by Joe Nickell
At the time of Jesus, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was a principal article of faith among many Jews, especially the Pharisees; however, the Sadducees believed the soul perished with the body (Stravinskas 2002, 677; Riley 1995, 20–21). Specifically, the Hebrews believed that for three days “the soul hovered round, fain to re-enter and re-animate its fleshly tenement” (Dummelow 1951, 793–94), so for three days the mourners used to visit the grave. They believed that on the fourth day the soul left and decomposition began. Such a three-day vigil could do no harm, especially since—as we know—one who was apparently dead might revive.
THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNTS
The Gospels say that after his crucifixion Jesus’ body (like that of Lazarus) was wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb hewn from rock; then a great stone was rolled over the entrance. Only Matthew adds that the tomb was “sealed” and that a guard was placed. But only Matthew confronts the allegation of scandal—that the disciples came by night while the guards slept and stole away the corpse; he says the chief priests bribed the guards to spread the rumor. In any case, the stone was rolled back by an angel during an earthquake. Or so Matthew—and only he—claims (figure 33.1).
It is at this point that the four Gospels diverge. The earliest source, Mark, says that “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome” approached the tomb bringing spices and wondering who would roll the stone away for them. However, they found the tomb open and inside “saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.” He tells them that Jesus has risen and has gone on before the disciples to Galilee. At this the three women are frightened:
Mark 16:8. And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.
Only in a subsequent passage (Mark 16:9–20)—one believed to be a spurious addition to Mark's Gospel (Fuller 1971, 2; Price 2003, 22)—does Jesus appear, and then only to Mary Magdalene and “in another form” to two others.
In Matthew the “young man” becomes the “angel” who rolled away the stone. Matthew drops Salome from the group of women, leaving only the two Marys. In their rush to tell the disciples what they had seen and heard, they actually encountered Jesus “and took hold of his feet and worshipped him” (Matthew 28:2–9).
Luke relates that the two Marys, Joanna, and “the other women with them” went to the tomb, finding the stone rolled away. And “behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel,” telling them Jesus had risen. Although the disciples suspect these are only “idle tales,” Jesus later appears to others, although he is not at first recognized (Luke 24:1–37). Upon the return of two disciples from Emmaus, Jesus appears once again in the midst of the twelve.
In John's account (20:1–15), only Mary Magdalene goes and finds the stone removed. Fetching Peter and another (the so-called Beloved Disciple), she returns with them to the tomb and the two disciples enter, finding the grave cloths. After they depart, Mary Magdalene sees “two angels in white” sitting where Jesus’ body had lain. Then suddenly she turns around and sees Jesus standing there, although she supposes him to be “the gardener.” In other words, she sees Jesus emerge from his tomb much as the Old Testament Saul saw the ghost of Samuel conjured from his grave by the witch (or medium) of Endor (1 Sam. 28:7–20). More on this presently.
THE JESUS APPARITIONS
The Gospels relate several sightings of Jesus after his death. Because the narratives have surely been corrupted in transmission (Price 2003, 9–23), I will not spend much time parsing the text. I will instead treat the tales as a group having certain identifiable characteristics. The accounts are important in part because, as Reginald H. Fuller (1971, 16) observes, “Never in the New Testament is there any actual narrative of the resurrection as such, only of its accompanying phenomena: the empty tomb and the appearances.” This, in itself, suggests we are dealing with the familiar genre of ghost sightings.
In some of the stories Jesus is seen quite clearly, although he is not at first recognized (for example, Luke 24:15–16). Again, he materializes inside a building with shut doors (John 20:19) (figure 33.2). In one instance he forbids being touched (John 20:17), while in another (involving doubting Thomas) he invites contact (John 20:27) (figure 33.2). This is after the disciples “supposed that they saw a spirit,” whereupon Jesus says that “a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:37–39).1
In addition to the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection apparitions, there were others, including his appearance to John the Seer (Revelation 1:10, 12–20), to Saul (Paul) on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–9), “to James, then to all the apostles” (as reported by Paul), and even “to more than five hundred brethren at one time” (1 Corinthians 15:6–7). As well, there have been “visions” of the glorified Christ among Christians in succeeding years and centuries. While these are usually distinguished from resurrection appearances on theological grounds (Fuller 1971, 42–43), to the modern paranormal investigator this seems a distinction without a difference.
