In contrast to the Old Testament, the New Testament seems to offer many fewer examples of what might be understood as “voice hearing”. However, the voices that are identifiable are very significant and, as with the Old Testament, there have again been those who are quick and unhesitating in their identification of examples of voice hearing within its pages. For example, Jesus and St Paul are listed by John Watkins in his book Hearing Voices (2008, p.30) amongst other “famous voice hearers”,1 and Kauffman (2016) also lists them both as founders of religion who had “verifiable persistent non-drug-assisted hallucinations”. Laroi et al. (2014, p.5214) list “Paul on the road to Damascus”, amongst foundational religious figures, as having had “Culturally Meaningful” hallucinations.2 And, as will be discussed later in this chapter, there have been various attempts to “explain” the resurrection appearances of Jesus on the basis of bereavement-related hallucinations. There is thus an important case to answer. Does voice hearing “explain” some of the most significant spiritual and religious experiences of the New Testament?
The “voices” that are heard in the New Testament mostly appear within narratives that are presented as historical.4 The four figures who might most readily be identified as putative voice hearers within these narratives are Jesus, Peter, Paul, and John (the author of Revelation). This is not to suggest at the outset that any of these figures necessarily were voice hearers (although this possibility will be explored). Nor is it the case, as will also become clear, that these are the only figures in the New Testament who might be considered to have heard voices. However, I propose that the most theologically and psychologically significant narratives that might be understood as examples of voice hearing in the New Testament may usefully be grouped together in this way.
The canonical gospels mark a significant change of understanding of how God speaks to people in comparison with the preceding Hebrew tradition. In the synoptic gospels, God’s voice is heard primarily through the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In the prologue to John’s gospel, Jesus is introduced as the “Word” that was in the beginning with God, and was God, and which has now lived among us. This richly imbued language, implicitly appealing both to Hebrew tradition and Greek philosophy, is illustrative of the important changes in understanding of divine–human communication that were taking place in Christian communities in the wake of the Jesus “event”.
Referring to this more explicitly, the author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (1:1–2). In continuity with Hebrew tradition, the writer quotes extensively from Hebrew scripture, and especially from prophecy, but in a significant development from the preceding tradition he outlines a case for the uniqueness of Jesus in the history of divine–human relationships. This might be characterised as a move away from expecting to hear God speak through prophets, and a greater emphasis on reflecting on how God has spoken through Jesus of Nazareth. This is not to say that prophecy5 and voice hearing find no place in the Christian New Testament, but they are made relative and subordinate to God’s revelation of himself in the person of Jesus.
Jesus
Voices that might be religious “building blocks”6 – that is, voices experienced as an encounter with the divine – are important in the gospel narratives at four key points. First, angelic voices play a part in the infancy narratives in Luke.7 Second, according to the synoptic gospels, a voice from heaven is heard at Jesus’ baptism.8 Immediately after this, Jesus is tempted in the wilderness and hears the voice of Satan. Third, a voice is heard by Peter, James, and John at the transfiguration. Finally, there are various encounters with angels, and with the risen Jesus, in the resurrection narratives, most of which involve some kind of dialogue.9
The annunciations
According to Luke, the conceptions of John the Baptist and of Jesus are respectively announced to Zechariah and to Mary by the angel Gabriel,10 and the birth of Jesus is announced to the shepherds, also by an angel.11 The angel “appears” to Zechariah, is “sent” to Mary, and “stood” before the shepherds. In each case the angel speaks, and implicitly a voice is heard. Zechariah and Mary converse with the angel. But these narratives are introducing important births at the outset of the gospel. Are they psychological accounts – or more importantly to be understood as narrative devices?
Raymond Brown, in The Birth of the Messiah, draws attention to a stereotyped pattern of biblical annunciations of birth which may be identified in relation to Ishmael, Isaac, Samson, John the Baptist and Jesus (Brown, 1993, pp.155–159).12 There are clear parallels between the circumstances of the parents of John the Baptist as recorded in Luke – that is, Zechariah and Elizabeth – and the parents of Isaac (Abraham and Sarah) and Samuel (Elkanah and Hannah).13 Within the Lukan narrative, John the Baptist is thus set both within the context of the patriarchal tradition recorded in Genesis (Brown, 1993, p.269) and in the prophetic tradition of Samuel. The only previous biblical appearance of the angel Gabriel had been in Daniel, one of the last books of Hebrew scripture to be written. Thus, John is set in the tradition of Hebrew scripture (p.270), as it were, from beginning to end. The words that the angel speaks to Zechariah draw on passages of Hebrew scripture that further reinforce these parallels, and also link John with Elijah.14
Similarly, the message of the angel to Mary also evokes reference to Hebrew scripture. Brown has shown that the words of the angel in Luke 1:32–33 parallel those of Nathan to David in 2 Samuel 7:8–16 (Brown, 1993, pp.310–311). They also (in verse 35) possibly reflect a Christological formulation of the early Christian church (Brown, 1993, pp.311–316). Again, in the annunciation to the shepherds (2:9–12) there may be implicit references to passages from Isaiah and elsewhere, including incorporation of a theophany-like experience evocative of Isaiah 6 (Brown, 1993, pp.424–427).
Luke, as an author, thus appears to have been incorporating a rich array of allusions within his narrative, but does any of this reflect actual human experience of the characters involved, or does it tell us more about the author than about any of the historical participants in the narrative? There would not appear to be sufficient evidence to settle this question one way or the other15 but, whether in the narrative or in human experience (or both), an important point is established by Luke early in his gospel. As Caird observes:
The message came to [Zechariah] through the angel Gabriel. It is inevitable that our religious experiences clothe themselves in garments provided by our habitual cast of thought. All those who have had any vivid sense of God’s presence have wanted to speak of it in terms of seeing and hearing, though well aware that God himself can be neither heard nor seen. In early times the Israelites overcame this difficulty by speaking of God’s presence as his ‘angel’ [Gen 22:11; Exod. 23:20; cf. Isa. 63:9] and this reverential manner of speech later developed into a belief that God communicates with men through a host of messengers, among whom Gabriel was especially the angel of revelation.
