Christian apologist Cameron Bertuzzi is a busy beaver. On January 30, 2025, he posted a video titled, “Millions Saw This Miracle — Why Do Christians Ignore It?”, in which he discussed an alleged series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Zeitoun, a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, which were witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people (including Christians and non-Christians alike) in the late 1960’s. Now, less than a week later, he has put up a new video, titled, “The Best Evidence for Christianity… Isn’t in the Bible?!”, in which he argues that the evidence for Christianity based on the Marian apparitions at Zeitoun is stronger than the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus from the New Testament, and challenging Protestants to face up to this fact:
Readers who watch the first six minutes of the video will get the gist of it. Later in the video, Bertuzzi rebuts Protestant arguments that the apparitions might have been demonic in origin.
In response to Bertuzzi’s latest video, I posted the following message:
Hi Cameron. You really need to read Brian Dunning’s article, “Illuminating Our Lady of Zeitoun” (Skeptoid.com, podcast #766, February 9, 2021 at https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4766 ), debunking the Marian apparitions at Zeitoun. Allow me to quote a few brief excerpts:
“…The apparitions took place from 1968 to 1971, so hopefully there is some video or 16mm film, especially given that thousands of people are said to have gathered nightly in hopes of catching a glimpse. Surprisingly, neither exists — could it be nobody thought to film such a firmament-rending event? There are, however, some photographs.
“…What you’ll immediately see is that none appear to actually be photographs; they are illustrations, in some cases composited or superimpositioned with photographs. Read about some of them and you’ll discover that most are acknowledged illustrations — many of those you’ll find were created at the time for sale by street vendors during the events…
“…Crucially, this entire event took place shortly after Egypt’s defeat in the Six Day War, which resulted in great public despair and anxiety…
“This was the setting when Cynthia Nelson, then a professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo, heard about the apparition from her students and spent the next five months studying the phenomenon… Nelson spent may evenings there herself, and on several occasions she saw what appeared to be flashes of light on the church’s domes, which to her looked similar to headlights. Every time the slightest reflection would appear, the crowd would swell in cheers and gasps of awe, for there was no doubt in their minds that they were seeing the Virgin Mary.”
You can read Cynthia Nelson’s article, (“The Virgin of Zeitoun,” Worldview, 1 Sep. 1973, Volume 16, Number 9: 5-11) online at https://carnegiecouncil-media.storage.googleapis.com/files/v16_i009_a003.pdf . Here is an excerpt of Nelson’s field notes relating to an apparition she witnessed, in late April of 1968:
“Talking with a woman in her late fifties, the daughter of a very famous Cairo surgeon, I learned that her own daughter, an honor student in chemistry at Cairo University, who had seen the Virgin on April 12, insisted that her mother accompany her again to Zeitoun. She described her experience: “She was like a statue, hands folded in front, head veiled and bent. She rose up in the sky completely and was illuminated. I first saw the halo, then I saw the Virgin completely. She came down between the palm tree and the dome on this side street here.” As we were talking, the crowd began pointing to the palm tree and exclaiming “It’s the Virgin-she looks like a nun, and she is swaying to and fro as if she were blessing us!”
“When I looked to where the crowds were pointing I, too, thought I saw a light through the branches of the trees, and as I tried to picture a nunlike figure in those branches, I could trace the outline of a figure. Rut as I thought to myself that this is just an illusion of the light reflecting through the branches, the image of the nun would leave my field of vision. Still, there was no doubt in my mind that there was a light and that if I looked for the image it would come into focus. I immediately “explained” this perceptual experience as an illusion caused by reflected light. But the source of the light was a mystery, for the streetlights had been disconnected all around the church for several days. And within another week all the trees around the church would be cut. The woman beside me was convinced it was the Virgin, which reveals once again that what the eye sees is the consequence not so much of psychological processes but of intellectual, emotional and ideational concerns.”
Here is an excerpt of Nelson’s field notes relating to another apparition that took place on June 1, 1968:
“I arrived at Zeitoun at 10:00 P.M. and stayed until 2:00 A.M., accompanied by three Egyptian woman friends, two Muslims and a Copt. There were intermittent flashes of light – perhaps headlights, I inquired? I was told by the crowd that for the past two weeks there had been no buses or cars allowed near the area. The crowd’s response to these flashes of light was electric. They clapped and shouted “There She is! There She is!””
Nelson also describes how a Muslim woman she spoke to, who was a poet and wife of a university mathematics professor, who had seen the apparition at Zeitoun, mentioned that Muslims also believe in the Virgin Mary: “We Muslims believe that the Virgin is in fact a Muslim.” Hence the apparitions cannot be invoked to prove the truth of Christianity over Islam. Nelson also quotes what the Coptic Patriarch Pope Shenouda III had to say on the subject in a 1972 speech commemorating the fourth anniversary of the apparitions, in which he disavowed any sectarian appeals to the apparitions as a support for their beliefs: “Our revolution has forbidden monopoly, therefore we shall not monopolize the Virgin.”
You mentioned incense in your video. However, Nelson describes how “Vendors were selling incense as haraka (blessing)” near the scene of the apparitions. Could some spectators have bought some and then burned it reverently while the apparitions were taking place? That sounds quite plausible to me. And one of your commenters (see below) described how he spontaneously smelled incense while listening to your video. Olfactory hallucinations can and do occur: I’ve had them myself.
To sum up: the crowd saw some mysterious lights and many of them conjured up an image of the Virgin Mary in their minds. Not all of the people in the crowd saw the same thing, as you’ll notice from reading Nelson’s article. The photos are worthless, as their provenance is unknown and their veracity is contested. There is no film footage of the apparitions, and no photographer was up on the roof when the apparitions took place. Some people smelled incense; others did not. Finally, the Marian apparitions may have been triggered by the fact that Egypt had just suffered a humiliating military defeat, triggering a sense of national crisis, coupled with prophecies of an upcoming appearance of the Virgin Mary that were circulating in the Copt community beforehand (see Nelson’s article).
Given the points made above, it would be unwise in the extreme to use these apparitions as a proof of Christianity. As to whether the evidence for Zeitoun is stronger than the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus: I think you’re aware that there are problems with both the maximalist” argument and the “minimal facts” argument for the Resurrection: the former appeals to questionable premises which most Biblical scholars doubt or reject (such as the claim that the Gospels are early documents, or the claim that the apostles had extended conversations with the risen Jesus and touched him and ate with him), while the latter establishes only a supernatural apparition of Jesus at the very most, and not a physical resurrection. You should also read Ryan Turner’s article, “An Analysis of the Pre-Pauline Creed in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11″ (Christian Apologetics Research Ministry,” October 1, 2009, at https://carm.org/evidence-and-answers/an-analysis-of-the-pre-pauline-creed-in-1-corinthians-151-11/ ) in which he acknowledges that according to most Biblical scholars, the original pre-Pauline creed contained only an appearance of Jesus to Cephas and to the Twelve. (The rest was added later.) Moreover, the creed does not say whether Jesus appeared to the Twelve simultaneously, which means Christians cannot appeal to the unlikelihood of mass hallucinations. In the end, the Resurrection of Jesus has to be taken on faith. Cheers.
What do readers make of Marian apparitions, such as Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje and Zeitoun? Over to you.
P.S. My response to Bertuzzi seems to have “disappeared” already. That was quick!