I’ve been reading Dale C. Allison’s Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and its Interpreters. It’s an odd and fascinating book. Only the second half of it is directly about the resurrection; the first half is comprised of other essays related to the historical Jesus, though they’re interesting in varying degrees in their own right. Allison adds periodic autobiographic digressions and discloses his personal viewpoints on various issues, which gives the book a personal tone and prevents it from being a dry, academic work. It seems clear that Allison considers himself to be a Christian of some sort, though obviously not too conservative, since he allows that Jesus was wrong about the timing of the apocalypse. Still, he’s critical in particular of the work of John Dominic Crossan, from the notorious Jesus Seminar, though he seems to consider Crossan a scholar worth engaging with.

In his 177-page chapter on the resurrection of Jesus, Allison starts out with a useful taxonomy of explanations for the resurrection, which parallel those given by apologists who are summarizing their hypothesis along with various “naturalistic” explanations. In Allison’s case, his list of categories consists of orthodox belief, misinterpretation, hallucinations, deliberate deception, genuine visions, belief in God’s vindication, and rapid disintegration of the body plus visions. His summaries of various theories that fall into each category are more even-handed the those offered by others, though he doesn’t hesitate to make his own sentiments known, such as when, regarding the so-called “swoon theory” (that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross and was later revived), he repeats the usual criticism that “how a flagellated, half-dead victim of the hideous torture of crucifixion could impress others as triumphant over death is hard to imagine.” (p. 203-204)

In the rest of the chapter, Allison proceeds to offer a series of carefully written and well-considered observations and analyses of various aspects of the resurrection. He does a responsible and thoughtful job and displays an in-depth knowledge of the relevant literature. He refers fairly often to the work of William Lane Craig, sometimes sympathetically and sometimes more critically. Allison sees more ambiguity on a number of issues than allowed for by Craig, Michael Licona, and Gary Habermas. About halfway through the chapter, Allison turns toward the question of occurrences that are analogous to the resurrection appearances of Jesus. He asserts that the apologists are right to question whether appearances of the risen Jesus to groups over a period of time can be attributed to hallucinations or “mass hysteria,” but then comments, “Yet, if the apologists’ questions are good, problematic is the assumption, often made, that the resurrection appearances are, because of their multiple witnesses and shared nature, without real analogy.” (p 269-270)

Allison then takes what may or may not be considered an odd turn: an extended exploration of various, and seemingly somewhat common, reports from people who have claimed to have encounters with the recently dead. He seems to have spent a considerable number of hours collecting and analyzing such reports, perhaps motivated in part by his own such experiences, which he relates. His lengthy footnotes documenting his sources refer to a fairly extensive grab-bag of studies from psychology journals, articles from psychical research journals dating back to the nineteenth century, assorted memoirs, and stories from publications such as Fate magazine, which is filled with accounts of ghosts and UFO encounters. He stops short of citing supermarket tabloids. In a footnote, he comments that “I have noticed that apologists typically content themselves with making broad generalizations about visions; they rarely catalog and examine individual reports in any detail” (p. 271), which accords with my own observation on the tendency of the apologists to lack concrete examples and case studies for some of their assertions and methods.

In any case, I’m still reading Allison’s book, so I’ll have to withhold judgement until I get a better grasp of his whole argument. Craig and Licona have both published somewhat sympathetic but still critical responses to his work, which I’ll need to re-read as well.