(Caird, 1985, p.51)
Even if the information that Luke gives us about Zechariah and Mary is not historically reliable, so that it is not Zechariah or Mary who are trying to convey their religious experience in terms of seeing and hearing, but rather Luke himself, the voice of the angel as a narrative device is still significant. In the Lukan narrative God communicates with human beings. In this sense, at least, his voice is heard.
The Baptism and Temptation
At Jesus’ baptism the heavens are torn apart and Jesus sees the Spirit descending on him like a dove. Then comes a voice from heaven, which says: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22). The story is very similar in Mark and Luke, and the words of the voice are exactly the same, although Luke seems to allow us to read the story in such a way that the voice might have been heard by others, as well as by Jesus (Michaels, 1981, pp.27–28, 30–31). In Matthew (3:17) the voice is addressed to all who are present, and not just to Jesus:16 “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
In all three gospels, the words seem to be a combination of Psalm 2 and (less certainly) Isaiah 42. In Psalm 2 (verse 7) we read: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you.’” In Isaiah 42 (verse 1) we read: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.” The link with Isaiah is perhaps more tenuous, but the words are reminiscent of various passages in Isaiah where a chosen – and suffering – servant of God fulfils a divinely appointed mission. The voice thus may be taken to imply that Jesus is the suffering servant called by God.17
Some commentators18 understand the voice as that of the “bath-qol”, referred to in various passages by rabbis of the time. The bath-qol, literally the “daughter of the voice”, or the echo of a heavenly voice, is a kind of inferior substitute for the word of God as given directly to the prophets. It is likened by the rabbis to the chirping of a bird, or the moaning of a dove. According to this view, when the last Hebrew prophets – Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi – died, the Holy Spirit then vanished from Israel, and God could no longer be heard directly. But the bath-qol could still be heard – as it were indirectly, an echo of God’s voice. In fact, most recent commentators do not think that this was what the gospel writers had in mind. On the contrary, they were emphasising that the heavens have been opened – that, theologically speaking, God’s voice was being heard directly.19 But how might we now understand this speaking of God “directly” to Jesus?
For centuries, the baptism narratives were understood primarily from a devotional point of view. Serious critical scholarship on the baptism narratives came on the scene only in the 19th century. David Strauss (1808–1874), in The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1973; originally published in 1835)20 – having examined the conflicting gospel accounts of the events at Jesus’ baptism, and having considered the difficulties inherent in considering them to be either supernatural or natural occurrences – eventually concluded that these phenomena “have merely a mythical value” (p.245). In his view, the texts follow a Hebrew prophetic tradition that put Messianic declarations “into the mouth of Jehovah, as real, audible voices from heaven” (p.243). He noted that the dove referred to by the gospel writers has rich symbolic significance within the Hebrew and other Eastern traditions. He therefore proposed that the heavenly voice and the hovering dove were gathered from contemporary sources and then incorporated into Christian legend, but that they had no historical basis in the experiences of Jesus or of those who were present at his baptism.21
In the early 20th century, based upon their reading (or misreading) of the gospels, a number of psychiatrists – taking a completely opposite approach to Strauss – argued that Jesus had such extraordinary beliefs about himself, combined with voices and visions, that a psychiatric diagnosis was indicated. Jesus, they said, was clearly psychotic. Amongst the pieces of evidence used to support this conclusion, the accounts of Jesus’ baptism featured significantly. It was argued that people who have hallucinations of the voice of God, and who believe that they are sent by God, must be mad.22
Even a century ago, such arguments were patently crude and contentious. In a dissertation entitled The Psychiatric Study of Jesus, published in 1913, Albert Schweitzer (Schweitzer, 1948) – the biblical scholar and medical missionary – convincingly demonstrated that the proponents of such a diagnosis were both ignorant of research on the gospel texts, and also arrogantly over-confident about the ability of psychiatry to make reliable diagnoses on the basis of those texts. Much of the evidence for asserting that Jesus was suffering from such conditions as megalomania, or religious paranoia, arose from dubious speculation. Taking the voice at Jesus’ baptism as a starting point, one psychiatrist immediately proposed that Jesus must have experienced hallucinations at other times, too – such as at the transfiguration. Yet it is the disciples (and not Jesus) to whom the heavenly voice is addressed on that occasion. Schweitzer’s rebuttal of these crude arguments remains convincing on its own terms, although it should also be said that psychiatry has moved on and now operates by rather different criteria.23
Serious psychological studies of Jesus entered a lull after Schweitzer’s Psychiatric Study,24 but a series of psychological analyses and psychobiographies have appeared over the last 30 to 40 years.25 Most have paid little or no attention to the voices that Jesus is said to have heard. Amongst these, John Miller’s Jesus at Thirty is worthy of comment as offering a more positive psychological approach. Miller does not eschew attribution of inner disharmony to Jesus, but does so without employing diagnostic categories (Miller, 1997, pp.19–29). Miller understands Jesus as having been attracted to John the Baptist’s movement as a result of inner conflicts, possibly concerning the death of Joseph, which were then resolved through a “conversion” experience at the point of his baptism. Evidence for this is largely speculative, but Miller portrays a very human Jesus, who must have been drawn to John out of some sense of inner conviction, and who struggled with thoughts and feelings about vocation and family and priorities in life, just as other human beings do. The approach taken is firmly psychological rather than psychiatric. Whilst Miller’s account of Jesus’ “conversion” at his baptism is in many ways an attractive one, within which the humanity of Jesus is affirmed, and naïve diagnoses of mental disorder are avoided, it still lacks a critical positive account of the voices that Jesus hears. William James, whose account of conversion experiences is cited by Miller, proposed that voices may be a common concomitant of such experiences (p.228) but (even now) we know little about how common they may be in this context, or what their significance is.
More recent scholarship has generally affirmed the historicity of the baptism of Jesus,26 but has been much more cautious about what can or cannot be asserted about the experiences of Jesus himself. John Meier, for example, sees the theophanic component of the baptism narratives as clearly being a later Christian composition: “a psychological interpretation of the baptismal story as a path to Jesus’ inner experience ignores the basic insights of close to a century of tradition, form, and redaction criticism” (Meier, 1994, p.108). James Dunn27 is a little less pessimistic, leaving open at least the possibility that Jesus in some way experienced some sense of commissioning at his baptism, but this is a far cry from finding evidence in the text to support any constructive account of Jesus’ mental state at the time of his baptism, far less any evidence of mental illness.
