Mainstream acceptance of the Mormons’ Easter Story?

Johnson, “This odd appearing/disappearing of Jesus, and the appearing accounts has a very important message, and that is the resurrection is not resuscitation. Jesus does not open an office. He’s not there permanently. He’s not there in his former somatic limitedness. He’s a surprising presence. He intrudes, he interrupts, he is not predictable, he is not controllable, and in that sense, he shares the life of the living God.”

Smith-Christopher, “The appearing and disappearing are kind of moving us towards the reality that we are going to live with for the rest of time, and that is that we don’t have the physical presence of Jesus anymore with us, we have as it were the spiritual presence of Jesus with us. There’s a sense of we’re getting used to the fact that now, the physical presence of Jesus is no longer going to be accessible to us.”

Could yet another possibility exist that explains Jesus sporadic appearances. Is it possible that he did not limit his visits to ancient Israel? This is the intriguing scenario described in the Book of Mormon. The book which emerged in 19th century America is revered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as God’s Holy Word.”

Kathleen Flake, Assistant Professor of American Religious History, Vanderbilt University, “The Book of Mormon is an account of a civilization that lived in the Americas between about 600 years before Jesus was born, until about 400 years after he died. The centerpiece of this story, is Jesus’ appearance to them, after he died, and was resurrected. He comes to the Americas with business in mind. Jesus will say to these people in the Americas, now I said to the Jews in Palestine ‘other sheep I have which are not of this fold, and they misunderstood me. They thought I meant the gentiles, but no. I meant you. I meant you’re the other sheep; I must come visit you, I must manifest myself unto you so that you can bear witness to the world about the nature of God, and how to receive a forgiveness of sin, or more to the point, how you can overcome the circumstances of the world and be made one with God.’”

According to the Book of Mormon, the risen Jesus remains with America’s ancient tribes for 3 or 4 days. He then vanishes and then makes sporadic appearances for an unspecified period of time. Meanwhile, according to the New Testament, Jesus continues to embrace his disciples in Israel. But perhaps the most puzzling story of all is also the most epic. Did the resurrected Jesus really appear before a gathering of 500 spell-bound witnesses?

One episode in the New Testament’s eastern narrative cries out as perhaps its greatest paradox. Why would Jesus’ appearance before the greatest number of people, be described in the fewest number of words?

Johnson, “In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul gives a recitation of those who had experiences and appearance of Jesus. He includes a puzzling reference to 500 at one time, some of whom are still around and are able to bear testimony to this fact. The most puzzling thing about this is that there is no story about it in the gospels as such. We would think that if there were such an event, it certainly would be included among the resurrections stories of Jesus, or the appearances.”

Smith-Christopher, “Now for Paul, he just sort of mentions this in passing. Now of course, when we moderns read that, we want to say, “Stop! Wait! Back up! What do you mean 500 people? Who were they? What were they? Where were they? When did this happen?’ And we’re terribly frustrated about the fact that Paul just sort of mentions it in passing. Clearly, his concerns were elsewhere. He was already arriving at the issue of ‘what does all this mean’? Not, ‘did it actually happen?’”

Is the resurrection as told in the gospels, history? Or is it meant to convey the internal experience of those living long ago?

Smith-Christopher, “Often, you hear this idea bantered about, the idea of this massive hallucination, a sort of group perception of what they wanted to see, because they were so overcome with grief. There are a number of problems with this explanation. Psychiatrists tell us that individuals have hallucinations, not groups. For a group to be involved, they had to have seen something. Now they may have misunderstood what they saw, but they saw something.”

Sheehan, “Those people didn’t have to have a visual experience of Jesus in the room. In a prayer for example, in an ecstatic experience, they could have said, ‘Jesus has been awakened by God’. That’s what constitutes an appearance. Could that have taken place in a dream, could it have taken place in a communal prayer moment? Certainly it could have. When Paul in Galations 1:6 says that Jesus was shown to me as risen, he says, ‘He was shown within me’, that is within his inner consciousness even.’