![Jesus Christ's sermon on the Mount, Bible, Vintage religious illustration art stock illustration](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-07/iStock-2224226621.jpg?itok=tUB_AIX6) # Jesus of Nazareth July 15, 2026 Dale C. Allison Jr. Christians regard Jesus of Nazareth as the founder of their religion. He was born and raised in first-century Galilee but was executed in Jerusalem. He played various roles, among them prophet, charismatic healer, and Messiah. The earliest sources describe him as a God-obsessed individual who experienced visions and had the ability to predict the future as well as to read people’s minds and see things from afar. He was famed as a teacher and doer of remarkable deeds that he and his followers attributed to divine agency. Such miracles included healing the ill and exorcizing demons. His crucifixion at the hands of the Romans did not end his cause. Despite his death, his followers became convinced that, shortly after his execution, he had risen from the dead and had become, for them, a supporting invisible presence. Such beliefs cannot be dismissed as purely late and legendary. They rather go back to real, first-hand experiences. People who knew Jesus himself made these large claims about him. In this way, the stories about Jesus may contain more than myth. They may contain memories of real, albeit extraordinary events. Moreover, while many moderns are reflexively skeptical of all metanormal claims for Jesus, parallels from the history of religions and parapsychology suggest we should keep an open mind. ## Miracles and the Historical Jesus Our primary sources for the historical Jesus are the letters of Paul and the three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Most critical scholars regard the Gospel of John as somewhat later and further removed from the original memories, although it is not entirely devoid of independent early tradition. Extra-canonical sources, such as the Gospel of Thomas, are likewise of secondary importance. This does not mean that Paul and the Synoptics preserve unsullied history. Sorting fact from legend remains a difficult project. It is nonetheless reasonable to hold that the early traditions about Jesus ultimately descend, in significant measure, from the historical ministry, that is, from people who encountered Jesus himself. Historians are on safe ground especially when a theme or motif recurs in multiple sources or traditions. This generalization includes the topics now to be considered in turn—Jesus as visionary, as prophet of the future, as clairvoyant and telepath, as healer, as exorcist, and as worker of additional miracles. ### Jesus as Visionary Luke 10:18 reports that, when Jesus’s disciples returned from a mission of healing and preaching and reported their success with casting out demons, he declared: “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” The words can be understood symbolically, as a pictorial way of expressing Satan’s defeat in Jesus’s ministry. It is no less likely, however, that they refer to a vision, to an ecstatic experience in which Jesus believed he had glimpsed the commencement of evil’s downfall at the turn of the ages. If so, perhaps it was one source of his confident conviction that “the strong man” (= Satan) had been bound (Mark 3:27). A vision may also lie behind the story of Jesus’s baptism. Mark, the earliest gospel, recounts the story this way: “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (1:10–11). The third person singular seemingly confines the sight to Jesus alone: “he saw the heavens torn apart.” This is consistent with the voice addressing Jesus directly (“You are”) as well as with Mark’s failure to note the onlookers’ reaction to an amazing sight and supernatural voice. If, then, Mark here preserves memory, it seems that Jesus’s baptism was the occasion of a visionary experience that, given its importance in all three Synoptics and its occurrence at the commencement of his public ministry, he interpreted as a divine calling. There is yet another story that, if more than a legend, may also reflect a visionary experience. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’s temptation, the devil takes Jesus up to “a very high” mountain and shows him “all the kingdoms of the world” (4:8). Luke more abstractly has it that “the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world” (Luke 4:5). Neither assertion makes literal sense. Origen, remarking on Matthew’s version, observed that there is no mountain peak from which one can see all the world.\[[1](#notes)\] As for Luke, there is no ordinary state of consciousness in which one can see the whole world “in an instant.” So, the story is either an imaginative legend, or it preserves the memory of visionary Jesus, in this case, a Jesus who construed a certain experience as a victorious encounter with Satan. One recalls, from a later time, the accounts of Anthony of the desert, who purportedly engaged in solitary combat with the devil on multiple occasions.\[[2](#notes)\] Because Jewish prophets were often visionaries, Jesus’s status as a visionary harmonizes with his role as a prophet.\[[3](#notes)\] Ezekiel opens with this sentence: “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the River Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God” (1:1). Isaiah also begins by claiming to record the prophet’s vision: “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah” (1:1). This last is especially interesting given Jesus’s apparent fondness for Isaiah. He was further fond of Daniel, a prophetic book filled with references to visions.\[[4](#notes)\] The Book of Daniel is clear that some of its author’s visions were dreams.\[[5](#notes)\] Whether this was true for any vision of Jesus we do not know, although the surrealistic nature of the temptation story would make sense as originating in dream material. We, in any case, have no evidence that, unlike some, he actively sought visionary experiences through fasting, sleep deprivation, or the ingestion of organic substances.\[[6](#notes)\] ### Prophetic Foreknowledge According to the canonical gospels, Jesus, on multiple occasions, foresaw the future. He reportedly, among other things, anticipated that he would die an untimely death in Jerusalem,\[[7](#notes)\] that one of his followers would betray him,\[[8](#notes)\] that his disciples would experience persecution and tribulation,\[[9](#notes)\] and that Jerusalem’s temple would be destroyed.\[[10](#notes)\] Mark’s Gospel contains an entire chapter given over to Jesus’s prophetic forecasts (13). The motif of a premonitory Jesus is so well attested that it is likely to belong to the originating tradition, that is, to go back to authentic memories. Jesus’s status as a prophet included functioning as a seer. A skeptic might evaluate this side of the tradition by holding that, while Jesus and his acolytes did imagine that he, via a supernatural ability, sometimes beheld the future, nothing extraordinary was involved. Perhaps he anticipated his death, Judas’s betrayal, and Jerusalem’s demise not because he had genuine intimations of the future but because he could, exercising common sense, see whither the winds were blowing. For the rest, the predictions were after-the-fact fabrications designed to elevate Jesus’s reputation and prestige. His followers remembered the few hits—due to chance or prudent guessing—added to their number, and then disregarded all the misses. The historical record is, however, full of individuals foreseeing, through some opaque capacity, future events, including untimely death and disaster for themselves and people dear to them. Both Emanuel Swedenborg and Abraham Lincoln, for example, saw their deaths ahead of time.