Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
convincing naturalistic explanation of the easter stories, 29 Oct 1999
By A Customer
Having read The passover plot and various other sceptical revisions of the events around 30 CE there was always something missing, namely what was the actual psychological basis of the stories, assuming they weren't just made up out of whole cloth. Jack Kent in a tour de force of rational analysis fills that gap by demonstrating that the pattern and type of experience reported in the gospels and acts exactly fits what regularly occurrs today amongst the recently bereaved, namely hallucinations of the loved one. Paul of Tarsus' experience on the road to Damascus is also convincingly explained as a conversion disorder. After 2000 years of illusion we finally get the answer! Well done Jack
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't muster against his own evidence, 3 Dec 2007
Written in 1999, this slim book is an easy enough read to get through in one or two days, but beyond this the book does not offer anything to the debate over the resurrection. A reworking of the classic hallucination theory, this book attempts to explain the resurrection away by pointing to a supposed conversion disorder of Paul and the bereavement process of the disciples. Fraught with contradictory and unsubstantiated claims this book is a poor attempt at a naturalistic swipe against the resurrection of Jesus.
First, Kent, who incidentally has no formal psychology training, uses psychological data on widows to try to explain what happened to the disciples. Claiming that the disciples were so overcome with grief over the death of their spiritual leader whom they had been with for three years, they imagined that they saw Jesus to satisfy their inner grief. Kent uses a study by Rees as his evidence. However, this study when examined, actually would not support Kent's claim. In the study, Rees points out that hallucinations among widowed were significantly higher the longer the widow was married, thus if the couple had been married 50+ years as compared to less than 10 years the chance of seeing a hallucination jumps from 30% (10 years) to more than 60% chance. Thus a correlation between spending time with someone and seeing a hallucination points to a longer period. The disciples were only with Jesus less than three years, not enough time to create a bond like that of a married couple, especially among a younger crowd (as compared to those in their 60's and 70's). In addition, even Jesus' own brother who grew up with Him initially doubted and thought them to be crazy. Only when he saw the risen Christ was it only than that he changed his mind. Add this to the fact that psychologists agree that hallucinations are a private event brought on by certain environmental factors, we cannot explain how these "hallucinations" occurred in multiple settings, to a large number of people, and they all agreed with what they saw. If this were truly a large hallucination event, there would be multiple contradictory accounts and they would have to continue to occur for the faith to continue. Kent also believes that hallucinations are a normal event and thus can account for Jesus' appearance. However, most psychologists and therapist also point out that while those who grieve do see things, they know that what they are seeing is not the real thing and they snap out of it. In addition, these hallucinations do more for the individual to cope than to transform their lives or those around them.
Kent goes on to claim that Paul's conversion account can be explained away by the extreme stress he was under forcing him to a decision point of either stopping his killing spree or give into the wishes of his teacher Gamaliel. There is a major problem with this theory though, one that other critics have yet to point out. While it may be argued that Gamaliel was opposed to the killings of the Christians, Paul, if he was to succumbed to the wishes of his teacher, would not have joined this fringe group as his teacher saw them as. If he felt so awful about defying the wishes of his teacher, why, after stopping the killings, would he join the very group that his teacher labeled as a fringe group not worthy of significance? If he was so adamant about being loyal to his teacher as Kent proposes, he would have ceased the killing and returned home to his beloved teacher, not join the very group that his teacher opposed! This disorder also does not explain Paul's companions either. The various accounts clearly show that those present with Paul also experienced something as well. They claimed to here something or saw something. An inner personal trauma cannot be manifested into an experience that others can attest to.