We should therefore be cautious about asserting too confidently that we know exactly what experiences Jesus had at his baptism. After all, each of the evangelists gives us a differing account. In John’s gospel (1:32–34), it is John the Baptist who sees the Spirit descend on Jesus from heaven, like a dove, and who testifies that Jesus is the Son of God, but neither Jesus nor the crowd hears a voice.28
Following the baptism, in Mark (1:12–13) we are told very briefly that Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan and waited on by angels. No voices are mentioned. In Matthew (4:1–11) and Luke (4:1–13) a longer account is provided in which the Devil (or “the tempter”) speaks to Jesus three times. In two of the utterances, the heavenly voice heard by Jesus at his baptism – “You are my Son”29 – is reflected back as a question: “If you are the son of God …”
Bultmann (1963, pp.253–257) identified the temptation narratives as legendary, being drawn from an uncertain mythological tradition such as, possibly, a nature myth (e.g. Marduk’s combat with the chaos of nature) or a story of temptation as commonly found in mythological and hagiographical accounts of saints and holy men. The dialogue with the voice of Satan he understood to be modelled upon a Hebrew pattern of Rabbinic disputation. Thus, the voice is mythical but shaped by Hebrew tradition.
Caird, acknowledging that the account is coloured by language that many will understand as mythological, also offered some interesting reflections on how this voice might be understood in terms of Jesus’ experience:
Conscious of a unique vocation and endowed with exceptional powers, he must set aside all unworthy interpretations of his recent experience. He has heard a voice saying, “Thou art my Son”; now he hears another voice, “If you are the Son of God … ”, and he must decide whether or not it comes from the same source. Three times he makes up his mind that the voice which prompts him to take action is that of the Devil.
(Caird, 1985, p.79)
Consciousness of a unique vocation, and “exceptional powers”, might appear to contrast strongly with Miller’s account of inner struggle, but the latter also acknowledges a positive sense of messianic vocation. It is the understanding of vocation as bringing fame, power, and esteem that presents temptation (pp.55–64). Rather than being evidence of delusional grandiosity, the temptation reflects a conscious decision on Jesus’ part to relinquish such ideas.
As with the baptism narratives, contemporary scholarship remains sceptical as to what the temptation narratives tell us – if anything – abut the psychological experiences of the historical Jesus. Dunn points out that both the baptism narratives and the temptation narratives are clearly stories told by others about Jesus, rather than stories told by Jesus about himself.30 We simply do not have the first person account upon which to base any judgement concerning whether or not Jesus heard voices. We do have important gospel narratives within which heavenly and Satanic voices play an important part in conveying to the reader significant information about the identity and calling of Jesus – but this is a very different thing.
The transfiguration
In each of the synoptic gospels there is an account of an episode in which Jesus goes up a mountain with Peter, John and James.31 On the mountain, Jesus’ appearance is changed or “transfigured”. His clothes become “dazzling white”, his face “shone like the sun”,32 and he is seen and heard talking with Moses and Elijah.33 Following some remarks by Peter, who is terrified and does not know what to say, a cloud overshadows the group. From the cloud a voice is heard: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 9:7), “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5), and “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35) After the voice has spoken, the disciples find themselves alone with Jesus.
There has been a variety of interesting accounts of this episode by commentators.34 Some say that it is a legendary development of a resurrection story35, and some that it is a completely symbolic36 narrative. Cranfield, who distinguishes what might be considered a vision and an audition from what might be considered “factual”, ends up concluding that it is both.37 Caird draws attention to research on mystical experiences in which intense devotions are allegedly associated with changed physical appearance.38 Fenton, noting the parallels with the account of Jesus’ baptism, considers this to be an epiphany story of a kind common in ancient writings.39 I. Howard Marshall suggests that there must have been some historical event to “trigger off” the formulation of the narrative, but that “the nature of the event is such as to almost defy historical investigation”.40
We are therefore left with a polyphony of views, but France (commenting on Matthew’s account) is right to draw attention to the fact that the experience “is narrated in vivid terms of the disciples’ visual and auditory sensations”.41 We are left with a narrative of a voice heard by Peter, James and John that does not really fit the expected pattern of modern accounts of mental disorder, voice hearing or mystical/religious experience. Whilst its theological and narrative significance is clear, as confirming divine affirmation of Jesus to the three disciples and to the reader of the gospel, its historical, psychological and biographical42 fabric is not.
The Resurrection Narratives
The most distinctive and remarkable of Christian beliefs is that of the resurrection from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth.43 The resurrection narratives as recorded in the four canonical gospels44 comprise a series of different accounts of men and women who are variously said to encounter in some places angels announcing the resurrection of Jesus, and in other places the risen Jesus himself.
In Matthew 28:1–8, Mark 16:1–7, and Luke 24:1–11 Mary Magdalene, accompanied by one or more other women,45 is recorded as encountering one or more angels, at or near the empty tomb, who tell her of the resurrection. In John 20:12, Mary alone encounters two angels who ask her why she is weeping. The variety of different accounts of angelic encounters has been taken by some as evidence that this was a literary device, developed to emphasise the significance of the discovery of the empty tomb.46 It is impossible to know exactly what actually happened.47
In Matthew (28:9–20), Mary Magdalene and another Mary, and later the 11 disciples, all have encounters with the risen Jesus in which he speaks to them. In the longer ending to Mark (16:9–20), Mary Magdalene, then two unnamed disciples, see Jesus, but we are not explicitly told that they speak with him (or hear him speaking to them). Later the 11 all encounter Jesus and hear him speaking to them. In Luke (24:13–53), two disciples on the road to Emmaus encounter Jesus and speak with him. When they eventually recognise him, he mysteriously vanishes out of their sight. Subsequently, the 11 disciples and their companions also see and hear Jesus. Reference is also made to an earlier, and separate, appearance to Peter.
In John (20), Mary Magdalene is the first to see and speak with the risen Jesus and subsequently the other disciples also see and speak with him on two separate occasions. Finally, Jesus appears to, and speaks with, Peter and six other disciples by the Sea of Tiberius.