\[[11](#notes)\] If one accepts, on empirical grounds, the overwhelming testimony to authentic foreknowledge, one need not dismiss all the forecasts attributed to Jesus as bogus or secondary. He may have somehow seen or known some things in advance. One can adopt this point of view independent of theological convictions. Confirmed predictions are scarcely confined to religious contexts. On the contrary, in multiple contexts and through a facility we do not understand, people occasionally obtain knowledge of what will, or probably will, come to pass. ### Clairvoyance and Telepathy Numerous stories depict Jesus being clairvoyant or telepathic.\[[12](#notes)\] He was able, the sources claim, to perceive things “in his spirit” (Mark 2:8), to read people’s minds (Matthew 12:15, 25; Mark 12:41–44; 14:18-21; Luke 6:8; 9:47; 11:17), to discern circumstances from afar (Mark 7:24–30; 11:1–10; John 1:35–51), and to know people’s past circumstances without conversing with them (John 4:4–42). One early Christian source summarizes Jesus’s activities with these words: “By command alone he made the blind see, the deaf hear, the demons flee, restored health to the sick, and gave life to the dead. And, because nothing was impossible for him, he even perceived people’s thoughts.”\[[13](#notes)\] The New Testament writers do not divulge how Jesus might have obtained such metanormal knowledge: They just report it. Later Christians have often claimed that Jesus could read minds, decipher hearts, and know things at a distance because he was God: The Supreme Being is omniscient. By contrast, modern skeptical scholars, persuaded that we gain knowledge of the world only through the customary senses, regard the relevant texts as unhistorical.\[[14](#notes)\] They believe that early Christians, seeking to exalt their hero, gave him an ability he did not have. They may have done so because they thought of him as a prophet and because, in the Bible, prophets can know things from afar.\[[15](#notes)\] Or they may simply have enjoyed enhancing Jesus’s status and improving the entertainment value of stories about him by giving him a marvelous ability found in tales throughout the ancient world.\[[16](#notes)\] Yet, those who, aside from whatever religious commitments they may or may not have, judge clairvoyance and telepathy to be real, albeit sporadic, mystifying human aptitudes need not be so skeptical. One scholar of antiquity, not known for his affection for Christianity, wrote: “The belief that Jesus knew the minds of people he met may be founded on fact. Some people are uncannily … able to read the minds of others.”\[[17](#notes)\] Adopting this view does not entail the authenticity of the many stories that feature a clairvoyant or telepathic Jesus. Yet given the number of those stories, it is reasonable to infer that they preserve the impression of people who knew him. ### Jesus as Healer All layers of the tradition preserve stories in which a compassionate Jesus, through non-medical means, heals a wide variety of individuals with illnesses. The beneficiaries include the blind, the lame, the deaf, lepers, epileptics, and individuals with fevers.\[[18](#notes)\] Jesus does not cure them through prayer, ritual, or incantation. Nor, with three exceptions, do the stories have him employing mediating agents.\[[19](#notes)\] (He uses saliva in Mark 7:31–37; 8:22–26; and John 9:1–12.) He ordinarily cures people with an authoritative word or command (Matthew 8:16). There are, however, references to him placing his hands on the sick and of them reaching to touch him.\[[20](#notes)\] Physical contact appears to have been part of his ordinary repertoire, although there are cases of healings at a distance (Mark 7:24–20; Luke 7:1–10). Notable are the repeated references to Jesus’s emotions in connection with his healing. He is depicted as being moved with pity (Mark 6:34; 8:2), as being angry (Mark 1:41; 3:5), as being stern (Mark 1:43; John 11:33, 38), as being grieved (Mark 3:5), and as sighing (Mark 7:34). Evidently the act of healing was deeply emotional. The gospels present Jesus as famed for his remarkable success as a healer (Matthew 4:24). People probably sought him as much or more for his purported ability to undo physical infirmities as for his teaching. Given their first-century Jewish context, most of them presumably believed that he was a channel of gracious divine power. This was certainly the belief of Jesus himself. The sources have him attributing his miracles to the Spirit or the finger of God (Matthew 12:28; Luke 11:20) and even claiming them to be the fulfillment of prophecy (Matthew 11:2–4; Luke 7:18–23). Jesus was not wholly in charge of what happened when he sought to heal individuals. Mark reports that he could not do many works in Nazareth, his hometown: “He could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief” (6:5–6). This is not likely to be a memory invented out of nothing. It tells us that, whatever the cause, Jesus’s intervention was not always effective. Moreover, on one occasion, when a woman touched the hem of Jesus’s garment, Mark states that he immediately became aware that “a power had gone forth from him” and then asked the crowd, “Who touched my cloak?” (Mark 5:30). This indicates that, whatever happened, he had not willed it. Here he is the carrier of a numinous power that has jumped from him to another without his willing it. Most modern scholars, even if they are unsure about the details of the relevant stories, have little trouble thinking of Jesus as an efficacious healer. Our contemporary world has its religious healers, and not all of them are frauds. The usual non-religious explanation for seemingly successful cures is that they are psychosomatic, the upshot of a potent placebo effect. This is a reasonable approach to the gospels, given that Jesus so often stresses the need for faith in them.\[[21](#notes)\] Religious belief can serve as an effective placebo for psychically conditioned maladies. That, however, need not be the last word. Not only should we keep in mind that we have no real understanding of how placebos work, but there are well-documented healings for which present-day scientific knowledge has no persuasive explanation.\[[22](#notes)\] A secular point of view may deem such healings to be cases of “spontaneous remission” (a known category in modern medicine).\[[23](#notes)\] Being without an explanation scarcely forces one to invoke God. A religious point of view, which may appeal to Catholic records of canonization and competently investigated healings at shrines such as Lourdes, may deem them to be the fruits of divine intervention. Whichever alternative one opts for, one might entertain a threefold typology regarding the sick who approached Jesus hoping for change: (a) some were not healed (Mark 6:5–6); (b) some were made well because of their expectant faith; that is, they benefited from the placebo effect, which they interpreted in religious terms; (c) some experienced healings that, were we in a position to examine them, would leave us, in the current state of medical knowledge, still scratching our heads. ### Jesus as Exorcist The gospels contain several stories of Jesus casting out demons, and the evangelists’ summaries of his ministry invariably include this activity.\[[24](#notes)\] We have here a historical fact, however one explains it. Jesus took himself to be, through his exorcisms, successfully combating Satan and demonic spirits (Mark 3:27; Luke 13:32). He is reported to have retorted to critics: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). Even opponents appear to have conceded that he appeared to drive out evil spirits (Mark 3:22), just as he acknowledged that he was not alone in doing so (Matthew 12:27; Mark 9:38–39). Only uninformed prejudice would urge that, if demons do not exist, the stories in the gospels must be legends. The interpretation of exorcism is one thing, its actual occurrence another. Exorcism is a cross-cultural phenomenon well documented by anthropologists.