Book Review Essay

The Resurrection of Jesus: An Engagement with Dale Allison

Andrew T. Loke

Hong Kong Baptist University

Abstract: In his latest book, The Resurrection of Jesus, Dale Allison states that,

while he personally believes that Jesus resurrected, “the purely historical

evidence is not, on my view, so good as to make disbelief unreasonable, and it

is not so bad as to make faith untenable.” This article focuses on Allison’s

discussion concerning apparitions, hallucination theory, mass hysteria, and

pareidolia. While appreciative of various aspects of Allison’s work, this article

points out various problems with Allison’s use of materials in other disciplines

and a number of fallacies of reasoning in Allison’s analyses, and demonstrates

that the best skeptical hypothesis against Jesus’ resurrection suggested by

Allison is untenable.

Dale C. Allison, Jr. The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History.

London: T&T Clark, 2021. 403 pages. 47.95.

 1. Introduction

Dale Allison’s The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics,

History1 is the fruit of a lifetime’s reflection by a leading New Testament

scholar on “the prize puzzle of New Testament research.” 2 Its implications for

apologetics is indicated by its subtitle and its conclusion that “the purely

historical evidence is not, on my view, so good as to make disbelief

unreasonable, and it is not so bad as to make faith untenable” (Allison

personally believes that Jesus resurrected).3 While appreciative of many aspects

of Allison’s work, this article will point out various problems with Allison’s

analysis. By applying the considerations against the relevant categories of

naturalistic hypotheses which I explain in detail in my book, Investigating the

Resurrection of Jesus Christ,4 I shall show that the best skeptical hypothesis

against Jesus’ resurrection suggested by Allison is untenable.

1
Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (London: T&T Clark, 2021).

2
Ibid, 8. Other important recent and older publications include Andrew Loke, Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A

New Transdisciplinary Approach (London: Routledge, 2020); Joseph Bergeron and Gary Habermas, “The Resurrection of

Jesus: A Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter,” Irish Theological Quarterly 80 (2015):

157–72; James Ware, “The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5,” New Testament Studies 60

(2014): 475–98; Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove: IVP, 2010);

Dale Allison, Resurrecting Jesus (New York: T&T Clark, 2005); N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).

3
Allison, Resurrection, 353.

4
My book, Investigating the Resurrection, also addresses other relevant issues such as the problem of miracle and

demonstrates that the resurrection of Jesus is the most reasonable conclusion.

 2. Allison’s Conclusions

After a dizzying assessment of arguments and counterarguments, Allison

arrives at the following historical conclusions:

Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, buried Jesus, perhaps

in a family tomb. Shortly thereafter, some of Jesus’ female followers

found the entrance to that tomb open, his body gone. After that, likely

quite soon after that, at least one of them, Mary Magdalene, had a vision

of Jesus. Sometime later, in Galilee, Peter, probably aware of the story of

the empty tomb as well as of Mary’s encounter and presumably her

interpretation of it, also believed that he had met Jesus. Not long after

that, the apostle and his companions returned to Jerusalem, where they

began to proclaim that God had raised Jesus from the dead. By that time,

additional members of the twelve had become convinced that they, too,

had seen their lord, whether in Galilee and/or Jerusalem. Months or even

years after that, something happened to convince members of a large

crowd—“more than five hundred,” according to Paul—that they too had

beheld Jesus. Subsequently, Jesus’ brother James made the same claim,

and eventually also Paul of Tarsus.5

5
Allison, Resurrection, 336.
 Allison notes that the above conclusions are quite conservative within the

broader context of critical study of the New Testament. 6 According to Allison,

the best skeptical hypothesis is as follows: After thieves had stolen Jesus’ body

(Allison notes that there is no proof of this),7

Mary Magdalene hallucinated Jesus, as have others suffering grief. Likely

triggered by Mary’s claim, something similar then happened to Peter in

Galilee a bit later. As for the interpretation—God raised Jesus from the

dead—Jesus proleptically supplied that. He had prophesied death in the

eschatological tribulation and vindication at the general resurrection, so it

would not have been difficult for his followers to imagine that the latter

days had arrived, and that the resurrection of the dead had commenced,

and all the more if Jesus seemed to Mary and/or Peter to be not a ghost

but instead solidly real.8

Allison then argues that we do not have enough information to insist that

James’ and Paul’s experience could not have been subjective. As for the

collective appearances,

. . . We can infer a few things about the appearance to the twelve as

several texts likely descend from an early report of it. Yet who saw
6
Ibid.

7
Ibid, 345.

8
Ibid, 339.
 exactly what lies beyond us, as does the reason for the note of doubt

consistently associated with accounts of the meeting. As for the five

hundred, our lack of knowledge similarly allows a skeptic to wave it

away. Maybe mass pareidolia is the explanation. Or perhaps it was a case

of mass hysteria. Groups can, in any case, according to their own

testimony, share visionary experiences.9

Due to limitation of space, I shall focus on Allison’s discussion

concerning the collective appearances (parallel apparitions, hallucination, mass

hysteria, mass pareidolia) (I shall evaluate Allison’s discussion concerning the

empty tomb in another publication).10

3. Concerning the collective appearances

3.1. Concerning parallel apparitions to Christ’s resurrection

Allison argues that there are examples of apparitions of the dead which

can be considered as in some sense parallel to Christ’s resurrection. He notes

that the last few decades have witnessed a revolution in the study of apparitions

following Dewi Rees’ publication in British Medical Journal which notes that

9
Ibid, 340.

10
Andrew T. Loke, Studies in the Origin and Development of Divine and Resurrection Christologies (Eugene: Cascade,

Forthcoming).
47% of the 293 widows and widowers interviewed believed that they had

