lwenke said
I also mentioned this in this thread:

** you do not have permission to see this link **

but no-one talked about the 500+ so I thought I’d focus on that here….

So what do you think happened here:

1 Corinthians 15:6 – “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”

  

I don’t think anyone knows what happened. We have no idea where Paul got this story. 

I seem to remember BDE speculating that there probably wouldn’t have been enough Christians at the time for a gathering of 500 in one place to even be practicable (and, BTW, even if you had a sufficiently dense Christian population to make such a gathering a possibility, what sort of gathering would that have been? What would the venue have been? What was the occasion).

I also think it worth noting that you can have a story about what a group witnessed develop naturally without any mass hallucination:

One person in the group claims to see something remarkable and spectacular. Some others–having heard the first person–imagine, after the fact, they saw the same thing (that disinterested witnesses can taint each others’ memory is a well known psychological phenomenon). A few others are desperate for attention and lie claiming to have seen it, because, hey, who doesn’t want to have witnessed something that is a big deal and that everyone wants to hear about? Most others didn’t see anything, but don’t want to admit it (emperor’s new clothes?), and just keep quiet, because they are ashamed to acknowledge they didn’t see it, but qui tacet consentire videtur. A handful of people didn’t see anything, and they will tell anyone who asks.

If you have someone who wasn’t there, but subsequently tries to figure out what happened by talking to those who were there, especially if the one investigating gets a bit caught up in the excitement and wants the spectacular thing to have happened, it will be easy for them to filter out the handful of people who saw nothing and are willing to say so, and to instead focus on those who claim to have seen something. Then let the story get repeated (and exaggerated) a few times and, boom, you go from a group of 15 people, one of whom actually thought he saw something at the time (while another 4 developed false memories that they saw something after the first person suggested it to them, 3 others didn’t see anything but claimed to see something because they wanted the attention, 6 people didn’t see anything but didn’t want to admit it or talk about it, and 1 person didn’t see anything and would say so to anyone who asked), to a story where there were 500 people and all of them saw the thing plain as day with their own eyes. 

lwenke said
So which theory do you think is better – mine based on the 1988 event or Richard Carrier’s use of the Fatima story?

  

What do you think actually happened in 1988? You ask ask what we make of your theory based on the 1988 event, but I don’t think you have offered a theory of what actually happened in 1988.

I will say one further thing. I’m really not sure exactly what the argument is though. 

I’ve said I think the Jesus appearing to 6000 is a hoax; I’m not sure how convincing it was as a hoax (that is, I don’t know how many of those present actually thought they saw Jesus). 

But I don’t know what happened when Jesus appeared to the 500. Is it possible Peter announced to all Jesus’ disciples that Jesus was going to come back and deliver a special message, and after everyone was gathered, John says, “Behold, an angel of the Lord!” and James the Just struts onto the podium dressed as Jesus, utters a few words about keeping the faith and how blessed Jerusalem is, and walks off, then the story spreads and gets recorded by Paul? I suppose, but it doesn’t strike me as the most likely story. 

Yes. I think one or more of the original Jesus sightings might have been mistaken identity.

But just saying mistaken identity doesn’t really tell us much. People make mistaken identifications for reasons, there is some root of the mistake.

E.g., seeing your mom’s doppelganger is not the same as going on a blind date and introducing yourself to the wrong stranger–who happened to be wearing the same thing your date had told you to look for.

I think what happened when people thought Jesus was Jeremiah or Elijah or John is different from what happened in Nairobi. In both cases they mistook one real person for someone else, but I think the reasons for that misjudgements were distinct.

Yes, I think the disciples in the road to Emmaus are a promising model. Imagine this: as they travelled, they were in shock from seeing their friend and Messiah brutally executed. They they were in the denial stage of grieving, and unable to accept that they had been wrong and that Jesus had not actually been the Messiah. Trying to make sense out of this, as they walked together, they searched the Scriptures in their minds for anything that might have been a prophecy of a suffering and dying Messiah (indeed, this might well have already started when they were with the others, and now, on the journey they were just rehearsing what they had already found). Maybe one of the passages that had given them hope and consolation was ps 16, especially ps 16:9-10.

On the way they meet a stranger. Maybe he is even a charismatic stranger–you know the sort who makes you feel like the only person in the world when he speaks to you, but maybe not. Perhaps he even participated in their discussion, and points out some further passages–or maybe not.

He stops with them to eat, and as good Jews they bless their bread before eating, and they invite the stranger to recite ha’motzi.

They finished the meal; the stranger continues on his way. Once he is gone, it comes up in conversation among them that, as they heard and watched the stranger say the blessing and ritually break the bread, they had a vivid memory of Jesus saying and doing the same thing–as they would have seen Jesus do exactly the same thing many times before–, indeed for a moment it was almost like Jesus was sitting in front of them. They realize that they both had felt the same thing: it was like he was in front of us; I could hear him saying the words.

Primed with their prior speculation about the Messiah being killed and not suffering decay, being still deeply traumatized and in denial, and both having had the same vivid experience, they concluded it was indeed Jesus they had just eaten with.

Is that what actually happened? No idea. But I think something like that could very well have happened.

Finally, I doubt something like that could explain an appearance to 500 at once. If something like an appearance to 500 did happen, I suspect it was more that one or two people thought they saw something, and in the retelling their experience ended up getting attributed to the entire group.

But it is impossible to say what if anything happened, because all we have is Paul’s report, which is of unknown provenance and offers no details.