\[[25](#notes)\] Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries took for granted the existence of evil spirits and their ability to oppress, possess, and torture individuals. For many today, these are discredited beliefs. And a modern medical doctor, if able to go back in time, would undoubtedly identify some of the demoniacs brought to Jesus as victims of epilepsy. A modern psychologist or therapist would likely diagnose some of them as suffering from severe psychotic disorders, including multiple personality disorder. An anthropologist or sociologist might explain much in terms of conventional role-playing: The socially disempowered can seek (unconsciously) to gain attention and influence through acting in accord with a cultural script that signals possession by a spirit. Yet, to adopt such rationalizing explanations is not to deny that exorcism might in fact be an appropriate means for dealing with certain disorders that their victims construe in preternatural categories. Many modern reports of exorcism involve events that, if true, do not harmonize with a materialistic worldview. It is, for instance, not uncommon to encounter the claim that a possessed individual levitated and could not be pulled down by the combined efforts of several bystanders, or that someone could read the memories of those nearby or speak in a language they had never studied.\[[26](#notes)\] The exorcisms in the gospels do not, however, report anything of this sort. Demoniacs scream, convulse, and channel exogenous voices. Yet nothing clearly demands a metanormal explanation. ### Other Miracles The primary sources report not only that Jesus was a charismatic healer and exorcist but that he also performed various additional miracles: • Raising the dead Resurrection of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:21–24). Resurrection of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11–17). Resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1–44). • Supernatural provision Feeding of five thousand with few resources (Mark 6:35–44). Feeding of four thousand with few resources (Mark 8:1–9). Finding a coin to pay a tax following Jesus’s instruction (Matthew 17:24–27). Catch of an extraordinary number of fish following Jesus's instruction (Luke 5:1–11). Transformation of water into wine (John 2:1–12). • Rescue Calming of a storm (Mark 4:37–41). • Epiphany Walking on water (Mark 6:48–51). Transfiguration into light (Mark 9:1–8). • Punishment Cursing of a fig tree that withers (Mark 11:12-14, 20–25). When taken in conjunction with the exorcisms and healings, more miracles are attributed to Jesus than to anyone else before the Middle Ages, except for the fifth-century Christian pillar sitter, Simeon Stylites. The sources portray Jesus as exercising his miracle-working charism with supreme self-confidence. While the stories as we have them reflect Christian beliefs and interests, it is nonetheless clear that Jesus himself had a remarkable sense of authority. He never wonders whether he can still a storm, or multiply loaves and fishes, or raise someone who has died. Further, his power works its complete effect not gradually but immediately.\[[27](#notes)\] Such commanding power and success raise questions about what Jesus thought about himself and what his contemporaries made of him. At least two synoptic stories depict him as being what one might call semi-divine. To walk on the Sea of Galilee, as he does in Mark 6:45–52, is a theophanic act because, in the Hebrew Bible, it is God who makes his way over the sea (Job 9:8; Ps 77:19; Hab 3:15). Moreover, when seeking to calm his terrified disciples, Jesus says: “Take heart, it is I.” (6:50). “It is I” is, in Greek, egō eimi, literally “I am.” That is the famous title for God in Exodus 3:14 and elsewhere. Similarly, when Jesus rebukes the roaring waves and stills the storm in Mark 4:35–41, he is doing something that the Hebrew Bible reserves for God, as in Ps 89:8–9: “O Lord God of hosts, who is as mighty as you, O Lord? Your faithfulness surrounds you. You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” If such stories rest on historical events (however explained), those around Jesus may, from time to time, have experienced his presence as somehow numinous or mediating a sense of the transcendent. ## Sense of Divine Power and Presence Bernard McGinn has rightly observed, “There can be no direct access to experience for the historian. Experience as such is not a part of the historical record.”\[[28](#notes)\] This holds for Jesus. We can nonetheless say three things about his religious sensibilities and practices. First, the sources depict him as both speaking about and practicing private prayer. Mark 1:35–36 reports that once, while it was still dark, Jesus “got up, went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” When his disciples awoke, they had to hunt for him. There are other such occasions.\[[29](#notes)\] Moreover, he is remembered in Matthew 6:5–6 as commending solitary prayer: “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Second, Jesus spoke of God as Father and correspondingly thought of himself as God’s son. The extent to which he might have taken himself to be God’s son in some unique sense is debated. In some passages others are also God’s sons and instructed to pray to God as Father.\[[30](#notes)\] Yet there are sayings in which his sonship seems to be special, such as Matthew 11:25–27: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” After the Resurrection event, Christians certainly came to understand Jesus as “the Son of God” in a sense not true of others.\[[31](#notes)\] Third, Jesus thought of himself as a container of and instrument for divine power, which he conceptualized as Spirit. Luke 4:18–19 has Jesus, as fulfilled in his ministry, quote lines from Isaiah 61:1–2; 58:6: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Even if the story in which these lines appear is apocryphal—the experts disagree—other sayings of Jesus echo Isaiah 61, so it is a good bet that Jesus found himself in that oracle. Indeed, he appears to have declared that to oppose his work was to oppose God’s Spirit.\[[32](#notes)\] As to how he felt or perceived the presence of that Spirit, it is plausible that he sensed it, at least at times, as a power or energy from beyond. But beyond that we can only speculate. ### Explanations The gospel writers and the mainstream Christian tradition after them attribute Jesus’s miracles to divine intervention: God authored them. Jesus himself, it is clear, believed this. In later Christian theology, this conviction has sometimes gone hand in hand with the notion that he must have been divine in order to work so many astounding wonders. That, however, has never been the only explanatory option. Already during Jesus’s day, some attributed his deeds of power to evil spirits. According to Matthew 12:24, some said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this man casts out the demons.” In later versions of the so-called Toledoth Yeshu, or the History of Jesus—a Jewish polemical work of uncertain origin—Jesus can do what he does because he is a sorcerer. Having surreptitiously learned God’s holy name, he wields it to work wonders. ### Skepticism Modern skepticism of the stories about Jesus first appeared during the Enlightenment, but the impulse to explain away miracles goes back to the Protestant Reformers. Roman Catholic history was full of miracle claims—bleeding eucharistic hosts, statues of saints moving of their own accord, inexplicable healings at shrines, visions of the Virgin Mary, and so on. Catholics regarded such claims as proofs of the truth of their doctrines. Protestants, accepting the biblical miracles but not the later stories, felt compelled to counter Catholic reports. They forwarded various rationalistic explanations, including conscious deception, edifying invention, misperception of the mundane, and hallucination. In doing so, they thought of themselves as on the side of “reason.” The strategies Protestants deployed when attacking Catholic miracles were later adopted and enlarged by deists and Enlightenment intellectuals, who used them to discredit the biblical stories. Some—above all in the latter half of the eighteenth century—deemed the gospel narratives to be legendary propaganda, fabricated by insincere disciples without historical foundation to further their religious cause.