experienced contact with their dead spouse.11

Rees regards these experiences as “hallucinations or illusions.” 12 Now a

hallucination is “a sensory experience which occurs in the absence of

corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ, has a

sufficient sense of reality to resemble a veridical perception, over which the

subject does not feel s/he has direct and voluntary control, and which occurs in

the awake state.”13 It is an intramental event. By contrast, an illusion is the

perception of an external entity with the normal processes of sensory

perception, but not as what it is, i.e., there are other causal factors which distort

the perception of this extramental entity. It is significant that Rees does not

mention any collective hallucination or collective illusion. A collective

hallucination would be akin to a group of students “seeing” a teacher in a

classroom when there is in fact nothing there. A more recent article by

physician Joseph Bergeron states that “collective hallucination is not found in

peer reviewed medical and psychological literature.”14

11
Allison, Resurrection, 213; citing Dewi Rees, “The Hallucinations of Widowhood,” British Medical Journal 4 (1971): 37–

41.
12
Allison, Resurrection, 37.

13
Anthony David, “The Cognitive Neuropsychiatry of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: An Overview,” Cognitive

Neuropsychiatry 9 (2004):108.
14
Bergeron and Habermas, Resurrection, 161.
 Allison notes, however, that it is not obviously true that all “apparitions”

are purely endogenous (i.e., intramental, like hallucination). Nevertheless,

while Allison thinks it is difficult to rule out the possibility that deceased

people could have indeed appeared to their loved ones in some of the strongest

cases of apparitions he cites, he also thinks it is difficult to rule out the

possibility that these cases can be explained naturalistically. He thinks that this

conclusion is similar to that concerning Jesus’ resurrection. I shall argue below

that they are dissimilar.

Allison cites long lists of literature claiming occasions at which more

than one person saw an apparition together, 15 One problem is that these are not

peer-reviewed medical and psychological literature. To those lists may be

added my claim that four of my relatives ate with my long-deceased

grandfather yesterday. The point is that anybody can claim a group of people

saw something. I just did. I made it up. Could it be the same with the claims

listed by Allison? Space does not permit discussing all the cases Allison cited. I

shall focus on what Allison regards as the strongest cases to illustrate the point.

Consider the case of Samuel Bull who is said to have appeared to more

than four people, and which Allison thinks is relatively well-evidenced in that

15
Allison, Resurrection, 218n37.
it comes from contemporary, first-hand witnesses. 16 In 1932 Bull died. Shortly

thereafter, Bull’s daughter, her husband, and their five children moved into

Bull’s residence to help care for his aged wife. “The entire family claimed to

see, on more than one occasion, the apparition—which appeared to be solid—

at one and the same time.” 17 Consider also the Buddhist Rainbow Body cases,

which Allison considers to be “the evidence for them [that] is potentially the

strongest of all.”18 Allison highlights a case told by Dalai Lama of a Tibetan

yogi Khenpo A-chos who in 1998 “surprised his disciples by announcing that

he would leave. He put on his saffron robe and told them to seal him inside his

room for a week. His disciples followed his request and after a week opened

the room to find that he had completely disappeared except for his robe.” 19

Allison notes a scholar Francis Tiso who set out for Tibet to investigate the

claims and recounted his discoveries in his book Rainbow Body and

Resurrection.20 Tiso was able to access various biographies and interviewed

three Tibetan monks who were on the scene in the days after A-chos died, one

of whom claimed that A-chos appeared to his disciples. 21 Such alleged

16
Ibid, 218n37.

17
Ibid, 256.

18
Ibid, 284.

19
Ibid, 273

20
Francis Tiso, Rainbow Body and Resurrection (Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2016).

21
Allison, Resurrection, 274; citing Tiso, Rainbow Body, 60.
“appearances” are different from the appearances of the bodily resurrected

Jesus, for Rainbow Bodies are not bodily resurrections but are supposed to

involve the disappearance of corpses (usually leaving behind some body parts

such as nails and hair) typically accompanied by the appearance of rainbows or

lights and occasionally appearances in visions and dreams.

Concerning Bull’s case, Allison comments that “we have little cause to

doubt the sincerity of the reporters.”22 However, it is one thing to have reasons

for doubting sincerity; it is another thing to have reasons for proving sincerity.

Allison cites some investigators who considered and discarded the possibility

that the family made up a tale in order to obtain better housing after (merely)

speaking with the family.23 However, this is not enough to rule out the

possibility that they made up the story for other reasons. Consider the case of

Maria Gonzalez and her three companions who claimed to have seen Virgin

Mary in San Sebastian de Garabandal in 1961. Those who were persuaded by

them evidently thought that there is little cause to doubt their sincerity.

However, one of the companions later confessed that their claims were not

authentic, stating that “she and her companions had used the trances and

apparition claims as a means to get away from the village and play!”24
22
Allison, Resurrection, 257.

