THINK ABOUT THIS: Who Got Jesus’ Dead Body?
There are a thousand ways to approach a conversation about Jesus Christ, but in the final analysis, it all comes down to one crucial question — Why was His grave empty on the third day after His crucifixion and burial?
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
The answer of the Gospels is, of course, that, just as He predicted before the crucifixion would be the case, Jesus was resurrected from the grave, appeared in person to the disciples and many others in Jerusalem and in Galilee before ascending into Heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father. And He is coming back some day, hopefully soon.
Skeptics of the resurrection have for centuries sought to offer a credible alternative explanation for the empty tomb. Islamists, for example, have long claimed that Jesus was not crucified, that the Romans mistakenly nailed the wrong guy to the cross. No serious New Testament scholar, either from among the skeptics or the believers, finds that explanation remotely persuasive.
The key fact for this discussion is that among New Testament scholars, three-fourths of the skeptics and virtually all of the believers agree the tomb was empty on Easter morning when the women arrived expecting to anoint His body and complete the burial preparation. The disagreements revolve around the question that headlines this post.
If Jesus was not resurrected but the tomb was empty, then somebody must have taken His corpse. There are four conceivably reasonable answers. Let’s examine each in turn with an eye on determining if any of them are as reasonable an explanation, given the evidence, as the Gospels provide.
First, Jesus’ enemies knew He had predicted He would be raised from the dead, so they went to Pilate, the Roman authority in Jerusalem, reminded him of Jesus’ prediction and asked for a guard at the tomb. Pilate consented and the guard was most likely a unit of the Roman Legion detachment.
Now Jesus’ enemies in the Sanhedrin were wily political operators, so it’s possible they wanted the guards as cover for their own plan to take Jesus’ body, hide it until the disciples began claiming the Resurrection had occurred, and then roll the rotting corpse down Jerusalem’s Main Street. That would have been the end of Christianity.
Photo by Pisit Heng on Unsplash
That scenario, however, never unfolded, so Jesus’ enemies must not have stolen the body. That leads us to the second possible answer: What about Jesus’ friends, the disciples and the other followers?
Maybe they stole the body and planned to point to the empty tomb as proof of the Resurrection, which would then become their springboard to power and influence leading the new spiritual movement.
But, given what we know, does that possibility make sense? I suggest the evidence simply doesn’t support the claim for several reasons. First, the disciples all scattered in fear when Jesus was arrested. They cowered in fear, terrified that they would be next in line to be nailed to a Roman cross.
Is it likely then that this rag-tag group of cowards, none of whom is known to have any military training or experience, somehow found the courage and tactical planning ability the day/night after the burial to organize a successful assault on the Roman guards, overcome them, break the Roman seal on the tomb — the penalty for which was death — steal the body and hide it so effectively that it would never be found?
I would suggest the Keystone Cops were more likely to have located, assaulted and killed Osama bin Laden than the disciples were to pull off such a stunning maneuver. We can reasonably eliminate this second potential alternative explanation for the empty tomb.
The third possibility is that grave robbers did it. Joseph of Arimathea was known to be a rich man and it was only rich men who were able to afford to be buried in a grave carved out of a rock.
So perhaps a group of grave robbers assumed that, given Joseph’s wealth, maybe he deposited some gold or silver or other valuables in the grave with Jesus, thus making it an attractive target, assuming the Roman Guards could be dealt with.
Screenshot from YouTube.
But, even assuming they did overcome the Roman Guards and bust open the tomb to find said valuables, why would they also steal the body? The body was worthless to them and indeed, since the Romans crucified Jesus, taking his corpse risked incurring Pilate’s lethal wrath. Out goes the grave robber possibility.
We are left then with one other possible alternative explanation for the empty tomb — Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross, He passed out, was wrapped in an estimated 120 pounds of burial linen and spices, but then was revived by the coolness inside the tomb.
From there, despite His grievous wounds and substantial loss of blood, He somehow found the strength to reopen the grave from the inside, overcome the guards, and slip away, never to be seen again because He stole away to India, or Japan, or perhaps the North American Indians.
No medical expert can be found who will support the claim anybody could survive the horrors of lashing and crucifixion, retain sufficient strength to overcome a Roman Guard unit that could have as many as 12 well-armed, highly trained soldiers and then get out of Jerusalem totally unseen and travel to parts unknown.