\[[33](#notes)\] It is as though the polemic in Matthew 28:13 rightly remembers: “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” Other rationalists tended to think of the accounts as going back to real events that were wrongly construed. That is, the disciples supplied not the facts but their interpretation. On this view, the gospels are fairly reliable once we subtract the supernatural overlay. Although Jesus never walked on water, his disciples were once on a boat and saw him from afar, wading in the surf, and to them it looked like he was astride the waves. Similarly, when Jesus shared what few provisions he had with a large crowd in the desert and some followed his example, sharing what they had, the tale of Jesus feeding the five thousand was born. Nor did Jesus ever raise the dead. He did, however, sometimes pray over individuals who were thought to have died but were in truth in deep comas and headed for premature burial; so, when one or two of them later managed, in the ordinary course of nature, to regain consciousness, Jesus received the credit. As for his resurrection, that too goes back to misinterpretation. Jesus appeared to die on a cross and so was buried. Yet he was only near death, and the cool of the tomb revived him. When he later walked out, superstitious followers thought God had raised him from the dead. Yet another tactic for explaining why the gospels contain so many miracle stories if miracles do not occur is associated above all with the German historian and theologian, David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874).\[[34](#notes)\] He took the narratives to be largely products of reflection on the Jewish Bible. For example, the episode of Jesus being transfigured, Strauss argued, derives from the story of Moses being transfigured in Exodus 24 and 34. Not only does Jesus shine like the lawgiver, but there are other parallels: the event takes place “after six days” (Mark 9:2; Exodus 24:1); it occurs on a mountain (Mark 9:2; Exodus 24:12–18; 34:3); a divine voice speaks from a cloud (Mark 9:7; Exodus 24:16, 25–28; 34:5); and onlookers are afraid (Mark 9:6; Exodus 34:29–30). The underlying theological logic is this: If the Messiah must be like Moses, and if Moses was transfigured into light, then surely the same happened to the Messiah. In like manner, the story of Jesus feeding five thousand is modeled on 2 Kings 4:42–44, where Elisha feeds a hundred people with twenty loaves of barley and some ears of grain. The underlying thought is this: If Elisha the prophet miraculously fed a crowd with insufficient supplies, surely Jesus, even greater than Elisha, must have worked the same wonder with even more people and fewer provisions. ## Thinking with Parallels The approaches just introduced do not exhaust the explanatory options. We are free to reject the rationalistic assumption that history is altogether devoid of inexplicable events, just as we are free to decline the theological supposition that any truly inexplicable event must have for its cause either the Christian deity or a demonic agent. We can reasonably accept the reality of certain mystifying events as well as the existence of unusual or extraordinary human abilities, and we can do so without subscribing to any particular set of dogmatic religious beliefs. It is possible, for example, to hold, on purely empirical grounds, that human beings on occasion read other people’s minds, see things at a distance, are inexplicably healed, know the future, and enigmatically glow. Those who so think will approach the stories in the gospels through a comparative lens and be open to supposing that Jesus had certain psychic or metanormal powers, or that he was a charismatic in whose wake odd things happened. Consider the story recounted by all three synoptic writers of Jesus being transfigured into light. It is clear that it was written with Moses in mind. Strauss was right about that. This does not, however, lead to the skeptical conclusion that the story is purely mythological. The reason is that reports, from numerous times and places, of people seeing glowing individuals are not so rare. Moreover, a surprising number of these are from first-hand witnesses.\[[35](#notes)\] As an illustration, I can quote the following account, from one of my children, who in January of 2019 had an audience (along with three others) with the late Vajrayana master Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, a Tibetan holy man: > The four of us sat down in front of him, and he poured us tea. As he did so, I discerned a soft white light radiating from him—like a halo around his seated figure. And the longer I looked, the brighter the glow seemed. At first, I thought it was some strange effect of the light coming through the window next to him, where snow was sparkling as it fell. But within a few minutes more, I had no doubt: this man was actually glowing. And the glow only became clearer as the afternoon light turned to dusk. After our audience, during which Rinpoche answered our questions and gave teachings through a Tibetan translator, all four of us left in a state of wonderment and joy. We confirmed with each other: we had all seen his body glowing.\[[36](#notes)\] The number of similar accounts suffices in my judgment to leave one with an open mind on the matter.\[[37](#notes)\] That in turn will leave one with an open mind about the story in the gospels. Perhaps it descends from an occasion on which a few saw Jesus anomalously radiant. But what of the other miracles, especially so-called nature miracles? Jesus is reported to have turned water into wine (John 2:1–11), calmed the sea (Mark 4:35–41), fed thousands with a few scraps (Mark 6:30–44), walked on the water (Mark 6:45–52), and with a word made a fig tree wither (Mark 11:12–20). Most of these stories also have cross-religious and cross-cultural parallels.\[[38](#notes)\] Skeptics will respond that this fact only goes to show the ease with which such stories can be concocted and then, as they are told and retold, grow in the telling. They might also observe that the sayings of Jesus nowhere refer to the nature miracles, which would be consistent with them being later creations. Yet, one should not exclude the possibility that certain types of stories recur because certain unusual events recur. For what it may be worth, Roman Catholic canonization records do contain first-hand accounts of the multiplication of food,\[[39](#notes)\] and there are even some contemporary accounts of people walking on water.\[[40](#notes)\] It is difficult to draw a clear line between what sometimes really happens and what never does. Perhaps all we can say is that the more common one judges a phenomenon to be, the more likely one will be to credit its appearance in stories about Jesus. ## Resurrection The gospels do not end with Jesus’s execution. They conclude instead with his resurrection from the dead. There are, in this connection, two families of traditions. One has to do with the discovery of his empty tomb. The other has to do with postmortem appearances. The latter include accounts of, or references to, both groups and individuals, including one individual—Paul of Tarsus—who was not, at the time of his experience, a follower of Jesus. The historicity of the discovery of the empty tomb is debated.