23
Ibid., 257n117.

24
Joe Nickell, Looking for a Miracle (Amherst: Prometheus, 1998), 181–4.
 Concerning the Rainbow Body case, Allison notes that

Despite the multiple sources he uncovered and the three first-hand

witnesses with whom he spoke, Tiso . . . has come to no firm conclusion

as to what really happened. . . . [H]e also does not altogether disallow the

alternative that we are dealing here with a ‘hagiographical symbol,’ and

that the people with whom he spoke made things up, ‘perhaps in

collaboration with one another, perhaps following the dictates of a

cultural tradition.’25

Now I am not claiming that the above cases are indeed fraud. Rather, I

am arguing that the burden of proof is on those who claim these cases as

parallels to Jesus’ resurrection to establish their claim by excluding a fraud, but

this has not been proven. Frauds are common occurrences, and cases of people

obtaining money by making religious claims26 and religious tourism (e.g., to

pay respect to the remaining “sacred” body parts of individuals who reportedly

achieved the Rainbow Body27) are well-known. Moreover, unlike the

25
Allison, Resurrection, 274-5; citing Tiso, Rainbow Body, 11, 82.

26
Tibor Krausz, “Dubious Buddhist religious practices under fire from young Thai monk who’s become a social media star,”

South China Morning Post, Sept. 4, 2020

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/3099716/dubious-buddhist-religious-practices-under-fire-young-thai-monk-whos
27
A website claims that “more than 100,000 sangha members and lay devotees attended the puja and paid respect to the sacred

body of Lama AChuk Rinpoche” (“The Rainbow Body of Light: Periodically Updated Research Page,” accessed 14/4/2022,

http://therainbowbody.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-rainbow-body-of-light-periodically.html).
foundational nature of Jesus’ resurrection to Christianity, the teaching of

Rainbow Body is not foundational to Buddhism, and there is no context of

persecution concerning the origin of the belief in Rainbow Body. Therefore, in

these cases there is insufficient consideration for ruling out the possibility of

fraud for financial incentives.

On the other hand, Allison notes that the fraud theory has long been

discarded in the case of Jesus’ resurrection, citing E. P. Sanders: “‘I do not

regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation’ of Easter faith, for some

of those in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 and the canonical resurrection narratives ‘were to

spend the rest of their lives proclaiming that they had seen the risen Lord, and

several of them would die for their cause.’”28 Moreover, in his argument

against the claim that Easter faith was sufficiently explained by the disciples’

pre-Easter belief that God could raise a martyred prophet, 29

Allison rightly

concludes that “Easter faith was, in large measure, a response to appearances of

the risen Jesus. . . . [T]he sources, however much they otherwise disagree,

concur that something earth-shattering occurred in the days immediately after

the crucifixion.”30

28
Allison, Resurrection, 310; citing E.P Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 279-80.

29
Allison, Resurrection, 183.

30
Ibid., 198-202.
 What kind of “earth-shattering” appearances could these be? Sensing the

presence of a dead person (e.g., bereavement experience) and/or individual

hallucination of a dead person would not be “earth-shattering” since these are

quite common and (as Allison himself notes) “typical encounters with the

recently deceased do not . . . lead to the establishment of a new religion.” 31

Moreover, they do not usually result in the widespread belief that the corpse

had revived, but that the person’s body is dead. The greatest proportion of

those cases documented by Rees claimed that their experience was a “sense of

presence,” without (say) physically seeing or touching someone as a group, i.e.,

without the kind of experiences that would lead them to think that they actually

encountered the resurrected body of a deceased person. It is important to be

clear about the meaning of resurrection: when used with reference to the

physically dead—as in Jesus’ case in 1 Cor 15:3–5—the term egeirō (“raise”)

refers unambiguously to the reanimation or revivification of the corpse. 32

Resurrection was not supposed to be a subjective private event.

Allison argues that the comparative study of apparitions “might be taken

to reinforce the possibility that Luke 24 and John 20–21 preserve the primitive

conviction that the risen Jesus seemed to some of those who encountered him

31
Ibid., 221.

32
Ware, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” p. 494.
to be not ethereal but utterly real, even solid.” 33 He claims that “apparitions can

be perceived as solid and can even sometimes be touched,” and that “our brains

. . . are capable of generating very vivid, realistic, and compelling imaginary

experiences.”34

Nevertheless, it is unclear how much the veracity of the apparitions

literature cited by Allison can be established, and how much they are

analogous to the case of Jesus’ resurrection. For example, Allison cites the

names of eight people attached to the Shakers’ Sacred Roll and Book who

testified that “we saw the holy Angel, standing upon the house-top . . . holding

the Roll and Book.”35 However, the text does not say that they saw the Angel

together at once, in a way analogous to a “group appearance” of the resurrected

Jesus.

Against O’Collins’ questioning of the reliability of parapsychological

literature which have been regarded by many experts as pseudoscientific,

Allison replies by claiming that the accusation that the parapsychologists

invented their stories of “collective experiences” as “beyond preposterous if

33
Allison, Resurrection, 227-29.

34
Ibid, 230-31.

35
Allison, Resurrection, 233; citing Part II. Being a Sequel or Appendix to the Sacred Roll and Book (Canterbury: n.p., 1843),

304.
one knows the empirically based literature.” 36 He cites “a large survey by non-

parapsychologists, in collaboration with the National Institute of Mental

Health, confirmed the basic reliability” of the Census on Hallucinations

conducted by the founders of the Society for Psychical Research a century

earlier.37 However, that survey merely confirmed the incidence of

hallucinations in the earlier Census; it does not mention collective experiences.

Thus, Allison’s reply to O’Collins is misleading.

Allison then claims that “in a more recent, twentieth-century survey, 12%

of apparitional experiences were collective,” 38 and the data from a study in

Iceland, which collected 349 reports, show that, of 89 cases in which two or

more people were in a position to share a supposed encounter with a dead

individual, they did so in 41 cases. 39 However, both sources Allison cites are

from parapsychological literature which O’Collins questions (i.e., they may be

fabrications). Moreover, Allison himself notes that the conclusions of these two

sources are contradicted by the much lower percentage in a study by Kalish

and Reynolds: of 434 individuals they interviewed, only “slightly over 2

36
Allison, Resurrection, 237.

37
Allison, Resurrection, 236-7, 249; citing A.Y. Tien, “Distribution of Hallucinations in the Population,” Social Psychiatry

and Psychiatric Epidemiology 26 (1991): 287–92.

