I’m still reading Dale C. Allison’s Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and its Interpreters. In his search for reports of experiences that are in some way analogous to the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, Allison draws heavily from the literature of parapsychology and the investigation of psychic phenomena. In a somewhat apologetic footnote (p. 297), he even cites a book called Elvis After Life: Unusual Psychic Experiences Surrounding the Death of a Superstar. Still, Allison’s chapter on the resurrection is filled with sensible, cautionary observations for both sides of the debate over the nature of the postmortem appearances. He notes that “human testimony, including firsthand testimony, is fragile.” (p. 294) Allison also observes:

“As for the New Testament’s stories in which Jesus appears to more than one witness, how do we know, without interviewing them, that the Twelve, let us say, saw exactly the same thing on the occasion of Jesus’ collective appearance to them? There are examples of collective hallucinations in which people claimed to see the same thing but, when closely interviewed, disagreed on the details, proving that they were after all not seeing exactly the same thing. How do we know that the Twelve, subjected to a critical cross-examination and interviewed in isolation, would all have told the same story? Or would their testimony rather have been riddled with inconsistencies? No one will ever know.” (p. 297)

Quoting another writer who remarks that the disciples were unprepared for a mass experience, Allison responds, “Such a remark can only be true of the first encounter, that of Mary Magdalene or Peter, as the case may have been. Once one of them had told of seeing Jesus, then the idea would have been planted in the mind of others, so how can we exclude the thought of psychological contagion? Even the pre-Christian Paul had presumably heard claims of people seeing the risen Jesus.” (p. 297)