\[[41](#notes)\] Some regard the story as a legend untethered to history, like those about the missing bones of Heracles (Diodorus Siculus 4.38.4–5) or the disappearance of Romulus (Plutarch, Rom. 27.7–28.3). Others have argued that the body was likely stolen, perhaps by individuals who used body parts in their magical recipes. Traditional Christians, of course, regard God as the agent of the empty tomb.\[[42](#notes)\] It is possible even here, however, to be comparative. Tibetan Buddhists believe in a phenomenon known as “rainbow body.”\[[43](#notes)\] In a case from 1998, a certain Khenpo A Chö was laid to rest under a yellow cloak, after which his close disciples purportedly observed that his body was becoming smaller each day. By the eighth day, it had altogether disappeared. The interpretation was that the pious practitioner had become liberated into a body of light. There followed multiple postmortem appearances of Khenpo to many of his disciples. Whatever one makes of this story, its essentials were written down within two years of Khenpo’s death by people who knew him. Moreover, Tibetan Buddhist tradition contains quite a few such stories, and the purported phenomenon is ongoing, with recent stories still emerging. There seem to be two options in thinking about all this in relation to Jesus’s resurrection. On the one hand, if every single story from Tibet were hagiographical, this would reinforce a skeptical take on the traditions about Jesus, for it would show how easily and quickly falsehoods about recently departed saints can emerge in a religious setting. On the other hand, if some of the Tibetan stories are not altogether fictitious, one could take this as evidence that something similar happened to Jesus. Something that happens in today’s Tibet might be something that happened in yesterday’s Jerusalem. Regarding the appearance traditions, there is widespread agreement that at least some descend from real experiences. That is, the stories are not purely legendary. Some followers of Jesus really did believe that they had encountered him after his crucifixion. Explanations, of course, differ. Perhaps most orthodox Christians think in terms of Jesus’s followers encountering a revived physical body. In defending this position, they appeal not just to the empty tomb but also to Luke 24:42–43, where the risen Jesus eats a piece of broiled fish, and to John 20:27, where Jesus invites doubting Thomas to touch his wounded side and the marks of the crucifixion on his hands. Skeptics, however, doubt that these two events are historical.\[[44](#notes)\] Beyond that, their usual strategy is to think in terms of hallucinations. People sometimes see things that are not there, and the disciples were victims of wish fulfillment. Once Mary Magdalene or Peter reported seeing Jesus, the seed was planted for others, through a sort of emotional contagion, also to see Jesus. Yet a third option is to regard some of Jesus’s postmortem appearances as being veridical yet not physical. This view, more often than not, deems the empty tomb a legend but affirms that the disciples really did encounter a postmortem Jesus who communicated with them. In the Gospel of John, the first appearance is to Mary Magdalene (20:11–18). In Matthew's Gospel, the first appearance is to Mary Magdalene and another Mary (28:8–10). The latter has it that, when they met Jesus, they took hold of his feet. The notice likely serves to dispel the slander that he was nothing but a ghost. In John’s account, Mary is by herself. As she stands weeping outside the empty tomb, convinced that someone has taken Jesus’s body and laid it elsewhere, she has a vision of angels, and then, turning around, she meets Jesus, who asks her why she is weeping. She does not know it is him but rather supposes he is a gardener. When, however, he speaks her name, she suddenly recognizes him. Jesus then tells her not to touch him (which seems to contradict Matthew’s version of the story, in which Mary touches Jesus’s feet). First Corinthians 15:5 speaks without elaboration of an appearance to Peter (= Cephas). The importance of this encounter is indicated by its initial placement in Paul’s list of appearances. Luke 24:34 refers to this same event: “They \[the twelve\] were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon.’” This agrees with putting the appearance to Peter before the appearance to the group of twelve. Unfortunately, no narrative account of this experience has survived (although some scholars think it may inform the story in John 21:1–17, which involves a miraculous catch of fish). Why this is so has been much discussed. Maybe there was something about the story that later Christians were uneasy with, or that did not align with their theology, so they deliberately forgot it. Another possibility is that nothing but a bare vision was involved. That is, no words were spoken, and nothing occurred except Peter seeing Jesus, perhaps briefly. Whatever the truth about that, given the story of Peter denying Jesus (Mark 14:66–72), it is reasonable to guess that, for the apostle, the appearance brought a sense of forgiveness. First Corinthians 15:5 refers, without adding detail, to an appearance to the twelve: “\[H\]e appeared to the twelve.” Mark 14:28 (“after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee”) and 16:7 (“But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee”) refer to the same event. There are also appearances to the twelve in Matthew 28:16–20 and in Mark 16:14–18 (which is not an original part of the Gospel), as well as to “the eleven” in Luke 24:36–49 and to “the disciples” in John 20:19–23 and 24–29. Despite the different details and settings—Mark and Matthew locate the event in Galilee, Luke and John in Jerusalem—the narrative accounts exhibit the same basic structure: Sort**Element****Matthew****Ps.-Mark****Luke****John****Setting** 28:16 16:14 24:33–36 20:19 **Appearance** 28:17 16:14 24:36 20:19–20 **Doubt** 28:17 16:14 24:37–41 20:20 (cf. 20:24–29) **Commissioning** 28:18–20a 16:15–16 24:44–48 20:21–23 **Promise of support** 28:20b 16:17–18 24:49 20:22 As there is also some overlap in vocabulary and themes, these stories are likely variants of an older story that has been developed in different ways.\[[45](#notes)\] One common motif is doubt, and it is a good bet that this was not freely invented but remembered: The experience left some confused or uncertain. It is hard, however, to say much more than that. We cannot interview the participants to find out whether they all saw and heard the same thing.\[[46](#notes)\] Luke 24:13–35 (summarized in Mark 16:12–13) tells of Jesus appearing to two disciples—Cleopas and an unnamed other—on the way to Emmaus. Although walking with him, they fail to recognize him until he is at table with them, utters a blessing, and gives them bread. The story strongly recalls old accounts in which angels mysteriously come and go, as well as modern legends about phantom hitchhikers who suddenly disappear, only for their identities to be learned later.