38
John Palmer, “A Community Mail Survey of Psychic Experiences,” Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research

73 (1979): 228.
39
Allison, Resurrection, 249; citing Erlendur Haraldsson, Departed Among the Living (Guildford: White Crow, 2012), 201.
percent reported a post-death encounter that was part of the reality of another

person present at the time.”40 The fact that the results of parapsychological

literature are so different from the results in academic peer-reviewed

publication casts further doubts on the reliability of the former. Now it is

interesting to note that Kalish and Reynolds did not provide details concerning

the 2 percent reported: how many other persons were present and shared in

those encounters in each instance (e.g., were there up to eleven people or five

hundred people having an encounter together at any one time, or were there

only one other person?). Neither does it provide details concerning whether

those other persons who were claimed to be present and shared in those

encounters were convinced and were willing to testify that it was a resurrected

body (rather than a spirit) that they “saw.” Or was it (say) just a vague sense of

“feeling the spiritual presence” of the deceased person? Without these details,

it does not rebut William Lane Craig’s objection that there is no single instance

which exhibits the diversity and multitude of the resurrection appearances over

a short period. It is only by compiling unrelated cases that anything analogous

to the resurrection of Jesus may be constructed.41

40
Kalish, Richard and David Reynolds, “Phenomenological Reality and Post-Death Contact,” Journal for the Scientific Study

of Religion 12 (1973): 219.

41
William Craig, “Closing Responses,” in Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? ed. P. Copan and R. Tacelli (Downers

Grove: InterVarsity, 2000), 190–2.

3.2. Concerning ‘seeing the same thing’

Allison objects that Bergeron’s remarks against the collective

hallucination hypothesis “appear to assume that the groups who saw Jesus

beheld exactly the same thing. . . . Yet one fails to understand how anyone can

ascertain this.”42 Allison notes that the New Testament texts speak of doubt

(Mt. 28:17; Lk. 24:38), and he claims that this “may reflect the circumstance

that the disciples had different responses because they did not all have the same

experience.”43Allison also cites the story of Jesus’ appearance to Saul in Acts

9:7 (“the men who were traveling with him . . . heard the voice but saw no

one”), and claims that there are stories in which not everyone present sees an

apparition.44  He argues “we possess no details as to what the five hundred saw

(1 Cor. 15:6). . . . The same holds for the appearance to ‘all the apostles’ (1

Cor. 15:7), if that was indeed (against my argument in Chapter 4) a single

event.”45

Allison’s argument in Chapter 4 is unconvincing. He reasons that Paul

did not claim in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to “all the apostles at one

time” in verse 7 (unlike the appearance to the five hundred in verse 6), and

42
Allison, Resurrection, 244.

43
Ibid.

44
Ibid, 63n124.

45
Ibid, 244.
unlike the other two collective appearances (“Twelve” and “five hundred”) this

one was not associated with a number. He therefore concludes that this was a

broad generalization (‘Paul’s way of saying that Jesus appeared to others also,

or rather to everyone who bears the title, “apostle”’) rather than a reference to

single event. “Perhaps we should reduce by one the number of so-called

collective visions.”46 However, “at one time” is also missing from the

appearance to the Twelve in verse 5, yet Allison agrees that the latter was a

collective appearance.47 The absence of association with a number in verse 7

can be explained by the uncertainty of the number. 48 On the other hand, the

context indicates that Paul was talking about a sequence of distinct events of

appearances, starting with the appearance to Peter in verse 5b, followed by

“then” (v. 5b), “thereafter” (v. 6a, 7a), and “then” (v. 7b), and ending with “last

of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me” in verse 8. As Gordon Fee

observes, “the enumerating conjunction ‘then’ and the fact that the appearance

to the Twelve was collective, not individual, combine to suggest that a

46
Ibid, 79-80.

47
Paul’s qualification of the appearance to the five hundred as happening “at one time” was for special emphasis of that

particular resurrection appearance, as was his subsequent statement “most of whom are still living” which implies a portion of

them could be checked. It does not imply that the appearance to the Twelve was not a group appearance, just as it does not

imply that a portion of the Twelve were no longer alive and could not be checked, on the contrary we know that at least some

members of the Twelve such as Peter and John were still alive in AD 55 as attested by other sources.  
48
Wright, The Resurrection, 325–6.
collective appearance (probably with a commissioning) is in view here.

Moreover, one would expect the apostle to have written ‘and then to each of

the apostles,’ had he intended such.”49 Thus, it can be concluded that 1

Corinthians 15:7 refers to a single event of collective appearance. Hence, there

are at least three collective appearances to be accounted for, viz. appearances to

“the Twelve,” “five hundred,” and “all the apostles.”

Allison’s argument concerning the story of Jesus’ appearance to Saul in

Acts 9:7 is also unconvincing. Now Acts portrays Saul’s companions as

experiencing the effects of Jesus’ appearance to Saul; they fell to the ground

(Acts 26:14) and heard the voice, which indicates the objectivity of the

appearance. Nevertheless, Acts does not claim that Jesus appeared to Saul’s

companions and they later served as “witnesses” (despite not seeing the same

thing). In other words, this was not supposed to be a “collective appearance”

anyway, hence not everyone present saw an apparition. This is disanalogous to

1 Corinthians 15, which claims that Jesus appeared to three groups and implies

that they served as witnesses; i.e., this was a claim that there were collective

appearances.