What are we to make of these resurrection appearances and auditions? First, it is important to note that – according to the canonical narratives – they do primarily appear to be visual in nature – although there are communications (with Jesus and with angels) that take an auditory verbal form.48 There are no voices here in the absence of visual phenomena. Second, Reginald Fuller49 has argued that the verb used to characterise these appearances – ’ώφθη – taking into account its use in the Septuaguint and elsewhere – emphasises a revelatory initiative on the part of God, rather than a sensory experience on the part of those to whom Jesus appeared. Third, we receive accounts of these experiences in narrative form. They come to us as an innovative genre of literature from a particular time and place in history, and must be interpreted as such.50 We do not have any accounts that could be considered scientific in any modern sense – historical or psychological. For some scholars, at least, they make sense only as “creative storytelling”.51 At best, they are late and retrospective accounts of what happened, being written more than half a century after the events to which they relate.52
A broader evaluation of the traditional Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus is beyond the scope of the present work. The critical literature on the resurrection of Jesus is now vast.53 Within this literature, visionary and voice-hearing experiences have found a place as “naturalistic” explanations for the historical events that are presumed to underlie the texts, and were especially popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There has recently been something of a resurgence of interest in such theories. Although they do not currently appear to have widespread support as “explanations”,54 there is, in contrast, widespread agreement that “something” happened. That is, there seems to be a consensus that the early Christians had experiences of some kind or another that account for both the historical rise of Christianity and also the central and distinctive Christian belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. Whilst the nature of the experiences is debated hotly, it seems to be almost unanimously agreed that “the early followers of Jesus thought that they had seen the risen Jesus”.55
The traditional Christian conviction, argued strongly in recent years by Tom Wright (2003), is that Jesus literally and bodily came back to life. According to this account, the experiences of the early Christians were therefore neither visions nor hallucinations, but rather veridical perceptions of the bodily presence of Jesus. It is beyond the scope of the present work to debate this assertion per se. However, if the traditional account is not accepted, then the alternative comprises a relatively small number of possibilities.56 Visions/hallucinations do not play any part at all according to some of these accounts (that is, the “something” that happened did not take the form of visionary or hallucinatory experiences). Where they are appealed to, they are taken up in one of three ways:
Belief in the resurrection is taken to be premised on an empty tomb.
57 Subsequently, this conviction was confirmed by visionary/hallucinatory experiences.
Certain disciples, in the context of their grief at Jesus’ death, might have had visionary/hallucinatory experiences. These experiences then generated similar experiences in the wider community (usually explained fairly crudely on the basis of “mass hysteria” or similar allegedly social psychological processes). These experiences in turn begot a (fictional) story that the tomb was empty.
Visionary experiences of the risen Jesus are said not to be due to hallucinations, but rather to some psychical or spiritual mechanism. This category – of “veridical visions”
58 – will not be discussed further here, as it is not clear how it can be distinguished from other perception-like experiences in which an object of perception is not actually present. However, if this is accepted, the tomb was not empty and Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead. Beliefs of this kind only arose secondary to the visions.
Essentially, then, the proposal is that the resurrection appearances of Jesus, as attested to in the New Testament, were mixed modality (auditory and visual) hallucinatory experiences of the early Christians. This possibility seems to have been considered from very early times. Celsus, writing in the 2nd century ce, suggested that the supposed witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus “through wishful thinking had a hallucination due to some mistaken notion”.59
David Strauss (1865), in A New Life of Jesus, seems to have been the first modern scholar to popularise the view that the experiences in question may in fact have been visions arising from “instrumentality of the mind, the power of imagination, and nervous excitement”.60 Arguing first for a psychological account of the experiences of Paul on the road to Damascus (see below), he proceeded to propose that the accounts of the disciples’ experiences in encountering the risen Jesus were of an essentially similar kind. In each case he identified preceding beliefs and psychological states which he understood to have predisposed to these experiences.
As historical evidence of what Strauss considered to be a similar kind of phenomenon, he cited an example that now seems very strange – the reported 15th-century sightings of Duke Ulrich of Württemberg in his home country following his exile. Much of Strauss’s argument was concerned with textual arguments around the timing and location of biblical encounters with the risen Jesus, all of which might also appear to a contemporary reader to be of little relevance. It is noticeable that Strauss goes beyond what we might consider to be reliable historical evidence and demonstrates significant gender prejudice, on the basis of which the reliability of female testimony is dismissed out of hand. Thus, for example, he says of Mary Magdalene that “In a woman of such a constitution of body and mind it was no great step from inward excitement to ocular vision.”61
One of the best recent exponents of a hallucination theory of the resurrection is Michael Goulder. In an essay entitled “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision” (1996), he argues that there are other, essentially similar, psychological circumstances in which people are known to experience hallucinations – specifically, religious conversion experiences, grief reactions, and collective delusions.
Amongst the examples of conversion experiences that Goulder considers, two (Isaiah and Paul) are in fact other biblical accounts, and one (Arthur Koestler) is neither religious nor associated with any kind of hallucinations. Only the story of Susan Atkins might be considered strictly relevant. Atkins was a controversial figure who professed a conversion experience in prison following her conviction for her part in the murders committed by Charles Manson. In court she was found to be a highly unreliable witness, and her story is arguably completely unlike the Easter visions and auditions of the disciples as recorded in the gospels. Nonetheless, according to her own account of her conversion, Atkins saw and heard Jesus speaking to her, and Goulder argues that such hallucinations are typical of many religious experiences.62
Goulder is not alone in arguing that the resurrection appearances were in fact hallucinations experienced in the context of a grief reaction.63 In a book entitled Psychological Origins of the Resurrection Myth, Jack Kent (1999), a Unitarian minister, explores the possibility at greater length. However, there are some serious problems with this view. The individual experiences of a grieving widow or widower would seem to be far removed from a group of 11 disciples and their companions all seeing and hearing Jesus at the same time. Hearing or seeing the person who has been lost as a result of bereavement is usually comforting, but almost never associated with a belief that they have come back to life and are no longer dead. It is usually fleeting or short-lived, and yet some of the resurrection narratives are concerned with relatively long interactions and conversations. Furthermore, this theory does not account for the tradition of the empty tomb.64 This would generally, therefore, not appear to be a very plausible hypothesis on its own – although, of course, such occurrences could have been the basis for subsequent elaboration and exaggeration within the tradition.