Clearly, the narratives are what folklorists call “belief tales,” those intended “to give credence to folk beliefs.” Ghost legends, for instance, are typically not mere scary tales but instead feature ghosts that appear lifelike and have returned from the dead to complete some task (Brunvand 1978, 108–109). Ghostlore may contain contradictory elements. For instance, the ghost may be nonphysical and so walk through walls, yet have some effect on the physical world due to the requirements of the genre: the teller is often at pains to convince his audience both that a ghost is involved and that it is not the result of mere imagination or hallucination.
In one account, Jesus works a miracle, the draught of fishes (John 21:6), and it is tempting to see at least two other miracles as being misplaced resurrection (ghost) tales. One is the story of Jesus’ nighttime stroll upon the water of Lake Gennesaret (also known as the Sea of Galilee), at which his disciples “thought it was a ghost, and cried out” (Mark 6:49).2 The other is the account of Jesus’ Transfiguration, in which Peter and those with him awakened to have a “vision” of Jesus “transfigured”: “the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white”; he was seen conversing with the spirits of Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:1–9; Luke 9:28–36).3 Both of these miracle stories are consistent with resurrection tales that have been misunderstood as such and so wrongly inserted into the life story of Jesus.
EXPLAINING APPARITIONS
Indeed, the Transfiguration story, occurring as a reported “vision” seen upon waking, may explain how some of the sightings of the resurrected Jesus took place. There is a common experience, called a “waking dream,” that occurs in the twilight between wakefulness and sleep. It has been responsible for countless “ghost” sightings (Nickell 2001, 215–16) as well as bedside visitations of demons, extraterrestrials, and other entities. (Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, encountered the angel Moroni under conditions highly indicative of a waking dream [Nickell 2004, 300].)
Those most likely to have apparitional experiences (apart from the psychotic) are those termed fantasy prone—that is, otherwise normal people who have an exceptional ability to fantasize. In their classic study of fantasy proneness, Wilson and Barber (1983) found several identifying characteristics of the fantasy-prone personality, including susceptibility to hypnosis, having imaginary playmates in childhood, believing one has psychic powers, having vivid sensory experiences, receiving messages from higher entities, and others, including experiencing vivid dreams (as discussed above). Many reputed mediums, psychics, visionaries, and the like throughout history have exhibited fantasy proneness (Wilson and Barber 1983; Nickell 2001, 215).
As well, ghosts are perceived under other conditions, such as when the percipient is tired or in a daydreaming state. The evidence that many ghostly perceptions derive from reverie and other dissociative states is well established (Nickell 2001, 216). The relati
onship between apparitional states and a dream-like state was observed, for example, by G. N. M. Tyrrell (1973). He noted that, as apparitions, people appear fully clothed and are often accompanied by objects, just as they are in dreams, because the clothes and objects are required by the apparitional drama.
Some would place Mary Magdalene among such visionaries. It would seem that she was the source of the “vision of angels” in Luke (24:23) and possibly the first to “see” the apparitional Jesus. This was the same Mary Magdalene from whom Jesus had exorcised “seven demons” (Mark 16:9). According to Marcello Craveri, in his The Life of Jesus (1967, 424), “Ancient and modern students of Christianity agree that the belief in the Resurrection is founded on the hallucinations of a female visionary, Mary Magdalene or on a collective hallucination.”
Actually, the other reported sightings were probably prompted by psychological contagion—the spreading of an idea, behavior, or belief from person to person by means of suggestion (examples being the Salem witch hysteria of 1692–1693 and the Spiritualist craze of the nineteenth century) (Nickell 2004, 226). During the contagion, many who, like Paul, had not known Jesus but wished they had, were able to “see” him through individual dreams, waking dreams, other types of “visions,” and even at second hand through the claimed experiences of others.