Concerning the New Testament texts which speak of doubt, on the one

hand, the texts do not say that the doubt was due to the disciples seeing

49
Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 731.
different things; it might also be due to the fact that the disciples were not

predisposed to accept easily that someone rose from the dead. That is, they

would not have believed so easily given that they “were not hopelessly and

insensibly alienated from the solid world” such that they did not know from

experience that corpses do not naturally exit tombs.50 Initial doubts would have

been natural even if Jesus was truly seen by them. On the other hand, it can be

inferred (and I shall defend this inference below) that, if some members of the

Twelve, the five hundred, and the other apostles did not agree that they saw

Jesus and that their doubts remain (or they believed initially but recanted after

a short while), it is unlikely that Paul would cite them 25 years later in 1

Corinthians 15:3-11 as testimonial evidence to address the problem that the

Corinthians found the resurrection incredible (1 Cor. 15:12).51

Allison might object that the above inference assumes that Paul had a

certain amount of knowledge concerning the five hundred, which he questions.

He asks how many of them Paul knew personally, or with how many he had

conversed about their experience and tested their testimony.52 He thus writes:

50
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 246, 305.

51
That this was Paul’s intention is argued in Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006),

308.
52
Allison, Resurrection, 73.
 Paul, with his aside that most of the five hundred yet live, implies that

they could be interrogated. Yet was this more than a rhetorical

possibility? Whereas the apostle was writing to people in Greece, the

appearance to the five hundred must have occurred in Israel, where surely

the majority of surviving witnesses still lived. We have no evidence that

they traveled abroad giving their testimonies, nor that any Corinthians

braved the Mediterranean waves to learn more.53

In reply, it should be noted that the early Christian movement was a

network of close communication,54 and many Jewish Christians scattered

across the Roman Empire would have travelled yearly to Jerusalem for

festivals.55 Given these considerations, it would have been quite easy for early

Christians including Paul himself to come in contact with and check with these

“witnesses,” and to be aware (as Paul implied) that many were still testifying

and could be questioned, while some have died. Indeed, it would have been

natural for Paul to know about their testimonies given that Paul’s acquaintance

with Christian circles was both wide and extremely early,56 he had been in

these circles for many years already before writing 1 Corinthians, and these
53
Ibid, 74.

54
Larry Hurtado, “Interactive Diversity: A Proposed Model of Christian Origins,” Journal of Theological Studies 64 (2013),

454.
55
Bauckham, Jesus, 32, 306.

56
Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2003), 85–6.
‘witnesses’ would have been well-known within these circles from the very

beginning because of the foundational importance of what they “witnessed.”

Allison objects “If, further, the Corinthians had known any of them, Paul

could easily have written: ‘Then he appeared to more than five hundred

brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, including your friends

Faustinus and Vitus, although some had died.’ He did not so write.” 57

However, neither did Paul name the members of the Twelve in verse 5.

Elsewhere Paul indicates that he knew members of the Twelve and that the

Corinthians knew them too (1 Cor. 1:12 and 9:1–5 indicate that they knew

Peter), and this can explain why he did not feel the need to specify names

because they already knew who he was referring to. A similar explanation can

likewise be given concerning the five hundred in verse 6.

Allison also questions what we can know about what precisely the

“witnesses” believed and preached,58 and their analytical acuity and perceptual

powers (whether they were sober-minded, carefully “compared notes” on their

experiences, and conduct critical interviews). 59 However, he also notes “in

harmony with this common sense, which rightly assumes simple human

57
Allison, Resurrection, 74.

58
Ibid, 309.

59
Ibid, 63, 74.
curiosity”60 that, on seeing or hearing about an extraordinary event (such as

bodily resurrection!), people would have the basic human curiosity to want to

know the details. This implies that, on contact with the “witnesses” (which is

likely, as argued above), the early Christians including Paul would have asked

them about what they saw and thereby knew concerning the subject on which

they testified (even though [as Allison argues] we [the modern day reader]

possess no details as to what the five hundred saw). 61 Just as we can infer that

some people in the first century would have known what did Mary look like

even though we possess no details of what they saw. Moreover, ancient people

were well aware of subjective (intramental) hypotheses—e.g., people “seeing

different things” after drinking too much wine!—and Paul’s whole point of

emphasizing the five hundred seeing at once (1 Cor 15:6) was to rule out such

hypotheses by underlining the objectivity of the resurrection appearance and to

show that the resurrection could be verified. 62 Hence, (and given the likelihood

that Paul would have known what they testified, as established above), it is

unlikely that Paul would have cited the “witnesses” in 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as

testimonial evidence to address the problem that the Corinthians found the

resurrection incredible (1 Cor 15:12) if they testified to seeing different things.

60
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 236.

61
Allison, Resurrection, 244.

62
Joseph Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 550.
3.3. Concerning hysteria

Allison objects that “even if they said much the same thing, their

collaborative testimony might have emerged from conversations with each

other ex eventu.”63 Allison argues that people who share religious visions, such

as those of Mary at Fatima and Zeitoun, “often see different things” 64 and some

saw nothing at all.65 Nevertheless, with regard to the excitable crowds eagerly

awaiting such appearances, those who do not see the hallucination may later be

influenced by the accounts of others and carried away by their enthusiasm,

such that they may even begin to believe that they saw it too. 66 In other words,

they did not see anything but wrongly believed (i.e., due to being deluded) that

they saw something. This is a case of collective delusion, i.e., mass hysteria,

which may have been triggered by an individual hysteria and/or hallucination.