Kent clearly does not understand the nature of a hallucination event in relation to trauma and group experiences. Hallucinations do not account for what happened to the disciples or to Paul. Hallucinations would not account for the physical appearance of Jesus in a Platonic world view. The disciples who lived in a Platonic world would have never imagined a physical body coming back to life. The body was something to be shed and to be done away with in that time. To be released from the body was the goal of mankind. To claim a physical body would have been ludicrous and religiously suicidal. Kent grossly extrapolates a few anecdotal accounts in a medical journal and conjures up a fanciful theory that in no way deals with the facts at hand. After reading this book I am convinced that the only one who is delusional is Kent himself.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Insufficient support, 29 Nov 2007
The Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth by Jack A. Kent is a thorough disappointment. I purchased and read this book expecting to find an attempt at a plausible, naturalistic explanation for the events described in the Bible regarding the resurrection of Jesus. This, however, does not describe the project undertaken by Kent. Kent is a retired Unitarian minister and considers himself a Christian but his book denies that the resurrection ever took place. This is contrary to the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19 "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile . . . we are to be pitied more than all men". Why would he consider himself a Christian if he denies Christianity's major claim?
Curiously, Kent does not evaluate whether or not the resurrection might have taken place. Rather, he attempts to account for why it so strongly seemed to have taken place. This might be useful if he used accounts accepted by most mainstream critics of the resurrection. But that is something he is unable to do. Conversely, he begins by removing much of what mainstream critical scholars readily allow by relying on fringe interpreters such as Norman Perrin, Tom Harpur and Hans Kung. The common thread in the bulk of the removed material is that they are verses which Christian scholars rely upon to demonstrate that Jesus' appearances were bodily as opposed to spirit, Kent claims these verses were added later.
However, even granting Kent's claims of doctoring, his theory fails coherence. He opines that the testimonies to Jesus post-crucifixion appearances were really hallucinations: "I will argue that Mary Magdalene and the disciples did see what they believed were `appearances of Jesus but those `appearances' were grief-related hallucinations or illusions" (20). Kent appeals to psychological accounts of modern grief-related hallucinations based on works by Paul Rosenblatt, W. Dewi Rees and Steven Schuchter. I'm no psychologist, but I found much of what they said regarding modern hallucinations to be reasonable.
The biggest problems arise when Kent attempts to compare these modern hallucinations with the historic, biblical appearances. In chapter 3 Kent cites cases of grieving widows and widowers which report things like: "Amelia frequently felt her husband's presence: `I feel him covering me.' At night she was frightened and her children slept in her bedroom." "A lot of times if I am watching the crowds at a football game or a baseball game, a person looks like her and the crowd is passing by pretty swiftly, but I know it isn't her, but it looks like her." "It was like someone was touching my head and patting me on the shoulder. I opened my eyes and there was nobody there." "I can picture him in any given circumstances . . . I can almost feel his skin and touch his hands . . .(both ellipses in original)". On page 35 he adds, "She told me that if she had not known that her mother was dead she would have believed that her mother was alive and walking with her."
I have no doubt that such cases occur, but accounts such as: `picturing', `almost feeling', `seeing someone in a crowd who looks like, but knowing it's not them', and `being like someone patting you on the shoulder, but opening your eyes and finding that no one was there' are nothing like the biblical appearances. In almost every resurrection appearance account which Kent himself allows, but tries to explain as a hallucinations, there was more than one person who experienced the appearance. This issue is not addressed by Kent and for good reason. It can't happen! For two or more people to experience a hallucination of the same object at the same time, each person would have to manufacture distinct and mutually coinciding spatial perspectives of the object. In philosophy this is known as intersubjective agreement. Without getting fancy, it just means that if you and I were facing each other with someone in between us, we would not both at the same time see a frontal view of this person. So in a `shared hallucination', which `hallucinator' gets to decide who sees Jesus from the front and how does he get the other person to hallucinate Jesus from a side view? Kent really should have thought this through better. In short, hallucinations are individual experiences that cannot be shared.
Toward the end of his book, Kent addresses Paul's ministry and Christology, but it's more of a reflection of Kent's own unusual beliefs than it is a reflection of any scholarly research. He also addresses the debate between Gary Habermas and Antony Flew which resulted in a seven-to-two decision in favor of Habermas, again trying to align aspects of the debate to his unique perspective. However, if you are interested you should try to track down Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate by Gary Habermas and Antony Flew. Meanwhile, video of an informal debate between these two can be found on Gary Habermas' website, garyhabermas.com.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a plausible naturalistic account of the evidence for Jesus' resurrection, it won't be found here. Far from answering the question of Jesus' resurrection, Kent's book only dilutes the extensive amount of authentic scholarly work in the field.
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