The Stolen Body & Hallucination Theories – Resurrection Theories Debunked (Part 4)

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In this video, we’re going to look at another theory regarding the resurrection of Christ, a theory that explains away the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And this one we call the hallucination theory. And this one assumes that there was so much trauma for the disciples that they eventually had hallucinations of a risen Jesus. The problem with this theory, however, is that this hallucination occurred not just to one, but to many disciples. Another problem is that this hallucination occurred not just to individuals, but whole groups at the same time. And hallucination occurred not just once, but many times, at least 12 times over a period of 40 days. And finally, the problem with this hallucination theory is that the disciples not only saw Jesus, but they touched Jesus and they ate food with Jesus.

So all of these things combined together make it impossible for there to be such a hallucination. Again, according to the experts who have studied this, they say this is not how hallucinations occur.

So let’s go to another theory right away too. It’s called the stolen body theory. Now, the first three I mentioned the swoon theory, the wrong tomb theory, and the hallucination theory. There’s no historical evidence for them. They’re just ideas or theories made up in the minds of people, despite there being no historical evidence. The last one, the Stolen Body Theory, does have a little bit of historical evidence to it. Matthew chapter 27. And so this theory simply says that the disciples came and stole the body of Jesus at night. Well, even though there is some historical evidence for this one, it’s, you might say, kind of a really oh, I would say dumb theory. And let me tell you why.

So in order for this one to be true, the disciples who were gathered into a house, scared to death, they would have had to come up with the idea. Let’s suppose Peter said, men, this is a bad situation, but let’s make the most of a really bad situation. Let’s go steal the body of Jesus. So that means we have to sneak up there in the middle of the night without waking up the guards. Move the stone without waking up the guards. Go in there and unwrap the linen burial cloths from Jesus. It’s going to take a while and then we’re going to leave without waking up the guards. We have to get rid of the body. But then what we also have to do is we have to come up with a number of appearances of Jesus to us. So, Mary, we’re going to say that it appeared to you first. Then he appeared to me, Peter. Then he appeared to some of you other women. Then he appeared to you two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Then he appeared to all of us. Minus you, Thomas.

But then we’re going to say he appeared to all of us. And, Thomas, you’re there at that time, and you make this great confession of faith, my Lord and my God. And then we’re going to come up with a number of other appearances, and we have to make sure they’re fairly consistent with one another. And not only that, but then after we say that he appeared, we’re going to go tell everybody that we can that he rose from the dead. And we’re going to do so even under great duress and difficult, even if it means we’re going to have to suffer. Even if it means that if some of us might have to die, we know it’s a lie, but we have to be willing to suffer and maybe even die for what we know is a lie. There’s nothing in it for us, but let’s do it anyway for some reason.

So you can see how ludicrous this theory really is. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. So again, this is one of those theories that doesn’t hold any water. Has a little historical evidence to it, but not much. But it is rather ludicrous. And again, Christians believe that the historical evidence is overwhelming. And it’s in those historical documents we call Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that clearly testify that Jesus was dead. But he rose again, and that is for us and our salvation.

My name is David Thompson. I’m the director for The Center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for joining us.