\[[47](#notes)\] It is so full of Lukan features and dramatic embellishment that some reckon it to be the author’s creation. Even if they are wrong, we otherwise know nothing about the two people involved, and it may be that the Emmaus story is primarily a symbolic text, a memorable narrativization of early Christians meeting Jesus in the breaking of bread. In 1 Corinthians 15:6, Paul writes: “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.” Although we have no cause to doubt that these words refer to a real event, we do not know who was in the crowd, why people had gathered, who gathered them, or how many of them had known the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Nor do we know how many already believed in Jesus’s resurrection, where the event occurred, or whether it took place before or after Pentecost. (The latter is more likely given its absence from the gospels.) Nor do we know what exactly took place. Did Jesus speak or, as with most Marian apparitions, did he simply appear? How did everyone in a crowd of five hundred get close enough to the central event to assure themselves of what was happening? Should we envisage something in the heavens? Whatever the answers, we do not have them. Perhaps the event was the product of some sort of mass hallucination. But perhaps it was like the Marian apparitions in Zeitoun, Egypt, in 1968, which resist all reductionist explanations.\[[48](#notes)\] Paul reports, in 1 Corinthians 15:7, that Jesus appeared to James. This must be Jesus’s brother. As with the appearance to the five hundred, we cannot say when or where this took place, nor what the experience was like. Paul fails to elaborate, and the only account we have is a legend in the Gospel “According to the Hebrews.”\[[49](#notes)\] Since, however, Jesus’s brothers and sisters are not depicted as following Jesus during his ministry, it may have been a sort of conversion experience, not unlike Paul’s. Regarding Jesus’s appearance to Paul, the apostle’s letters have very little to say about it, though its foundational importance to him is evident.\[[50](#notes)\] In 1 Corinthians 15:8–9 he says this: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Paul does not supply additional details. Acts, however, contains three colorful versions of Paul’s calling: 9:1–19 (told in the third person); 22:6–16 (told in the first person); and 26:12–18 (told in the third person and somewhat condensed). While they are not in perfect accord, they share the following items: - Paul persecuted Christian Jews. - He was on the road to Damascus when he saw a light and fell to the ground. - He heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” - He responded, “Who are you, Lord?” - The voice answered, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” - The apostle rose from the ground. - The encounter turned Paul's life around and led to his mission to the Gentiles. Luke’s stories in Acts descend from Paul’s first-person narration. This follows from the correlations between Acts and what Paul himself writes. He says he was a persecutor of Christians before his calling (1 Corinthians 15:9; Galatians 1:13), and that he has seen the risen Jesus, the Son of God (1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8; Galatians 1:16; cf. Acts 9:17, 20). His claim to have been “called” (Galatians 1:15) implies a verbal element within that experience. He attributes his missionary work among the Gentiles to his Christophany (Galatians 1:16). And he relates that, shortly after his calling, he “returned to Damascus,” which suggests that his new life began in that city's environs (Galatians 1:17). If, moreover, 2 Corinthians 4:6 (“God … has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”) alludes to Paul’s vision of Jesus, this would line up with the accounts in Acts, where he sees a spectacular light. ### The Nature of the Appearances Attempts to explain Paul’s conversion within the limits of reason alone—undertaken usually on the assumption that psychological accounts and theological explanations are mutually exclusive—have been legion. But nothing demands that we explain away his experience as the product of epilepsy, or by insisting that he fell victim to his disposition for baseless visions. His subjective experience is not directly available to scientific or historical methods. Further, we know from interviews with modern people that visions come for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes for no apparent reason at all, and quite often to people without any mental pathology. There is now a large, critical literature on visions of the dead. It demonstrates that, while putative encounters with the newly departed are not exactly everyday events, they are a regular part of human experience. Moreover, examination of the stories reveals significant overlap with the traditions about Jesus’s resurrection appearances.\[[51](#notes)\] These parallels are there; however, one explains apparitions of the dead in general and the resurrection of Jesus in particular. In many reports, an apparitional figure: - Is both seen and heard. - Is seen now by one person, later by another or others. - Is seen by more than one percipient at the same time. - Has been a victim of violence. - Appears and creates doubt and/or fear in some percipients. - Speaks very briefly, often only a sentence or two. - Offers reassurance and comfort. - Gives guidance, makes requests, or issues imperatives. - Seems overwhelmingly real and indeed seemingly solid. - Appears and disappears in abrupt and unusual ways. - Is not perceived as unusual or extraordinary at the beginning of the experience. - Manifests so convincingly that the percipient undergoes changes in belief. - Is seen less and less as time moves on; most appearances (although certainly not all) take place within a year of the death of the person represented by the apparition. In coming to terms with these parallels, several considerations should be kept in mind. First, the similarities do not cancel the differences. Typical encounters with the recently deceased do not issue in claims about an empty tomb, nor do they lead to the establishment of a new religious movement. Nor can they explain the content of the words attributed to the risen Jesus. Apparitions, furthermore, rarely eat or drink, and they are not seen by crowds of up to five hundred people. It would, then, be overly simple to contend, without further ado, that early Christianity supplies us with nothing but one more variant of something otherwise belonging to common experience. Second, the parallels nonetheless are there, and they suggest that real experiences, however one explains them, lie behind the early Christian stories. If two things resemble one another, and if real experiences inform one, they likely inform the other one, too. So, it is fair to generalize that, despite Luke 24:42–43 and John 20:27 (see above), many of the traditions about Jesus can be characterized as vision-like. Third, this matches what we know about Paul’s famous encounter with Jesus. Acts plainly refers to his experience as a “heavenly vision,” that is, a vision above his head (26:19). In addition, there are bystanders to Paul’s encounter, and they do not experience what he does.\[[52](#notes)\] Fourth, the accounts of the resurrection appearances contain uncanny circumstances that suit visionary experiences better than everyday seeing. When Jesus appears to his disciples in Matthew 28:16–20, some doubt. No reason for their doubt is given, but if Jesus is as he always was, the failure to recognize him is puzzling. When Jesus walks down the Emmaus Road with Cleopas and another, unnamed disciple, the latter two fail to identify him (Luke 24:13–27). They catch on only when he sits with them at table and then inexplicably vanishes (24:30–31). This is clearly not Jesus’s old, ordinary physical body. The same holds for John 20:19–23. This purports that, during “evening on that day, the first day of the week … the doors were locked where the disciples were,” yet “Jesus came and stood among them.” He clearly has the ability to pop into a room. John 20:26 says the same thing: “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them.” Ordinary physical bodies are unable to do this. Then there is Mary Magdalene. When Jesus appears to her in John 20:11–18, she mistakes him for a gardener. How can that be if he is his same old body? The church father Origen, sensing how strange all this is, and with the empty tomb in mind, tried to make sense of things by surmising that Jesus “existed in a sort of intermediate body, between the grossness of that which he had before his sufferings and the appearance of a soul uncovered by such a body.”