For Easter Sunday 2024, I made resurrection rolls to use as an object lesson to explain Jesus' resurrection to my Sunday School class. It was also a fun way to celebrate the day with yummy, sugary treats.
If you're not familiar with what these are, they're basically crescent rolls wrapped around a large marshmallow that's been rolled in melted butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar. When you bake the crescent rolls, the marshmallow melts, so it looks like it disappeared when you cut the roll open.
I took one of the resurrection rolls and cut it in half, showing how the inside of the roll was now empty, just like the tomb they buried Jesus in.
One boy took a look at the empty roll and said, "You didn't put a marshmallow in that one. You're trying to trick us."
I replied, "I put a marshmallow inside every one of those crescent rolls, I promise you." Then I looked at my older daughter who was in the class, and who had been in the kitchen when I made the rolls that morning. "You can ask her. She was there. She saw the marshmallows inside the crescent rolls."
As I said those words, I thought about how important eyewitness testimony is in real life situations, in legal situations, and especially when we're talking about the historical truth of the resurrection of Christ.
I was able to share a little about that with the kids on Sunday morning, and I thought it would be good to write about it here.
The Importance of Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness testimony plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the world around us, even though psychological scientists still don't agree about how valid or reliable it is. [1][2] Jesus' resurrection, a cornerstone of the Christian faith, is one biblical event for which we have irrefutable eyewitness corroboration, so we can feel certain that the miraculous occurrence is historical fact. [3]
Scrutiny of eyewitness testimonies reveals the malleable nature of human memory, where confident recollections can sometimes be inaccurate, and these reports may be further complicated by high-stress environments, misinformation effects, and biases. [1][4] Nevertheless, as homicide detective and Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace asserts, the fact that there are differences in the accounts of the resurrection and other events in Jesus' life reveals the truth of the accounts and the trustworthiness of the reporters. [5]
In this post, I will analyze the credibility and impact of eyewitness testimonies on our collective understanding of this pivotal event, as well as events we experience every day. [4] By threading together faith, history, and cognitive science (in this post and my next one), I hope to offer a comprehensive and balanced account that sheds light on the themes of death, resurrection, and eternal life, which are essential to our understanding of who Jesus was and why He came to earth as the God-Man.
The Role of Eyewitness Testimony in Establishing Historical Truth
Eyewitness testimony, while a cornerstone in the legal system for reconstructing past events, is approached with caution in the realm of historical analysis. This caution stems from an understanding of the complexities surrounding human memory and the many factors that can influence the reliability of eyewitness accounts.
Historical truth, therefore, is established through a rigorous evaluation of sources, considering the proximity of the witnesses to the events, the potential for bias, and the corroborative value of the testimony combined with other evidence.
Evaluation of Credibility and Bias
I learned about eyewitness testimony in my undergraduate introduction to psychology course. Interestingly, it was the major research focus of the woman who taught the class, so we spent a lot of time on this particular subject, especially in relation to the reliability of young children's eyewitness accounts.
Eyewitness testimony is sometimes discounted because of a potential lack of either perceived or actual credibility and possible biases. Even individuals living at the time and location when and where particular events took place might not provide an accurate account, or their accurate account may not be accepted, due to personal or societal influences. [6]
Consider my resurrection roll example. Because she was there, my older daughter was able to corroborate my story. Because she was older than the boy asking the question, he may have been more willing to accept her verbal evidence. But what if she didn't come into the room until after all the crescent rolls had been folded over the marshmallows? What if she was five years old, instead of fifteen? Her truthful testimony of the actual event may not have been accepted nearly as well.
This highlights the fact that the real problem with eyewitness testimony is that it relies on the perceptions, biases, and actions of both the individual relaying the account and the one hearing it.
Remember the "telephone" game most of us played when we were children? How many of those messages actually resembled, at the end, what they started out being, according to the person relaying the message? And how many times were the messages intentionally distorted by one or more smart aleck during the course of the game?
Challenges to the Historical Analysis of Eyewitness Testimony
Because human memory can be shaped by many things, ensuring the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is sometimes a challenge. For example, my grandmother used to love telling the story of how she served brussels sprouts one night at her house, and I declined to eat them. She tried to encourage my consumption of them by telling me how yummy they were, and I told her to eat them herself if they were that good. I was very young at the time. I don't have an actual memory of the event, but because my grandmother frequently told the story later, and my mother corroborated it, my brain began to believe that her story was one of my own memories. To this day, over ten years since my grandmother died and four decades since the event actually took place, I remember it, even though I'm likely remembering the story rather than the event itself.
Is my memory of the event any less real than my grandmother's was? No, because I truly experienced it along with her.
Is it any less valid? Possibly. But, as an interesting sidenote, brussels sprouts are now one of my favorite vegetables. So, her mission to get me to eat them was eventually successful. Maybe that's evidence for the power of suggestion. I'm not sure.
What I do know is that human memory is imperfect. It is susceptible to intentional or unintentional misinformation and individual biases. This unreliability necessitates careful practices in both legal and historical contexts to prevent errors. [6] Misidentification by eyewitnesses has led to many wrongful convictions. Thus, the criminal justice system has taken great care in the collection and preservation of eyewitness evidence. [7] However, eyewitness testimony is still used in courts. Despite its flaws, it remains a valuable judicial tool.
When constructing cohesive narratives of past events, historians leverage both primary sources, like documents and artifacts from the time period, and secondary sources, such as analyses by other historians. [8] Peer review in historical scholarship serves as a way to validate the interpretations and conclusions drawn from eyewitness accounts, ensuring collective agreement on historical truths. [8] However, historical events cannot be reproduced in their original state. What's past certainly is past. Thus, the authenticity and accuracy of information can be compromised by additions or subtractions in transmission over time. [8] Remember what happens in the telephone game.
We also need to remember that history is written by the victors, so we don't always get more than one side of any story. [9] This underscores the need for a meticulous critical approach in the analysis of historic events, and certainly biblical events.
In my next post, I'll cover prophetic and eyewitness acounts of Jesus' resurrection. Of course, I'll use biblical sources, but I'll also include some information from non-biblical sources, as well. All of these sources point to the same conclusion: Jesus was a real person, and He really did something that changed the world.
References
[1] - https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/abstract/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0026.xml
[2] - https://www.quora.com/How-reliable-is-eyewitness-testimony-when-trying-to-determine-historical-events-What-other-types-of-evidence-is-more-less-reliable
[3] - https://lifehopeandtruth.com/god/who-is-jesus/jesus-resurrection/
[4] - https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/FlowersCase/eyewitnesstestimony.html
[5] - https://coldcasechristianity.com/videos/why-differences-between-the-gospels-demonstrate-their-reliability-video/
[6] - https://nobaproject.com/modules/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases
[7] - https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/178240.pdf
[8] - https://www.quora.com/If-historians-werent-eye-witnesses-of-events-they-report-why-do-we-accept-their-versions-of-what-happened
[9] - https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/history-is-written-by-the-victors-quote-origin.html