Lüdemann is the champion of this view, but what about Dale Allison, who argues more carefully that visionary experiences could underlie the tradition without being ordinary hallucinations?

Allison is the most careful skeptical treatment, and his conclusion is instructive. After weighing the visionary explanations at length, he finds the evidence for the empty tomb and the appearances stronger than most skeptics allow and declines to say what happened. That agnostic verdict from a leading historian is itself an argument against confident naturalistic dismissal. It also supports the modest claim made here: among the explanations on offer, the resurrection is the one that accounts for the most data at once.