Allison cites this generalization about visionaries purporting to see appearances

of the Virgin Mary:

What probably happens is that for some reason, one seer begins

hallucinating; this provokes imitation on the part of others present;

convinced that they are all seeing something, they conclude that they are

63
Allison, Resurrection, 233-4.

64
Ibid, 244n45.

65
Ibid, 74n200.

66
Ibid, 76n210.
 seeing the same thing; information is exchanged in an effort to determine

what this is, having convinced themselves that they are seeing the same

thing, they sort through this information to build up a consistent report.67

Allison then suggests that, because of his psychological need to restore

emotional equilibrium after betraying Jesus, Peter projected a forgiving Jesus

which he sincerely thought was real, and this emotional contagion (perhaps

taken together with reports of an empty tomb and Jesus’ prediction of his

resurrection) set off a chain reaction of mass hysteria in which other disciples

also had delusions that Jesus resurrected and appeared.68

One problem with Allison’s analysis is that he fails to consider whether

there was context of persecution in the other cases (apparently not for the huge

crowds at Fatima and Zeitoun), and whether there were financial incentives for

attracting religious pilgrims. At the initial stage of the Fatima event, the three

children who claimed that they encountered Mary were willing to suffer

persecution. However, “three” is a small crowd (unlike Twelve or five

hundred), and it wouldn’t have been difficult to induce hallucination given that

children are more prone to hallucination and that widespread pre-existing belief

in the Assumption of Mary was already present. “Skeptics . . . suggested that

67
Michael Carroll, The Cult of the Virgin Mary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 126.

68
Allison, Resurrection, 15.
Lucia was an imaginative girl who influenced her suggestible younger

cousins.”69 As for the large adult crowds who came later and subsequently

claimed to have experienced the apparitions, there was no threat of persecution

for them. On the contrary, the apparitions were sanctioned by the tourism

authorities,70 which suggests that financial incentives were present. The above

considerations may have motivated some people to contribute to the

enthusiasm leading to the emergence of collaborative testimony and the writing

of literature asserting that “thousands” saw the apparitions, 71 even though there

were counter-traditions that people did not see the same thing and some did not

see anything. (There was also no scientific evidence that the sun moved,

contrary to the claims at Fatima).72

By contrast, the context of persecution (which Allison noted earlier citing

Sanders; see Section 3.1) was present for those who claimed that they saw their

persecuted (crucified!) leader alive. The persecution which the earliest

69
Benjamin Radford, “The Lady of Fatima & the Miracle of the Sun,” published May 03, 2013, accessed April 27, 2022

https://www.livescience.com/29290-fatima-miracle.html .
70
Cynthia Nelson, ‘The Virgin of Zeitoun, Worldview 16 (1973): 7.

71
Allison, Resurrection, 74n200.

72
For objections to other claims concerning Fatima (e.g., that people’s clothes became dry quickly despite the rain), see

Radford, “The Lady of Fatima; Benjamin Radford, “Fatima Miracle Claims All Wet,” Skeptical Inquirer vol. 43, no.3

(May/June 2019), accessed April 27, 2022

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2019/05/fatima-miracle-claims-all-wet/ .
Christians would have to be prepared to face would have given people pause

about believing and proclaiming that they had collectively seen Jesus alive if

they did not see the same thing. Additionally, as argued in Section 3.1, sensing

the presence of a dead person is vastly different from seeing a revived corpse.

The above considerations render unlikely Allison’s suggestion that if “two or

three of the disciples said that they had seen Jesus, maybe those who did not

see him but thought they felt his presence would have gone along and been

happy to be included in ‘he appeared to the twelve.”’73 Moreover, it is unlikely

that more than five hundred people and the “other apostles” would be happy to

be included in the list of “witnesses” and face persecution (“why are we

also in danger every hour?”1 Cor 15:30-32), if they did not see anything like

that. Furthermore, unlike other cases (e.g., visions of Mary), there was no

counter-traditions of those who did not see anything. In particular, there is no

evidence that anyone leaked out the truth that they did not see anything, even

when persecuted.

Allison states that his skeptical scenario might be likened to a Bigfoot

(Sasquatch) scare, where a report triggers a series of others, and he cites James

Stewart’s article in support.74 However, Allison fails to note that Stewart

73
Allison, Resurrection, 63.

74
James Stewart, “Sasquatch Sightings in South Dakota: An Analysis of an Episode of Collective Delusion,” in Exploring the

Paranormal, ed. George Zollschan, John Schumaker, and Greg Walsh (Dorset: Prism, 1989), 287–304.
concludes that the delusion was in the form of attributing “mysterious, and to

some degree anxiety-producing causes” to mundane events; 75 none of the

‘sightings’ involved visions shared by a group of people. This is disanalogous

to the collective appearances of Jesus. This point also implies the falsity of the

analogies of Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (1902–1994) and Jewish

mystic and rabbi Sabbatai Sevi (1626-1676) cited by Allison. While a minority

of their followers claimed that they resurrected, 76 this was not a widely held

conviction among their followers, and there was no tradition of collective

appearances.77

Allison claims that “if there was a high concentration of resurrection

appearances in a relatively short period of time and then a drop-off, this would

match the pattern of many episodes of collective delusion: initial report

followed by the rapid multiplication of reports followed by swift cessation.” 78

However, Allison fails to note Stewart’s explanation that the reason for

cessation of collective delusion is that believers realize that the basic

assumption of the episode (e.g., the existence of Bigfoot) rests upon a delusion,

so they stop believing, the enthusiasm wanes, and the episode quietly

75
Ibid., 289.

76
Allison, Resurrection, 193, 282; 148-9.

77
Loke, Investigating,162-3.

78
Allison, Resurrection, 28.
disappears.79 In other words, many victims of mass hysteria are able to achieve

insight eventually and realize that their beliefs are wrong (for example, in cases

whereby someone believed he/she saw something with another person when

nothing was actually seen, the other person corrects him/her). This is

disanalogous to the case for Jesus’ resurrection in which the earliest Christians

did not stop believing and the collective appearances continued to be cited as

evidence for the objectivity of Jesus’ resurrection.