Finally, Goulder refers to the phenomenon of collective delusion, for which his primary example is a series of reported sightings of the “Bigfoot” monster in rural South Dakota in the autumn of 1977. Essentially the proposition is that, with the right psychological circumstances – including such things as a close-knit community, poor education, and anxiety – an initial visionary (“conversion”) experience can lead to a collective sharing of mistaken, false or delusional beliefs within a community. There are undoubtedly group experiences of this kind that might be used to support the contention that social processes following the crucifixion fostered something similar amongst the disciples. However, Goulder’s case is not helped by his choice of such a bizarre and dissimilar example, and it is further undermined by his prejudicial grouping of women with “poorly educated people” as those who are more vulnerable to such phenomena.
Goulder’s essay is an important example – argued at greater length and with better cited evidence than some others – of the recent resurgence of interest in hallucination theories as explanations for the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus.65 This resurgence of interest does not generally seem to have kept pace with the literature on voice hearing, and is not very convincing on purely scientific grounds. A different example of this resurgence of interest in hallucination theories is provided by Gerd Lüdemann (1994) in The Resurrection of Jesus. Lüdemann presents an extended argument for the “vision hypothesis” on critically argued historical grounds. Importantly, he argues that the biblical account does not present a primary theological statement (e.g. “God has raised Jesus from the dead”) but rather an account of the disciples’ experiences of the risen Jesus, which then find expression in such statements. However, he does not follow this critical historical analysis with a similarly extended and critical psychological analysis. Where he does refer to the importance of psychological considerations he demonstrates both a naïveté as to the ability of the historical-critical method to provide the necessary scientific basis for this, and also a reliance on “depth psychology” which would be seen by many today as highly subjective and unscientific.66
More recent biblical scholarship has generally been much more cautious about what can be said, and especially about the designation of resurrection appearances as hallucinatory. James Dunn concludes that it is not possible from the texts to say other than that witnesses to the resurrection “saw” Jesus. Whilst the emphasis seems to be on “normal” seeing, rather than on visionary experiences, he concludes that “A more refined psychological analysis has no real basis in the data examined.”67 Maurice Casey similarly argues that it is most appropriate to refer to the resurrection “appearances” of Jesus “because that is how those people who saw them interpreted them, and so did the early tradition about them”.68 Whilst he is willing to concede that “visions” might also be an appropriate term, Casey eschews the use of the word “hallucination” “because it belongs to our culture, not theirs, and its pejorative implications have been almost invariably used to confuse the major issues”.69
Others are a little more confident about what can be said, arguing on the basis of what is known about 1st-century Jewish and Christian beliefs about resurrection and visionary experience. For example, David Catchpole, based upon an analysis of the understanding of the concept of resurrection within the early “Jesus movement”, concludes that
In accordance with the through-and-through Jewish context of that movement, resurrection belongs to an earthly setting, presupposes the final divine judgement, and almost certainly involves the removal of bodies from tombs. The experience of seeing and hearing a recently deceased person who has returned from the post-mortem world to this world would definitely not count as resurrection. Nor would some internal experience, explicable in depth psychological terms, generate talk of resurrection.
(Catchpole, 2000, p.195)
Similarly, Tom Wright argues that “the ancient world as well as the modern knew the difference between visions and things that happen in the ‘real’ world”.70 Against this, Pieter Craffert argues that such approaches fail to understand the ways in which reality and consciousness are constructed differently in different cultures. In particular, visions (to be distinguished here from modern Western notions of “hallucination”) might well have been taken to be experiences of reality in the ancient Mediterranean world: “in a world where visionary perceptions are as real as other sensory perceptions, there is no doubt that what is seen, heard and felt in the visions are as real as what is experienced in waking consciousness” (Craffert, 2009, pp.146–147). It is not clear that Craffert’s argument finally succeeds. The “reality” of visions is one thing, but an empty tomb is quite another. The inclusion in the gospel narratives of references both to an empty tomb and to resurrection appearances suggests a more sophisticated argument than is explicable on the basis of a visionary “reality” alone.
Licona reviews six different hypotheses for the resurrection, including those of Goulder and Lüdemann, and finds the hypothesis of a bodily resurrection most convincing – thus eliminating all those hypotheses based upon hallucinations. Amongst his reasons for considering hallucinatory experiences as unlikely bases for the resurrection narratives, he gives more attention to the recent scientific literature on hallucinations than most other authors (albeit largely in footnotes, and relying on very few sources).71 In particular, he notes the rarity of multimodal hallucinations, and the extreme rarity of reliable accounts of group hallucinations.
On the former point, it is not clear that such experiences are so rare. Biblical narratives, later Christian mystical literature, and recent accounts of visionary experience are replete with multimodal experiences.72 On the latter point, however, it is clear that there is an important argument to be considered. Whilst collective hallucinations seem to be rare, they do apparently occur. Jake O’Connell (2009) describes a series of more or less well-documented cases in which groups of people appear to have shared visual religious experiences of an unusual (arguably hallucinatory) kind. However, he identifies a number of features of these experiences that appear to put them in a different category to the New Testament resurrection narratives. Amongst other things, people who shared these visions each saw them differently, and not everyone present reported seeing the vision. More importantly for the present purpose, O’Connell was able to identify no other examples of collective visions where the vision carried on a conversation with those present. He goes on to argue that an apparition that could carry on a group conversation “would thereby prove itself to be no hallucination”.73 Whether or not this is true would appear to depend upon the nature of the evidence available but, as we have seen, the nature of the New Testament resurrection narratives is such that we cannot confidently make such a refined analysis.
Perhaps a better and more critical psychological account of the resurrection appearances of Jesus to his disciples can still be written. However, it is also clear that the historical-critical method will never be able to produce the evidence that would be needed for such an account to be completely convincing in the light of modern psychological and phenomenological criteria. Firsthand accounts of the phenomenology are simply not available, and modern scientific criteria are anachronistic to the texts. Lüdemann is right to emphasise that it is the experience – and not the theology – that is presented as the primary evidence in the gospels, but it is presented on 1st-century, and not 21st-century, terms. Similarly, we might note, it is presented as narrative, and so must be interpreted in the first instance by literary and socio-rhetorical means.74
Kent may therefore be right to draw attention to the importance of myth. As discussed in Chapter 2, it does rather depend upon how one understands the concept of myth. Kent and Bultmann, amongst others, have in mind a view of myth as something which “didn’t happen” in some historical sense. However, such an understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient to an understanding of the essential nature of myth. If we take, for example, Dundes’ (1984) notion that myths are “sacred narratives”, explaining how things in the world came to be as they are, then I think that this is exactly what the gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus are.75 The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth makes sense of the world and, in particular, of the “Good Friday” experiences that Christians encounter. It provides hope. It does this through narratives that portray God as visible, audible, and tangible in the risen Jesus.
