GOOD QUESTION: What Accounts for the Transformation of These Four Men?
What accounts for the transformation of these four men from cowards, skeptics and deadly adversaries into the acknowledged and respected leaders of the early Christian movement? That something was seeing and talking with the resurrected Jesus Christ.
Doubting Thomas encounters the resurrected Christ, by Caravaggio.
Even most critical scholars agree that something occurred that completely changed Peter, James, the half-brother of Jesus, Thomas, and Paul.
Peter famously denied three times even knowing Jesus or being one of His disciples the night before the crucifixion, denials that Jesus predicted would happen before they did.
James presumably was among the family members who the Gospel of Mark claims thought Jesus was looney. Can you imagine the dinner table conversations that happened in that family in the years before Jesus began His public ministry!
Doubting Thomas:
Thomas was the skeptic who refused to believe the report of Jesus’ resurrection until he saw Him in person and physically put his hand into the holes in Jesus hands and His side where the Roman soldier thrust his sword.
And Paul, nee Saul, persecuted Christians “breathing threats and murder” until he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, the encounter that turned him in to the greatest missionary the church has ever known.
There are only three alternative explanations to the claim that what changed these four men was meeting and talking with the resurrected Jesus: Either they lied about it, they were somehow fooled into thinking they saw and talked to Him, or Jesus really didn’t die on the cross, He “swooned,” revived in the tomb, then escaped and falsely claimed to have been resurrected.
Four Men Lied?
The idea all four of these men lied about seeing and talking with the resurrected Jesus ranks right at the bottom with the swoon theory in utterly lacking credibility. Peter was crucified (upside down according to tradition), while James and Paul were beheaded.
The ultimate end of Thomas is not known with certainty but the most reasonable of several possibilities is that he was martyred in Syria. Men don’t knowingly die horrendous deaths for what they know to be lies.
The swoon theory was popular among certain German biblical critics two centuries ago, and reappears occasionally in contemporary debates, but think about it: Jesus was beaten nearly to death, with massive loss of blood and the onset of shock, then nailed to a cross for hours of agony before dying, and shortly thereafter being pierced with a sword into His heart.
It is more likely that every 2,365th person reading this post will awaken tomorrow morning having grown a third ear on their forehead than that Jesus survived crucifixion in some sort of unconscious state, then revived in the tomb and somehow had the physical strength to move a two-ton rock blocking the entrance, overcame professional soldiers, then managed to appear convincingly to the disciples despite gaping untreated wounds.
Multiple Mass Hallucinations:
That leaves us with the possibility that the disciples experienced a hallucination. Here’s the key problem with this one: Jesus appeared multiple times to differing individuals and groups, including one of 500 people, over a period of several weeks.
But hallucinations typically involve one person one or a few times within a short period of time, not multiple persons under a wide variety of circumstances and across a significant span of time.
Perhaps the hallucination explanation is possible, given a whole bunch of tenuous assumptions, but is it even remotely likely? And we haven’t even mentioned the impossibility of so many people repeatedly having a shared hallucination.
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EXPLAIN THIS: Who Got His Body?
Jesus had no biological siblings. Thomas died in India and was speared to death. All the Apostles died horrible deaths. I think you have a typo by stating Peter was beheaded….unless they beheaded his dead body after being crucified upside down. Our Blessed Mother is defamed everytime a protestant demeans her as being some normal human being. She was a sinless creature along with her son, who had a God Chosen chaste caretaker, St. Joseph, to care for them and protect the family. St. James was probably a cousin at most as everyone was brothers and sisters to Jesus.
I think you are right about Peter, that “beheaded” is a typo, should be Paul. Thanks for pointing it out. And while I don’t share your belief that Mary was sinless, I certainly do not intend in any way here or anywhere else to demean her.
When the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary he said to her “Hail full of grace.” Grace is God’s life in our soul. If Mary was full of God’s life in her soul as the Angel Gabriel said, that means she is without sin. We will not be full of grace until we (hopefully) get to heaven. God preserved Mary from the stain of original sin because he wanted the mother of His son to be born of an Immaculate Mother. Think about it for a moment. If you were God and could do anything, wouldn’t you make the mother of your son perfect in every way?
Curious what the Biblical evidence is that Mary was sinless. Since there isn’t any, they default to Church tradition which should carry no weight of theology.
If we are positing the existence of supernatural power, as is necessary for the explanation you prefer that Jesus was a divine being that died and then returned to life, then certainly supernatural powers could explain either nearly dying and recovering and escaping or causing groups of people to see things that weren’t there. If we are discounting ‘magic’ then of course your preferred explanation is even more unlikely then the others.
I will also point out that whole lot of people have seen Elvis after he died as well, I don’t think that proves Elvis’s divinity.
I continue to believe that you can’t ‘prove’ your way to faith and attempting it is both useless and possibly counter productive.