The skeptic might suggest the alternative hypothesis that the disciples did

see something extramentally together, but that was not Jesus; i.e. they saw

something else which they wrongly believed was Jesus. Such cases would be

labelled as illusions since they involve seeing an extramental identity but

misidentifying it. Relevant examples would be those mentioned in Michael

Goulder’s paper (referenced by Allison); such as delusion of the statue of Mary

moving and UFO sightings.80 The former involve seeing an extramental statue

while misidentifying its movement, and the latter are likely misidentifications

of airplanes, comets etc. Now Allison rejects the implausible hypothesis that

79
Stewart, “Sasquatch Sightings,” 302.

80
Michael Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision,” in Resurrection Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Oxford: Oneworld,

1996), 53, cited in Allison, Resurrection, 14.

the disciples misidentified another person as Jesus.81 He considers the

pareidolia hypothesis (another form of illusion), which is discussed below.

3.4. Concerning pareidolia

Pareidolia is “the perception of apparently significant patterns or

recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of

shapes and lines,”82 due to what is theorized as the human mind’s over-

sensitivity to perceiving patterns. Allison suggests that “a skeptic could offer

that people must have naively misinterpreted some natural phenomenon. Even

today, some Christians eagerly pass around pictures of clouds that, to them,

look like Jesus. So did a first-century crowd, naive about pareidolia, look up

and marvel at a figure in the clouds?” 83 Allison argues that Jesus’ predictions of

bodily resurrection and the disciples’ eschatological expectations enhanced by

Jesus’ teaching of the new age with its prefatory resurrection could have

contributed to their interpretation of what they saw.84 Moreover, within the

context of such eschatological expectation, “which included the prospect of

suffering and death followed by vindication at the resurrection of the dead, an

81
Allison, Resurrection, 22n74.

82
Lexico Dictionary, accessed April 27, 2022 https://www.lexico.com/definition/pareidolia .
83
Allison, Resurrection, 250.

84
Ibid, 145.
empty tomb, whatever the cause, could have predisposed some to believe that

Jesus had risen.”85

People have long realized that natural phenomenon can look like human

figures. Rock formations have been perceived to resemble heads of people, the

sun has been perceived by ancient Jews to resemble “a bridegroom from his

wedding canopy” (Psalm 19:5), although not literally regarded as such. Allison

seems to assume a universal gullibility of ancient people regarding such things.

However, this was not the case. Skepticism about “signs in heaven” was

present in the ancient world, just as skepticism about resurrected bodies was

present. For example, Titus wrote “a phantom navy was seen shining in the

sky,” and comments “when once men’s minds have been excited by

superstitious fears they easily believe these things” (Livius 21.62)—which

indicates that Titus himself was skeptical. While Allison notes that the

phenomenon of spectral armies is not rare; he also notes that not everyone on

the scene saw it and believe it.86 Allison also cites the cross of light Constantine

and his army purportedly saw above the sun,87 and while he rightly cautions

about the reliability of Eusebius’ (Vit. Const. 1.28.2) report of Constantine’s

vision, he did not note Eusebius’ remark that this incident was “hard to
85
Ibid, 344.

86
Ibid, 340n27.

87
Ibid., 74, 250.
believe.” This reflects the skepticism that was present, regardless of the

validity of Eusebius’ attempts to justify belief in this case (perhaps supported

by political agenda). Concerning skepticism about resurrected bodies, Craig

Keener comments on 1 Corinthians 15:12 that “educated, elite Corinthians

probably followed views held by many philosophers, such as immortality of

the soul after the body’s death. Many viewed the body as earthly, the soul as

heavenly (Heraclitus Ep. 9; Seneca Dial. 12.11.6), including some Jews (Wis

9:15–16; Sipre Deut. 306.28.2).”88

Moreover, Christians passing pictures of clouds that look like Jesus do

not regard the clouds as literally the reanimated corpse of Jesus, but merely as

signs or images, i.e., a likeness or representation, not the actual physical body

of Jesus. It is one thing to say that pareidolia is common (in the sense that

many people including myself have perceived patterns that resemble the

popular conception of Jesus’ face). It is another thing to say it is common for

people to believe that they had seen Jesus’ physical face after pareidolia (which

many people including myself don’t. For it is evident that the clouds don’t

move like the way living bodies move, they don’t speak to crowds, etc.).

Modern and ancient people know the difference between clouds and human

bodies (even though some of them may think that the shapes of the clouds were

88
Craig Keener, 1–2 Corinthians (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 122.
formed supernaturally to resemble Jesus’ face and interpret these as divine

signs of blessing or judgment). Yet the earliest Christian witnesses (“whether

then it was I or they, so we proclaim” 1 Cor 15:11) were referring to the

reanimated corpse of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 and saying that it was seen

by groups of people.