Viewed from our modern perspective, Jesus’ appearances to the twelve apostles may have been just a series of personal imaginative experiences—not unlike those associated with a typical “haunting” or even Elvis Presley sightings, which “can be seen as similar to spiritual visions” (Southwell and Twist 2004, 20). And the appearance to the five hundred may have been only an incident in which a group experienced a contagious outbreak of evangelical fervor, such as expressed perhaps by speaking in tongues (see Fuller 1971, 36).
In any event, whether Jesus’ resurrection apparitions are the product of experiences conveyed through oral tradition, or are even literary invention, or both, they are consistent with other alleged apparitional experiences. As such, they are therefore evidence, not of another world, but of this one.
The controversy over Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has largely ignored an essential fact. While some Christians have praised its “biblical authenticity” and others have criticized its “brutal violence and portrayal of ancient Jews” (Tokasz 2004), a major source for much of the movie has received comparatively little attention.
PLAYBOOK
Reportedly, Mel Gibson “accidentally stumbled upon” a book—The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, first published in 1833, which “planted a seed in his mind and finally played a large role in motivating him to make the film” (“Book That Inspired…” 2004). In fact, Gibson (2004) termed the book “great background and foundation material.”
Unfortunately, the book consists of the “visions” of a German nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824). As a child she had an invisible “guardian angel”; experienced apparitional encounters with Jesus, Mary, and various saints; and displayed a special sensitivity to anything held sacred (Brentano, 1833). In short, she exhibited many of the traits indicative of a “fantasy-prone” personality (Wilson and Barber 1983), not only the personality type of numerous religious visionaries, but also of countless Spiritualist mediums, alien abductees, and other fantasizers. They typically believe they have special powers, often including the ability to communicate with higher entities—a sort of adult version of a child's imaginary playmate.
A mystic, Emmerich may also have been a pious fraud. She made a show of being Christ like, even sleeping on planks placed on the ground in the shape of a cross, and from the age of about twenty-four she claimed to receive the pain of Jesus’ crown of thorns. Soon, blood was flowing down her face. After she was accepted into an Augustinian convent, she supposedly received “a mark like a cross upon her bosom” and still later exhibited a full array of stigmata (that is, the wounds of Christ's crucifixion).
She was subjected to a three-week medical examination in 1819, but “this examination appears to have produced no particular effects in any way” (Brentano 1833). Neither science nor the Catholic Church has ever authenticated a single instance of stigmata. Indeed, many stigmatics have been proven fraudulent (Nickell 2000; Nickell 2004).
Still later, Emmerich claimed to practice inedia, the alleged ability to forgo nourishment by suspending all eating and, sometimes, drinking (Nickell 1993, 225–29). Emmerich supposedly subsisted only on wine, and eventually “only pure water” (Brentano 1833). She was never properly investigated, but some inedics who were were exposed as frauds.
VISIONS
Anne Catherine Emmerich's purported visions—which provide far more elaborate and intimate details of Jesus’ final hours than do the Gospels—are also suspect. According to Catholic writer Ian Wilson (1988, 76):
In these we follow the elaborate preparations and ceremonial for the Last Supper. We are accorded flowing descriptions of the judgment hall of Caiaphas and the palace of Pilate. Not a blow seems to be omitted from Jesus's savage scourging by six drunken and blood-thirsty sadists. We are told of housewife Veronica wiping Jesus's face with her veil. We learn how special holes had to be dug for the three crosses. And we grieve with the holy women as they wash Jesus's lifeless body and lavish it with unguents in preparation for his burial.