Voice hearing in the gospels
We can only speculate on what actual experiences of voice hearing, if any, lie behind the gospel texts. As narratives, they include accounts of a variety of events, some of which might be construed as incorporating voice hearing experiences. The voices – angelic, divine, and demonic – are heard at key junctures in the narrative, affirming and announcing the significance of the birth of Jesus, his identity as Son of God, and his resurrection from the dead. They are heard by Jesus himself, by the disciples, and (in some cases) by others too. Whilst John the Baptist appears at the outset as a prophet in the Hebrew tradition, and angelic messengers appear at various points to speak on behalf of God, the emphasis is not on God’s voice as heard through such messengers, but rather on Jesus himself as God’s son, towards whom these messengers point. The central voice – that of Jesus – is therefore not that of a disembodied or visionary voice, but rather that of a visible human speaker, who is bodily present. This voice, conveyed by the text, takes centre stage. Even the heavenly voice – at the baptism and transfiguration – serves primarily to affirm the identity of Jesus as Son of God. In an inverse fashion, the voice of Satan serves a similar function within the narrative. Questioning what has been said by the divine voice at Jesus’ baptism, but being out-manoeuvred by Jesus, it is eventually silenced and shown to be false.
The appearances of Jesus after the resurrection, where he speaks to the disciples, are uniquely ambiguous in form and uniquely important to theology. If they are taken to be historical manifestations of a bodily resurrection, then they are not psychologically instances of “voice hearing”, in the sense with which we are presently concerned. In this case they are voices like any other human voices, spoken by an embodied human speaker. On the other hand, if they are understood to be manifestations of a visionary kind, they still affirm the central place of Jesus within the gospel narratives. In a very real sense, it might be said, Jesus has the last word in the gospel narratives.76
Peter and Cornelius
In Acts 10, a narrative account is given of visionary experiences of a pious Roman centurion called Cornelius and the apostle Peter.77 Cornelius has a vision of an angel who calls his name and then tells him that his prayers have been heard by God and that he is to send for Peter. The following day, as the centurion’s slaves are approaching with the message that they have to convey to Peter, Peter has a vision of heaven being opened and a large sheet lowered which contains all kinds of animals. He hears a voice which says “Get up, Peter; kill and eat”,78 to which he responds, in accordance with his Jewish tradition: “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.”79 The voice then says to him again: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”80 All of this is repeated three times before the centurion’s messengers arrive, asking Peter to accompany them to their master’s house.81
The events as narrated subsequently have some significance within Acts in regard to the place of gentiles within the early Christian community. As scripture, this passage has influenced the Christian tradition regarding non-observance of traditional Jewish customs concerning which foods may or may not be eaten.82 By extrapolation it has also influenced Christian attitudes more widely towards Judaism and Jewish traditions in (what Christians would call) the Old Testament. However, there has been a critical view that the narrative is not historical, and in particular that Peter’s vision was devised by the author of Acts (generally thought to be Luke) in support of his contention of the legitimacy of the Christian mission to the gentiles.83 If this is correct, it reveals an interesting understanding of the significance of the visions and auditions that the story includes. Thus, for example, Haenchen comments:
Luke virtually excludes all human decision. Instead of the realization of the divine will in human decisions, through human decisions, he shows us a series of supernatural interventions in the dealings of men: the appearance of the angel, the vision of the animals, the prompting of the Spirit, the pouring out of the ecstatic pneum/a. As Luke presents them, these divine incursions have such compelling force that all doubt in the face of them must be stilled. They compellingly prove that God, not man, is at work. The presence of God may be directly ascertained.
(Haenchen, 1971, p.362)
Haenchen does not see this tendency as a good thing, and goes on to argue that it undermines the nature of true faith and makes human beings into mere puppets. It demonstrates a point of view – whether in the context of the 1st or the 21st century of the Common Era – that visions and voices must be miraculous events attributable to divine intervention. As Haenchen argues, this is problematic, and especially so (we might add) in the light of contemporary scientific awareness of the nature of the experience of hearing voices.
Peter is said to hear voices in two other places in the narrative of Acts (5:19–20 and 12:7–9), both in the context of miraculous escapes from prison facilitated by an angel. In the first instance he is not mentioned by name, but is implicitly included as one of the apostles, all of whom hear the voice. In the second instance, it is Peter alone who hears (and sees) the angel.
Luke has groups of people hearing an angelic or divine voice on at least six occasions in his gospel and Acts – the annunciation to the shepherds, the baptism of Jesus, the transfiguration, the encounter of the women with the angels in the resurrection narrative, the angelic freeing of the apostles from prison, and the conversion of Saul (see below).84 If the various resurrection encounters with Jesus are also to be included, then this would add two more instances.
Voices heard by individuals, where only one person hears the voice, are in comparison rare in Luke’s writings. Peter’s vision of the sheet lowered from heaven and Cornelius’s corresponding vision, although each representing a voice heard individually, still comprise parts of a story within which the narrative asserts that more than one person heard a voice, and that these voices were apparently from the same source. Similarly, the annunciations to Zechariah and to Mary (and to the shepherds) are all part of a larger story within which the narrative is constructed around the notion that the voice speaks to multiple people on the same topic in a coordinated way over a period of time. In contrast, an angel (or the devil) speaks to an individual, and no voice is heard by others, on only two occasions: the temptation of Jesus, and Peter’s second experience of release from prison by an angel.