\[[53](#notes)\] Whatever one makes of that odd suggestion, the experiences of the risen Jesus do not appear to have been ordinary physical events. ### Sense of Presence Early Christians did not just believe that Jesus had appeared to people after death. Some of them also experienced him as being somehow present even when not seen. Paul could claim, “Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20), and he could say to others: “Christ is in you.” (Rom 8:10). Similarly, in Matthew 18:20, Jesus—the saying is presumably post-Resurrection—declares, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I, in their midst.” And in Matthew 28:20 he promises, “I will be with you always, even unto the end of the age.” It is impossible to say what precisely lies behind the conviction that, despite his crucifixion, Jesus was not absent but present. We do, however, know that those who have recently suffered the loss of a loved one commonly sense that individual's continued presence, and this sense can be overwhelmingly real. The experience is sufficiently common that psychologists—who offer different explanations of the phenomenon—have an abbreviation for it: SOP (= “sense of presence”). There are, moreover, testimonies to more than one person having SOP at the same time, as in this account: “I had this feeling that Matt was there in the room. I tried to shrug it off. As I turned to my left to look at Alice and Marie, they were both looking at me, wearing the most unusual expressions. The silence seemed forever until I said, ‘Do you feel what I feel?’ Almost in unison they nodded their heads and said: ‘Yes.’ We all felt he was there.”\[[54](#notes)\] Perhaps, then, some of Jesus’s first followers had this experience of him, which in turn helped nurture the theological conviction that he was ever present and a sort of ubiquitous presence in which those who believe in him dwell. ## Notes \[1\]Origen, *On First Principles* 4.3.1. \[2\]Athanasius, *Life of Anthony*. \[3\]Matthew 21:10–11, 45-46; Mark 6:4, 14–16; 8:28; Luke 7:16, 39; 13:33; John 4:19; 6:14; 7:40, 52; 9:17. \[4\]Daniel 2:19; 4:5, 10, 13; 7:1, 7, 13, 15; 8:1; etc. \[5\]Daniel 1:19; 7:2, 13; 7:1. \[6\]For fasting and/or ingesting plants in preparation for visions see Daniel 10:2–5; 4 Ezra 5:20; 6:35; 9:24, 26; 12:51; 2 Baruch 21:1–22:1. \[7\]Matthew 26:2; Mark 8:31–33; 9:9, 30–32; 10:33–34; 14:8, 22–25, 27–28; Luke 13:32–33; 22:37; John 8:21–30; 10:11, 17–18; 12:23–25, 32–33. \[8\]Mark 14:17–21 and John 13:10–11, 18–30. \[9\]E.g. Matthew 10:19, 23–25; Mark 10:39; 13:9–13; Luke 12:11; John 15:18–25; 16:1–4. \[10\]Mark 13:2; 14:58; 15:29; Luke 19:44; 21:20–24; 23:27–31; Acts 6:14. \[11\]Walter Prince, *Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences* (University Books, 1963), 55; Ward Hill Lamon, *Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847–1865* (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 116–17. \[12\] Matthew 8:5–13; 12:15–21, 22–30; 26:67–68; Mark 2:1–12; 6:45–52; 7:24–30; 9:33–37; 11:1–10; 12:41–44; 14:18–21; Luke 5:1–11; 6:6–11; 7:36–50; John 1:35–51; 2:23–25; 4:4–42; 6:60–70; 11:11–14; 13:11; 16:19. \[13\]Pseudo-Clementine, *Recognitions* 5:10. \[14\]See e.g. Robert J. Miller, “The Domain and Function of Epistemological Humility in Historical Jesus Studies,” *Journal for the Study of the New Testament* 12 (2014): 130–42, and James Crossley, “The Nature Miracles as Pure Myth,” in *The Nature Miracles of Jesus: Problems, Perspectives, and Prospects*, ed. Graham H. Twelftree (Cascade Books, 2017), 86–106. \[15\] 1 Samuel 9:20; 2 Kings 5:26; 6:8–10, 32–33; Ezekiel 8:1–16; 24:1–2. \[16\]E.g. Herodotus 1.47; Diogenes Laertius, *Life of Pythagoras* 41; Josephus, *Antiquities* 13.311–13; 15.3733–78; Pliny, *Natural History* 7.174 (52); Dio Cassius 67.18; Philostratus, *Life of Apollonius of Tyana* 3.16.1–4; 5.24.2; *Tosefta Pesaḥim* 2:15; Jerusalem Talmud Šebuot 38d (9:1); Jerusalem Talmud Soṭa 16d (1:4); Leviticus Rabbah 21:8. \[17\]Morton Smith, *Jesus the Magician* (Harper & Row, 1978), 115. \[18\]See among other texts Matthew 9:27–31; 11:5; Mark 1:29–31; 7:32–37; 8:22–26; 10:46–52; Luke 5:12–16; 13:10–17; 17:11–19; 22:50–51; John 4:46–54; 5:1–15; 9:1–11. \[19\]But his disciples, in Mark 6:13, anoint with oil for healing. \[20\]Matthew 8:15; Mark 1:41; 3:10; 5:27–31; 6:56; 7:33; 8:22; Luke 6:19; 7:14; 22:51. \[21\]Matthew 8:10; 17:20; Mark 2:5; 5:34, 36; 9:24; 10:52; Luke 7:9, 50. \[22\]Jacalyn Duffin, *Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World* (Oxford University Press, 2009); Jacalyn Duffin, *Medical Saints: Cosmas and Damian in a Postmodern World* (Oxford University Press, 2013). \[23\]Brenda O’Regan and [Caryle Hirshberg](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_2?ie=UTF8&field-author=Caryle+Hirshberg&search-alias=books&text=Caryle+Hirshberg&sort=relevancerank), *Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography* (Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1993). \[24\]Mark 1:23–28, 32–34; 5:1–10; 7:24–30; 9:14–29; Matthew 9:32–34; 12:22–23; Luke 8:2. Whatever the explanation, the Gospel of John leaves this side of Jesus's ministry wholly out of account. \[25\]See I. M. Lewis, *Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropology of Spirit Possession* (Penguin, 1971). \[26\]The best-known modern book with such claims is Malachi Martin, *Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans* (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992). \[27\]The one exception is the story in Mark 8:22–26. Here, Jesus has to lay hands on a man’s eyes twice before he can see properly. \[28\]Bernard McGinn, *The Foundations of Mysticism* in Vol. I of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (Crossroad, 1991), xiv. \[29\]Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46; 14:32–42; Luke 6:12; 9:18. \[30\]Matthew 5:9; 6:6, 8, 9; 7:11; Luke 11:2, 13; 20:36. \[31\]Acts 9:20; Romans 1:4; 2 Corinthians 1:19; Galatians 2:20; Hebrews 4:14; 1 John 3:8; Rev 2:18; etc. \[32\]Matthew 12:31-32; Mark 3:28–29; Luke 12:10. \[33\] Most famously Hermann Samuel Reimarus, *Fragments*, ed. Charles H. Talbert (Fortress, 1970 \[1774–78\]). \[34\]David Friedrich Strauss, *The Life of Jesus Critically Examined* (Fortress, 1972). \[35\]See Herbert Thurston, *The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism* (Henry Regnery Co., 1952), 62–70; Carlos S. Alvarado, “Observations of Luminous Phenomena around the Human Body: A Review,” *Journal of the Society for Psychical Research* 54 (1987): 38–60; and Patricia Treece, *The Sanctified Body* (Doubleday, 1989), 61–82. \[36\]Email to author, January 2019. \[37\]See further Dale C. Allison, Jr., *Interpreting Jesus* (Eerdmans, 2025), 196–99, and the literature cited there. \[38\]Ibid, 205-206, and the literature cited there. \[39\]Herbert Thurston, *The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism* (Henry Regnery Co., 1952), 385–95, and Wilhelm Schamoni, *Wunder sind Tatsachen: Eine Dokumentation aus Heiligsprechungsakten*, 3rd ed. (Johann Wilhelm Naumann, 1976), 206–28. \[40\]Craig S. Keener, *Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Modern World* (Baker Academic, 2021), 182–84. \[41\]For a survey of the issues and arguments, see Allison, *Resurrection*, 116–66. \[42\]See Dale C. Allison Jr, *The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemic, History* (T&T Clark, 2021*,* 341-46 for an overview of the evidence and arguments surrounding grave robberies and the empty tomb. \[43\]The standard work is Francis V. Tiso, *Rainbow Body and