Private vs. public religious experience: Brian Simmons's experiences are private; Jesus's resurrection appearances were witnessed by many simultaneously.

Simmons reports only privately witnessed experiences. The resurrection appearances of Jesus were corporate, multimodal experiences involving many individuals at once. Even secular historians acknowledge that the disciples experienced something external that made them believe Jesus rose. Hallucination theories fail because the experiences were group events and the profiles of the witnesses (including Paul and James, who were hostile) do not match grief-induced hallucination patterns.