The hearing of voices is not primarily an individual phenomenon in the Lukan narratives,85 and is usually associated with visionary experiences (that is, it is multimodal). However, it serves in the narrative of Acts to demonstrate that God “speaks” in the lives of individuals, groups of Christians, and the wider Christian community. In each case the voice serves to effect (or play a part in effecting) a change in direction – a change of understanding of Jewish food laws, a change of understanding of the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians, and (in Peter’s case) a change from imprisonment to freedom. All of these changes are, I think, indirectly, sequelae of the resurrection. Whilst visions and angelic appearances are not unknown in the Old Testament, they take on a new significance, a new authority, when embedded here in Luke’s account of what happens after the resurrection of Jesus.
Paul
According to Luke, Saul, a Pharisee known for his persecution of the early Christian church, was on his way to Damascus with a view to arresting anyone found following “the Way” and then bringing them back to Jerusalem.
Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” The men who were travelling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food he regained his strength.
(Acts 9:3–19)
This story86 must be one of the most famous conversion stories in the history of religious experience – and it revolves not around a sudden change of thought, but rather around the impact of a blinding light and an accompanying voice. It is arguably a call narrative rather than a conversion story, and it shows some similarities with the theophany in Isaiah 6 and other similar accounts of the call of the Hebrew prophets.87 The biographical and historical reliability of the account provided in Acts have been much debated.88 However, this has not inhibited speculation about the possible medical diagnoses – both of the eye condition (Bullock, 1978), and also of the possible cause of the visions and voices (Landsborough, 1987).89
In his correspondence with the Corinthian church, Paul refers to “visions and revelations” and to having heard things “that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat”.90 In his letter to the Galatians, he says in passing that he did not receive knowledge of the gospel through a human source, but through a “revelation of Jesus Christ”.91 Exactly how all of this relates to Luke’s account in Acts is not clear.
For Luke, who relates many conversion narratives in his gospel and in Acts, it would seem that it was important to include the conversion experience of a person who played a key part in establishing the mission of the early church to the Gentiles. Voice hearing plays a part in this story – but not so crucial a part that he is worried about changing the details between the three versions of the story that he tells. And, as is typical elsewhere in his writings, it is not only Paul who hears a voice.
For Paul himself, “visions and revelations”, which certainly do seem to include voices, and which draw upon his Jewish inheritance,92 have also been important. However, they are not so important that he feels happy to boast about them.93 He seems, rather, to fear that all of this might give the wrong impression. He knows that such things will gain the attention and respect of his readers, but he thinks that the key to understanding the nature of Christian faith is to be found elsewhere:
But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
(2 Corinthians 12:6–9)
It will be no surprise that the exact nature of the “thorn in the flesh” has also been the subject of much discussion, including various proposed medical diagnoses. And yet, this (along with voices and visions) is exactly the kind of thing that Paul is trying to take the focus away from. It is Christ’s power “made perfect in weakness” that he wishes attention to be devoted to. Voices (and visions) for Paul are of secondary importance, but where they are of importance they affirm the identity of Jesus, they affirm and effect a radical change in Paul’s understanding of his faith in God, and they affirm Paul’s relationship with Jesus.
The revelation to John
Revelation was probably written in or around the 95 ce.94 It is generally considered to be an example of apocalyptic literature, similar in genre to that of Daniel and Ezekiel in Hebrew scripture. It is the only extended apocalyptic writing included in the New Testament, although there is also a so called “synoptic apocalypse” included in Mark 13 (cf. Matthew 24 and Luke 21). Revelation shares important links with Daniel, with allusions being made to the latter within Revelation, and with a broadly similar use of symbolic language to interpret current political events.95 However, Revelation also incorporates elements of the genres of prophetic and epistolary literature.96 Beale has defined the apocalyptic-prophetic nature of Revelation as:
God’s revelatory interpretation (through visions and auditions) of his mysterious counsel about past, present, and future redemptive-eschatological history, and how the nature and operation of heaven relate to this. This revelation irrupts from the hidden, outer, heavenly dimension into the earthly and is given to a prophet (John), who is to write it down so that it will be communicated to the churches.
(Beale, 1999, p.38)
Although the book is traditionally ascribed to John the apostle, in fact we know very little about the author.97 The book may have been edited by more than one person, it might have been pseudonymous, or it may have been another John who actually wrote it. We do not know.98 The author, whoever he is, presents the book as an account of a visionary experience which begins with the hearing of a voice:
I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.” Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man,99 clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest.
(Revelation 1:11–13)
Some scholars believe that the book may in fact have been written down as a considered and planned attempt to write an apocalyptic work, and it does show at least some attempt to organise and structure the material in a coherent way.100 However, there is no good reason not to take the text for what it purports to be – a written account of a visionary experience. Christopher Rowland101 notes that actual visions may well have arisen as a result of meditation on scripture, and also be the subject of continued subsequent reflection. There is therefore good reason to believe that at least some of the visions in Revelation – but probably not all – are based upon authentic visionary experience.
Rowland102 also notes that an appeal to revelation received directly in this way can reflect a desire to eliminate uncertainty in the face of life’s complexity.
Apocalyptic may seem to pander to the desire for certainty and the unambiguous divine directive. Here after all is the voice from beyond which bursts like a flash of lightning into the greyness of our world and shows things up in their true colours. Temporising and uncertainty seem out of the question in the face of the crisis provoked by this irruption of clarity.
(Rowland, 1993, p.43)
Whether or not such appeals are actually made, Revelation hardly indulges them. As Rowland points out103 it offers unambiguous convictions about some things – notably about the central place of Jesus Christ in Christian faith – and it urges suspicion of the values of secular culture. It expects Christians to live distinctively in the light of these convictions. However, it does not prescribe the answers and its rich symbolism leaves plenty of scope for uncertainty and debate about interpretation.104
After the opening vision of the Son of Man, John is told what to write to each of the seven churches. In effect a letter appears to be dictated to each of them, and it is interesting to reflect on what has happened here. If we allow for a moment that John heard each of these letters dictated to him in his vision, word for word, it is hard to imagine (short of miraculous intervention) that he was able to remember each of them perfectly afterwards. But the words of the letters are presented very specifically as “the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands”.105 Understood simply as a literal account of a visionary experience, this is hard to reconcile.