Resurrection: Spiritual Attainment, the Dissolution of the Material Body, and the Case of Khenpo A Chö* (North Atlantic Books, 2016). \[44\] Barnabas Lindars, *The Gospel of John. New Century Bible Commentary* (Eerdmans, 1972), 613. Cf. David Friedrich Strauss, *The Life of Jesus for the People*, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London/Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1879), 411; John Ashton, *Understanding the Fourth Gospel* (Clarendon, 1991), 514; and Gerd Luedemann, *Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology* (Fortress Press: 1994), 163–65. \[45\]For detailed argument see Allison, *Resurrection*, 60–64. \[46\]I here bypass the appearance to Thomas (20:24–29). It has no parallel elsewhere and is not likely to be an old, independent account. Many modern scholars see it as having been creatively spun out of the story of Jesus appearing to the twelve and some doubting. \[47\]E.g. Judges 6:11–21; 13:3–21; Tobit 5; Luke 1:11–22, 26–38; 2:8–15; and Acts 10:3–7. \[48\]See Travis Dumsday, *The Marian Apparitions at Zeitoun: An Evidential Inquiry* (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2024). \[49\]As quoted by Jerome, *De viris illustribus* 2. \[50\]See 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8–10; Galatians 1:12, 15–16; and perhaps 2 Corinthians 4:6. \[51\]For full documentation see Allison, *Resurrection of Jesus*, 209–61, and Jonathan Kendall, *Seeing the Messiah: An Analysis of the Postmortem Appearances of Jesus Christ and the Lubavitcher Rebbe Against the Backdrop of Apparitional Phenomena* (Resource Publications, 2025). \[52\]In Acts 9:7, bystanders hear a voice but see nothing. In 22:9, they see a light but hear no voice. \[53\]Origen, *Against Celsus* 2.62. \[54\]Dewi Rees, *Death and Bereavement: The Psychological, Religious and Cultural Interfaces* (Whurr, 1997), 191. ## Bibliography **Ancient (or Primary)** Athanasius, *Life of Antony* Dio Cassius, *Roman History* Diogenes Laertius, *Life of Pythagoras* Herodotus, *Histories* Jerome, *De viris illustribus* Jerusalem Talmud, Šebuot Jerusalem Talmud, Soṭa Josephus, *Antiquities of the Jews* *Leviticus Rabbah* Origen, *On First Principles* Origen, *Against Celsus* Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* Philostratus, *Life of Apollonius of Tyana* Pseudo-Clementine, *Recognitions* *Tosefta Pesaḥim* **Modern (or Secondary)** Allison, Dale C., Jr. *Interpreting Jesus*. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2025. ———. *The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History*. London: T&T Clark, 2021. Alvarado, Carlos S. “Observations of Luminous Phenomena around the Human Body: A Review.” *Journal of the Society for Psychical* Research 54 (1987): 38–60. Ashton, John. *Understanding the Fourth Gospel*. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Craffert, Pieter F. *The Life of a Galilean Shaman: Jesus of Nazareth in Anthropological-Historical Perspective*. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008. Crossley, James. “The Nature Miracles as Pure Myth.” In *The Nature Miracles of Jesus: Problems, Perspectives, and Prospects*, edited by Graham H. Twelftree. 86–106. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017 Duffin, Jacalyn. *Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World.* New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ———. *Medical Saints: Cosmas and Damian in a Postmodern World.* New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Dumsday, Travis. *The Marian Apparitions at Zeitoun: An Evidential Inquiry.* Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2024. Dunn, James D. G. *Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament*. London: SCM, 1975. Keener, Craig S. *Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts*. 2 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011. ———. *Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Modern World*. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021. Kendall, Jonathan. *Seeing the Messiah: An Analysis of the Postmortem Appearances of Jesus Christ and the Lubavitcher Rebbe Against the Backdrop of Apparitional Phenomena*. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2025. Lamon, Ward Hill. *Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847–1865*. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Lewis, I. M. *Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropology of Spirit Possession.* Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. Lindars, Barnabas. *The Gospel of John. New Century Bible Commentary.* Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972. Luedemann, Gerd. *The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology*. Translated by John Bowden*.* Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994. Martin, Malachi. *Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans.* San Francisco: HarperOne, 1992. McGinn, Bernard. *The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century.* Vol. I of *The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism*. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Meggitt, Justin. “The Historical Jesus and Healing: Jesus’ Miracles in Psychosocial Context.” In *Spiritual Healing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives,* edited by Fraser Watts, 17–43, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Meier, John P. *A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles*. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Miller, Robert J. “The Domain and Function of Epistemological Humility in Historical Jesus Studies,” *Journal for the Study of the New Testament* 12 (2014): 130–42. O’Regan, Brenda and Carlyle Hirshberg. *Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography.* Sausalito, CA: Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1993. Prince, Walter. *Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences.* New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1963. Rees, Dewi. *Death and Bereavement: The Psychological, Religious and Cultural Interfaces.* London: Whurr, 1997. Reimarus, Hermann Samuel*. Fragments*. Edited by Charles H. Talbert. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970. Schamoni, Wilhelm. *Wunder sind Tatsachen: Eine Dokumentation aus Heiligsprechungsakten*, 3rd ed. Würzburg: Johann Wilhelm Naumann, 1976. Smith, Morton. *Jesus the Magician*. New York: Harper & Row, 1978. Strauss, David Friedrich. *The Life of Jesus Critically Examined*. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972. Thurston, Herbert. *The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism*. Edited by Joseph Crehan. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952. Tiso, Francis V. *Rainbow Body and Resurrection: Spiritual Attainment, the Dissolution of the Material Body, and the Case of Khenpo A Chö*. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2016. Treece, Patricia. *The Sanctified Body*. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Twelftree, Graham H. *Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study*. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999. Author Biography ### Dale C. Allison Jr. Dale C. Allison Jr. is Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. His academic research and publications focus on the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew, Second Temple Judaism, and the history of the interpretation and application of biblical texts. He has also written books on George Harrison, religious experience, and death and what might lie beyond. His writings have been translated into multiple languages, and he is a member of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. ![Dale Allison looking into the camera](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/Meta-Dale-Allison.jpg?h=255de64f&itok=x4OjWvZV)