We have much more to say about this in our blog post, "Who is Jesus? Proving Once and For All That He Lived, Died, and Rose".
Table of Contents:
1. Is there evidence (even outside of the Bible) that Jesus walked the earth and was crucified on the cross in the 1st century AD? (answer is yes).
2. Then what happened to His body?
About 99% of New Testament scholars (both liberal and conservative) would say that there was a person named Jesus, who walked the earth in the 1st century AD.
Why? Because there are non-Christian 1st century and other early writers who wrote about Him (this is called EXTRABIBLICAL evidence (evidence outside of the Bible).
Also, about 95% of those same scholars (both liberal and conservative) would say that Jesus was crucified on the cross, under Pontius Pilate in the 1st century AD.
SO, WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS BODY?
If He rose from the dead, then this validates what He said when He was on the earth, that He truly was the Son of God. But maybe He didn't rise. We will look at the alternatives below.
11 of the 12 disciples (not counting the apostle John) were martyred, proclaiming the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and we have some of their testimonies of this in written form, in the New Testament.
They all SAW the risen Lord. People who are hypnotized do NOT have the same experiences - they see different things. Group hypnosis (them all seeing the same thing) does not work.
Yet each of them proclaimed the same thing, that they had seen Jesus, risen from the dead.
Furthermore, this theory would still have the problem of the tomb. If they were hypothetically all hypnotized, people could just walk over to Jesus' tomb and see that He was still dead, and prove Christianity was false.
This theory has a lot of problems as well.
The problem with this theory, firstly, is Jesus' flogging. Jesus was whipped and bloody.
Have you ever gotten a cut on the bottom of your foot? How does it feel to walk even a few steps on that foot?
So Swoon Theory says that Jesus was beaten and bleeding from his shoulders, down his back, passed his buttocks, and onto his thighs, and is laying there in a tomb for multiple days, without food or water.
Then somehow, He manages to get up, walk over to the 2-ton stone door, roll that away, still bleeding, walk out the door, fight off the Roman guards keeping watch, whose lives depended on them keeping watch, then walk miles to where His disciples were, and appear to them, and say, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, follow Me."
Can you imagine the disciples thinking to themselves, as He is bleeding all over the ground, "Wow, I really want that sort of resurrected body as well."
No, they would have said, "Get this guy a doctor!"
The problem with this theory is that the disciples would not die for a lie. Would you?
If you knew something was a lie (something that you made up), and someone was about to kill you for it, would you stick to your lie?
Doubtful. Additionally, this doesn't explain the conversions of St. Paul, and James the brother of Jesus (who did not believe in Jesus as the Son of God until after He rose from the dead).
Check out our Blog - "Who Is Jesus? Proving Once and For All That He Lived, He Died, and He Rose"
Check out these books under the "Did Jesus Rise From the Dead" tab on our Book List.