As Beale indicates, the formula in Revelation 2:1 is recognisable as a form of words frequently used to introduce prophetic writings in Hebrew scripture.106 Similarly, when a warning is issued at the end of the book107 against adding to, or subtracting from, the words of the book, this might be understood to be not so much concerned with affirming an authoritative text word for word, as it is with warning against false teaching.108 In this respect, Revelation belongs to the genre of prophecy and emerges from a similar process of “translating” prophetic experience into prophetic writing as is observed in the books of written prophecy in Hebrew scripture. It is more concerned with the authentic prophetic message, we might say, than with either the original experience or the precise wording of the text.
Following the narrative of the dictation (if we may still call it that) of the seven letters, the focus of Revelation turns to heavenly events and becomes somewhat surreal. From this point on there has been much discussion and little agreement concerning the exact structure and subdivisions of the book. There is rich imagery and symbolism, drawing on Hebrew scripture109 and a series of events unfold in multiples of seven.110 Notably, there are seven seals which are broken by the Lamb,111 seven trumpets which are blown by angels, and seven bowls of the wrath of God which are poured out upon the earth by angels. There are thunder and lighting, earthquakes, huge hailstones, fire in a bottomless pit, plagues, a dragon, strange beasts, a great whore, a sea of glass and fire, and a lake of fire. There are angels in abundance, there are the armies of earth and heaven, and there are “those who have conquered the beast”. All in all, the imagery is vivid, colourful, and arresting, and the action is dramatic. Whilst there is much that is inappropriately referred to in our day as “awesome”, the acts and scenery of this book are indeed truly awesome.
Eventually, in Chapter 21, a new heaven and a new earth emerge in the wake of the destruction of all things, and a holy city, a new Jerusalem, comes down from heaven. John hears a loud voice from heaven, which says:
See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.112
In Revelation, John presents a narrative in which he is involved in rich visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and somatic perceptual experiences. This narrative is of a truly multimodal visionary experience, on a cosmic and heavenly stage. Insofar as voices are concerned, John is directly addressed in the narrative by the Son of Man and by angels, who command or question him, or explain what is happening. He is also, as it were, in the audience listening to a variety of heavenly voices. For example, in the theophany in chapter 4, he hears the four living creatures around the throne of God who without ceasing sing: “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”113And, in the same scene, he hears the 24 elders who sing: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”114 At one point, later in this theophany, John hears the singing of “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them”.115 Elsewhere, he hears the voices of the souls of the martyrs,116 a great multitude robed in white,117 an eagle,118 a voice from the altar,119 a voice from heaven,120 and the voice of a beast like a leopard speaking blasphemous words.121 He hears a voice from heaven that is at once like the sound of many waters, like the sound of loud thunder and like the sound of harpists playing.122 He hears the voices of many and various angels, he hears the kings of the earth lamenting the fall of Babylon,123 and he hears the voice of a great multitude praising God.124
John Sweet has suggested that the logic of Revelation is in fact more auditory than visual:
What John sees is again and again interpreted by what he hears; for example, the meaning of the Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, is given by the new song of the living creatures and elders [5:6–10]. The refrain of the letters to the churches is He who has an ear, let him hear. ‘Hearing’ opens up the whole realm of scripture, the words of God which demand man’s immediate response. ‘Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near’ [1:3].
(Sweet, 1990, p.17)
In the vein of this logic, Revelation, the last book of Christian scripture, brings the voice of the promise of Jesus to the final pages of the Bible, just as Genesis opens it with the creative voice of Elohim (God). The voice of Jesus in Revelation, no less than the voice of Elohim in Genesis, is a heavenly voice.
Voice hearing in the New Testament
So varied are the examples surveyed in this chapter that it is impossible to make any generalisations about the place of voice hearing in the New Testament. In most places the historical and psychological basis of the texts is open to question, and we do not have any direct access to the human experiences underlying the texts. There is considerable variation as to the amount and quality of the evidence that we do have. It is clear that authors have used various literary devices appropriate to their theological purpose, and in some cases these may well involve metaphorical or reconstructed (or perhaps even fictional) “voices”; in others, they clearly purport to present historical voices verbatim.
On the one hand, then, unqualified and confident listing of Jesus and St Paul amongst “famous voice hearers” is both premature and naïve. There is every reason to emphasise doubt as to whether Jesus, Paul, Peter, or any other New Testament character, “heard voices” in any historical or psychological sense. We simply cannot know beyond doubt what their experiences actually were. The evidence does not allow scientific certainty. On the other hand, confident assertions that none of these figures heard voices – in the sense of the contemporary phenomenon that we now identify as voice hearing – would also be going beyond the evidence. The experiences of Paul – and even of Jesus – could reasonably be construed as psychologically very similar to those of contemporary voice hearers.
Notwithstanding the attention of this chapter to some texts within which voices play a very significant part, it might be argued that the hearing of voices is not overall an important theme in the New Testament according to any of the accounts in which we are interested – historically, theologically, psychologically, or narratively. Leaving aside the unique place of the voices associated with the resurrection appearances of Jesus, most of the central teaching of the gospels is to be found on the lips of Jesus himself, a very visible and bodily present human speaker. It is the authorial (or at least editorial) voice of the evangelists which bequeaths to us the passion narratives. Most of the action in Acts does not depend upon the hearing of voices. Voices do not play a major part in the Pauline epistles. In the prologue to John’s gospel, as set out in the introduction to this chapter, a strong theological case is presented for Jesus himself as taking on the identity of the divine “Word”. The phenomenon of voice hearing – if it is in evidence at all – is thus, at best, marginal.
On the other hand, voice hearing in the New Testament, if and where it may be identified, usually carries Christological content.125 Voices, directly or indirectly, affirm the unique status of Jesus and thus preclude equivalent or greater revelatory significance to other voices or persons. “Voice hearing” (if it may be called that) in the New Testament is not insignificant. Whereas the voice of God might be said to fade out in Hebrew scripture, the New Testament concludes with an apocalyptic narrative within which divine and angelic voices play a highly significant part. Voices reappear in the New Testament in a significant, dramatic, and eventually apocalyptic, fashion.
Whilst the voice of Jesus, especially as it is heard in the gospel texts, is central to the New Testament (and to Christian tradition), other voices – mostly in a visionary context – are not insignificant within the narratives of the gospels and Acts. Historical-critical scholarship may well raise doubt about how these voices should be understood psychobiographically, but their presence in the canon, and in tradition, is theologically significant and, as we shall see in the next two chapters, sets the scene for later Christian voice-hearing experiences.
