The only Easter alternative left standing — and it still fails

People who are uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus Christ rising from the dead have never lacked creativity. Over the centuries, they’ve produced a steady stream of alternative explanations for what supposedly happened that first Easter morning.

We’ve heard them all: the resurrection as a slowly evolving myth, the disciples stealing the body (Matthew 28), the swoon theory, the wrong tomb hypothesis, the “spiritual-only” resurrection, and a grab bag of other attempts to sidestep the obvious claim, which is that Jesus actually rose.

But my personal favorite? The “mistaken identity” theory. A handful of advocates, including Robert Greg Cavin, have argued that Jesus had an unknown twin brother who conveniently appeared after the crucifixion and impersonated Him. Cavin even devoted a 400-page doctoral dissertation (Miracles, Probability, and the Resurrection of Jesus) to the idea.

That’s not just a stretch in my opinion; it’s intellectual gymnastics with no net. But hold that thought.

There are still some (the so-called mythicists) who go further and claim Jesus never existed at all. If that’s your position, feel free to announce it publicly in the comments section and embarrass yourself. As the saying goes, never interrupt your opponent when they’re making a mistake.

Even skeptics like Bart Ehrman push back hard on that claim. In his book, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, he flatly states: “He [Jesus] certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees.”

Then some dismiss the resurrection accounts as unhistorical. That falls apart, though, when you look at what historians across the spectrum actually agree on, such as the points emphasized by scholars like Dr. Gary Habermas:

1. Jesus of Nazareth was murdered by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

2. Three days afterward, His body was found missing by a group of His women followers.

3. There were reported appearances of Jesus over the course of many days to various people, including both believers and skeptics.

4. Christ’s reported appearances transformed both His followers and some skeptics into becoming bold proclaimers of his teaching and resurrection.

Dr. Paula Fredriksen, a very liberal historian, underscored the last point when she was interviewed years ago by Peter Jennings on an ABC News special entitled, “The Search for Jesus”. She stated:

“I know on their own terms what they saw was the raised Jesus. And all the historical evidence we have afterwards attests to their conviction that that’s what they saw. I’m not saying they really did see the raised Jesus; I wasn’t there. I don’t know what they saw, but I do know that as a historian, they must have seen something.”

But what was that “something”?

In current debates with Christian apologists, the only still-defended alternate explanation that gets traction is the hallucination hypothesis. For example, atheist Richard Carrier writes, “I believe the best explanation, consistent with both scientific findings and the surviving evidence ... is that the first Christians experienced hallucinations of the risen Christ, of one form or another.”

The general idea is, in the same way Christians have supposedly seen the Virgin Mary and had other mentally-induced spiritual visions, the disciples experienced the very same thing. Believing what Jesus had told them about His rising from the dead and wanting so badly to have Christ back with them, they had hallucinations of Jesus being alive and so firmly believed in what they saw that they told everyone He was alive and went to their deaths believing it.

At first glance, that might sound plausible, until you actually think it through. Consider:

Hallucinations don’t remove bodies. If Jesus were still in the tomb, all His opponents had to do was produce the corpse, and Christianity would have died on the spot. It didn’t. Plus, you have all the issues with the disciples-stole-the-body hypothesis, which no skeptic defends in public today.

And then there’s the expectation issue. Hallucinations are often fueled by anticipation or belief. But the Gospels go out of their way to show the disciples weren’t expecting a resurrection. They were confused, disillusioned, and frankly slow to grasp what Jesus had been saying all along. First-century Jewish belief didn’t include a single individual rising in the middle of history; it instead pointed to a general resurrection at the end of time (see Daniel 12:2).

On top of that, skeptics, including members of Jesus’ own family, claimed to encounter Him alive. Psychologically speaking, that’s the exact opposite profile of someone primed for a wish-fulfillment hallucination.

And let’s not forget the scope of these appearances:

Not once, but many times.
Not to one person, but to many.
Not just individuals, but groups.
Not in one place, but across locations.
Not under one condition, but in varied circumstances.
Not just to believers — but to doubters and enemies.

That’s not a hallucination; that’s a miracle. And skeptics generally don’t believe in miracles.

So, step back and apply the standard historical criteria for arriving at the best explanation for almost anything: explanatory power, scope, plausibility, coherence, and superiority over competing theories. When you do, one explanation doesn’t just survive, it dominates: that a divine miracle occurred on that first Easter morning.

Dr. N. T. Wright puts it this way: “The proposal that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead possesses unrivalled power to explain the historical data at the heart of early Christianity.” I agree.

Of course, you’re free to reject that conclusion. But if you do, the question isn’t whether people in the first century were hallucinating.

It’s whether you are.