Wilson continues:
But it is precisely this welter of detail that gives rise to most disquiet. Just how satisfied can we be that her account of the Last Supper is authentic? Should we really believe her assertion that the Last Supper chalice once belonged to Abraham? Does her description of Caiaphas's mansion accord with modern excavations of the city's first century priestly dwellings? Is it not a little suspicious that the Veronica story as she describes it owes nothing to any original gospel and everything to medieval legend? Does her assertion that Adam was buried at Golgotha owe more to symbol-seeking tradition than accurate reportage? How sure can we be that Jesus's body was washed and anointed before burial? The gospels do not specifically say so, and according to some, when a Jew died a bloody death the religious requirement was that he should not be washed in order that his life's blood should be buried with him.
Interestingly, Emmerich (1904, 137–38) envisioned Jesus’ mother, Mary, and others wiping up the “sacred blood” from Jesus’ flagellation, presumably to preserve it. In this imagined anecdote—repeated in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ—the linen towels were provided by the wife of the Roman prefect, Pilate. Gibson even goes further: whereas Emmerich only claimed to see Pilate's wife “send” the cloths, Gibson has her deliver them in person.
Ian Wilson concludes:
One could go into detail on the way Catharine [sic] was anachronistic or just plain wrong on point after point…. But perhaps more telling is the absence in her visions of any convincing “period” feel, and the inclusion of many stories, like that of Veronica, difficult to accept as anything other than apocrypha.
Emmerich's handling of Veronica's tale is instructive. Representing one of the stations of the cross in Catholic ritual, the medieval story derives from earlier legends (dating back to the fourth century) concerning certain miraculous self-portraits of Jesus. Over the centuries, one type of these came to be known as “Veronica's Veil.” According to a pious legend, Veronica was a Jerusalem woman who took pity on Jesus as he struggled with his cross on the way to Golgotha. In some versions of the tale, she gave her kerchief or veil to Jesus so he could wipe the blood and sweat from his face, and—in return for her generosity—he miraculously imprinted the cloth with his holy visage.
There were numerous such portrait veils, known, not surprisingly, as “Veronicas.” However, the term is believed to be a corruption of vera iconica, that is, “true image,” the corruption probably inspiring the Veronica tale. (Although the “Veronicas” were supposedly miraculously bestowed, they were actually painted. To explain how there could be many of the “original,” another story was invented telling of how the holy
image could supernaturally duplicate itself [Nickell 1993, 19–22].)
Anne Catherine Emmerich, who was steeped in Catholic traditions, knew that Veronica was a made-up name, deriving from “vera icon” [sic], but she claimed it was used to “commemorate” the woman's brave act. Emmerich somehow divined that Veronica's real name was Seraphia, and she added other unlikely details.
ANTI-SEMITISM? GRATUITOUS VIOLENCE?
Much of what critics have objected to in The Passion—namely the portrayals of Pilate and the Jewish high priest, Caiaphas, as well as what many have viewed as anti-Semitism and gratuitous violence—appears to derive largely from Emmerich.
The movie's depiction of Pilate as vacillating and as eventually succumbing to Caiaphas's desire that Jesus be crucified (Tokasz 2004) seems to come straight out of Emmerich. She refers to “the undecided, weak conduct of Pilate” who was “that most weak and undecided of all judges.” In contrast, Caiaphas, she says, “even went so far as to endeavor to exclude from the Council all those members who were in the slightest degree favorable to Jesus.” According to her, Caiaphas made no effort to conceal his hatred of Jesus (Emmerich 1904, 108, 132, 147).
Although at times Emmerich simply speaks of Jesus’ “malicious and cruel enemies” (122), at other times, whether intentionally or not, she appears to malign an entire people. She refers to “the wicked Jews,” “the hard hearted Jews,” “the cruel Jews” (101, 106, 115), and other disparagements, reflected in Gibson's The Passion in the sinister countenances and actions of Caiaphas's followers.
Regarding the film's extreme violence, while acknowledging that The Passion offers a “meticulous evocation of its time and setting,” Entertainment Weekly added (Jensen 2004):
It's also, apparently, the Most Violent Story Ever Told. The scourging of Christ—for some, The Passion's most gruesome sequence—sounds like a textbook lesson in torture, with Gibson's camera doting on the instruments used and the flesh-rendering damage they can inflict.