There is no teaching or prophecy in the New Testament that would

contribute to interpreting clouds as resurrected bodies. The closest text is

perhaps Mark 14:62; but that speaks of Jesus coming on/with (Greek μετα) the

clouds, rather than being identical to the clouds. Allison suggests that 1

Corinthians 15:6 might be caused by a pareidolia in the sky. He claims that it is

very hard to fathom how an assembly of more than five hundred could see an

earthbound man at one time and observes that ἐπάνω (“more than”) can mean

“above” or “over” and that Chrysostom noted “some say: ‘above’ is ‘above

from heaven. For not walking on earth did he appear to them but above and

over their heads.’”89 However, Chrysostom’s reference is late (4 th century) and

even then was not widely held (“some” say); moreover, contrary to Allison, it

is not implausible that five hundred could see an earthbound man at one time—

for consider how thousands of people can see a singer on an elevated platform

89
Allison, Resurrection, 250, citing Chrysostom Hom. 1 Cor. 38.5.
in an open-air concert and the singer can choose to come down the platform

and walk among them.

Now, unlike those Christians passing pictures of clouds (and believers of

the Marian apparition at Zeitoun, which Allison regards as a possible

pareidolia),90 Paul was not trying to convince the Corinthian Christians that

someone acted supernaturally and had given them divine signs; the Corinthian

Christians had already believed all that. Rather, their difficulty concerns the

reanimation of corpses. Additionally, it has been argued in Section 3.2 that

Paul’s point of stating the five hundred seeing “at one time, most of whom are

still alive” (1 Cor 15:6) was to emphasize the objectivity of the verifiable

evidence of Jesus’ resurrection to

“educated, elite Corinthians” (Keener) who found the idea of reanimated

corpses incredible (1 Cor 15:12), and that Paul likely knew the testimonies of

the five hundred and other witnesses. Given that this is the case, it is unlikely

that Paul would have referred to the testimonies of these witnesses if seeing

clouds was what they testified, as this would have made it more incredible (and

irrelevant) to the “educated, elite Corinthians.” 91

90
Allison, Resurrection, 299.

91
Keener, 1–2 Corinthians, 122.
 Finally, it is unlikely that three different groups of people (the Twelve,

five hundred, and other apostles) would have all looked at the clouds on three

different occasions and came to the widespread agreement that the clouds were

literally Jesus. This is especially so given Allison’s acknowledgement that not

everyone at the scene of a pareidolia (e.g., at Zeitoun) sees it and believes it.

Even if some individuals may have been predisposed to believe as a result of

eschatological expectations and an empty tomb, as argued in Section 3.2, the

excitement would have been tempered by threats of persecution; and given that

different people have different ability to experience pareidolia and different

tendencies to form beliefs as a result of pareidolia, it is unlikely that pareidolia

would have either originated or contributed to the widespread agreement

among the Twelve and other earliest Christians that they saw the resurrected

Jesus. In other words, it is a useless and irrelevant hypothesis.

3.5. Allison’s concern

Allison raises the concern that, if one were to judge all other accounts of

group visions to be “counterfeit, it would be wholly natural to suspect the same

for the New Testament reports.” 92 “Would not rejection of all the non-Christian

stories reinforce the skeptic’s repeated insistence that religious sincerity and

eye-witness testimony do not ensure historical truth? . . . [T]he more examples

92
Allison, Resurrection, 245.
of such delusion and/or deceit surrounding dead bodies that one can amass, the

more confident skeptics will be in rejecting the testimony to the resurrection of

Jesus.”93

Allison’s conclusion does not follow, because it depends on the reasons

by which other stories of group visions are judged to be false or unproven. The

skeptic is correct that religious sincerity and eyewitness testimony do not

ensure historical truth—people can be sincerely mistaken, and an “eyewitness”

can lie. However, delusion and deceit belong to different categories, and are

argued for or against using different considerations which may or may not

apply to the case concerning Jesus’ resurrection. 94 One must be careful not to

beg the question against the uniqueness of the case concerning Jesus’

resurrection by arguing that other cases concerning dead bodies have been

refuted or are unproven. It is interesting to note that, despite his attempts to

compile parallels from other stories, Allison himself notes the uniqueness of

the case concerning Jesus’ resurrection by stating that “Apparitions . . . are not

seen by crowds of up to five hundred people,”95 and observing that

93
Ibid, 277.

94
These considerations are explained in Loke, Investigating (summarized on pages 202-203); I have applied some of them in

this article against the skeptical hypotheses found in Allison’s book.

95
Allison, Resurrection, 221.
 Nonetheless, I know of no close phenomenological parallel to the series

of likely events as a whole. Early Christianity offers us a missing body

plus visions to several individuals plus collective apparitions plus the

sense of a dead man’s presence plus the conversion vision of at least one

hostile outsider. Taken as a whole, this is, on any account, a remarkable,

even extraordinary confluence of events and claims. If there is a good,

substantial parallel to the entire series, I have yet to run across it.96

4. Conclusion

Allison’s work is magnificent in its scope and the amount of literature it

cites. Nevertheless, much of what it cites concerning apparitions are of

questionable reliability, while its analyses of the naturalistic hypotheses

concerning the collective appearances and some passages in the New

Testament are beset with fallacies of reasoning. In light of these problems, the

best skeptical hypothesis his book proposes (i.e., a combination of

hallucination, mass hysteria, and mass pareidolia) is untenable; therefore, its

implications for apologetics should be revised.97

96
Ibid, 346.

97
I would like to thank David Graieg, Betty Talbert, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful feedback on the earlier
drafts of this paper.