead physical/natural body of Jesus came back to life like some sort of vampire or zombie. The laws of nature conserving matter and energy remaining in effect means we do have a question regarding what happened to all the dead dust of that physical/natural body. Did someone steal the body and destroy it? Did it fall and roll down into a crack in the earth? I do not know. I do know God is capable of many things, which are very unlikely and thus rightly called a miracle. But I simply see nothing reported in the text to require me to believe God violated the laws of nature He Himself created in order to support some claim to Christian magical powers.
Obviously I am not going to credit the notion of a twin. A revival would make more sense than that.
It was transformed. Still physical, but s spiritual physicality rather than a mundane physicality.
I’d say it was in accord with a law of nature that just hasn’t been in play due to humans being sinful. something that only happens under rare circumstances.
Thanks. I would agree that that sort of mythicist approach really does not sound plausible. I can see you have thought a lot about this.
About a month ago, our Sunday School watched a video by JD Greear, a pastor, who asserted that Lee Strobel’s “Case for Christ” basically proved the Resurrection. The two arguments he brought up were 1) the apostles must have really believed what they saw, as they went on to die for their cause, and 2) the NT alludes to multiple witnesses who are still alive today.
Greear (and then our Sunday School) went on to mourn how everyone, when confronted with proof, tends to continue. They surmised that it must come from either a desire to keep on sinning, or a difficulty with changing one’s worldview. Another said it was hubris for Thomas to doubt the word of the 10 other disciples, who had seen Christ. Interestingly, one said that if we keep on believing in spite of difficulty, it’s faith.
I felt the same lines as you–pointing out that crowd mentality can be very convincing, that alluding to many “people who are still alive” (especially 40 years later, though I did not think of that at the time), was really nebulous, and that Jim Jones was a fake, and he died for his own beliefs.
I find the labeling of steadfastness of belief on our side “faith,” whereas a stubbornness to change belief from the other side a failing, somewhat naive, to say the least.
I pointed out that I grew up with the idea of the Resurrection, so it’s not so hard for me, but for those just hearing about it, it’s pretty difficult.
I’ve read Strobel’s book years ago, but don’t recall all the details. Even though I have not read as much as you, I did not feel it was very strong.
It’s an interesting review, to me, of how it’s easy to fall into a judgement of others if we don’t watch out. I’m still thinking of a good, kind note to some friends of mine, to critique the book. I love Randal Rauser’s comments in this vein, such as his book, “Is the Atheist My Neighbor.”.
If you have further comments in that vein for my reading, I’d be interested. Thank you.
Some examples of transformation in the natural world:
Living things become fossils
Butterflies and other insects transform from a larvae stage to an adult stage
In these examples are atoms of one element just changed into atoms of another element? No. Do these transformations not acquire new materials and discard nothing? No.
So… Transformed? Sure. But a non-magical coherent reasonable transformation obeying the conservation of matter/energy would send all that dead dust back to the earth as something which isn’t needed.
And therefore the whole special effects version of transformation not in the text and nothing but a product of pure imagination only is frankly unnecessary. I have no need to insert such a magic show into the story. Especially since to me in sounds incoherent anyway.
You’re skipping over what the word resurrection meant: it comes from ἀνίστημι (ahn-ISS-tay-me), to stand up, to arise, to get back up after falling. It doesn’t involve the material in question to disperse, it indicates an action by the material in question. The concept of coming back to life comes in because the only way a dead body can get back up is by coming to life.
What happened to the atoms and molecules is speculation, but there is no warrant in the text for Jesus’ body turning to “dead dust”.
Nor for that matter is there any warrant to demand an event “obeying the conservation of matter/energy” in a chemical sense – it’s more reasonable to see a law of nature that is only rarely, perhaps uniquely, in play because the Word being flesh isn’t a routine event.
Don’t forget that to someone in the first century a cell phone would qualify as a “magic show”. There is no reason to not take the text for what it says, that Jesus’ body returned to life, and the problem is that the “technology” is beyond us. Demanding that He conform to our understanding of how things work is intellectual hubris.
Exactly. The words say absolutely NOTHING about the material of Jesus’ body. All it says is Jesus arose to speak to them again. And there is no reason why I should accept some special effect magic show inserted into the text. I don’t believe the laws of nature were broken or even some new fangled alien high tech employed either. I don’t need any magic in my belief of Christianity.