So what are we left with? We still have an empty tomb, plus we have solid evidentiary and logical reasons to reject the four most commonly cited alternatives to the Gospels’ claim that Jesus tomb was empty because He was resurrected, just as He said He would be.
If Jesus is alive, that changes everything and it means every man and woman must decide what they will do with what He said at John 6:44:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”
The fact you have read this far may well be evidence that He is drawing you to Jesus to be your savior. Want to talk about it? mark.tapscott@hillfaith.org. Absolutely confidential, no judgement, and no pressure. It’s entirely your decision. God bless.
FOR FURTHER READING:
Evidence That Demands A Verdict, Josh and Sean McDowell.
The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Dr. Gary Habermas and Michael Licona.
God’s Crime Scene, J. Warner Wallace.
FOR FURTHER VIEWING:
Did the Disciples Hallucinate the Resurrection?, Jimmy Wallace
Four Proofs of the Resurrection, Lee Strobel
William Lane Craig Debates Ben Shapiro on the Resurrection of Jesus.
The Impressive Training and Recruitment of Rome’s Legions, Filaxim Historia
Actually, I think the most common opposition to the resurrection is that the whole death, burial and resurrection never happened, the story was all fabricated and the published in the gospels. My answer to that thinking is that the disciples would all have known that this was a ruse and then died for the lie, not likely that men will die to protect a lie. Also, a lie will not continue for over 2000 years with many believers. There certainly are other reasons.
I think the “the disciples stole the body and hid it” hypothesis is disproved by their behavior. The people who ran away in fear of the Romans aren’t likely to have preached the resurrection until they were hauled off and executed. The stoning of Stephen would have put an end to the movement if so.
People die for lies all the time. Ask the followers of Jim Jones, or the Heaven’s Gate cult, or any Islamic suicide bomber. If the apostles actually believed the lie, they might very well die for it.
There are no witnesses to the Resurrection. None of the guards at the tomb (and it’s unclear from the Greek whether the guards were Jews posted by the Sanhedrin or a Roman cohort) are recorded as having converted. The legend that the Roman soldier Longinus converted is first recorded six centuries after the Resurrection. Thus, the only people who COULD have seen the Resurrection don’t appear by that experience to have been influenced to become Christians.
The Jewish objection to Jesus is that the Old Testament prophecies a Messiah, but not a Messiah who shows up twice (Christians are still waiting on the Messiah’s return – Jews consider that very weird).
The only person who informs us that this is a Resurrection is Jesus Himself. By every recorded witness testimony, He was dead on the cross. He was buried in a rock tomb. The tomb was guarded. The next day, the tomb’s stone was rolled away and it was empty, apart from burial cloths. But there is no witness accounts of the actual Resurrection, nor are any of the people who were in a position to see the actual Resurrection recorded as either (a) having actually witnessed it or (b) having been converted by what they were able to witness.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen, but what is the evidence for faith? According to St. Paul, the Resurrection is the evidence for Faith. If He is not risen from the dead, we are still in our sins, and the most foolish of men to boot. But, the Resurrection was not seen.
So, according to Scripture, the Resurrection is the evidence for Faith, and Faith is the evidence for the Resurrection. Which is circular logic, and does nothing to convince anyone who buys into Aristotelian logic.
Your essay does not address that problem.
Very interesting analysis, thanks for taking the time to write and post it, Steve. Question: Since Pilate condemned Jesus and it was his Legionaries that crucified Jesus. isn’t it far more likely that Pilate would have assigned a Roman unit known as a Kustodian, rather than relying upon the Jewish Temple police?
You could make that argument. Or you could make the argument that Pilate said, “Pilate said to them, “You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can.” Did he mean “you have my guard” or “you have your own Temple guards”? It’s impossible to tell from the context.
And ultimately, exactly who made up the guard really isn’t relevant. The fact is, whoever it was, as far as we know, no one in that unit converted. Whatever they saw that not made no significant impression on them. So, either they saw nothing, or what they saw was not very impressive from their point of view.
As I’ve pointed out to you before, the pagans didn’t convert due to any of the arguments you bring forward. You have to ask yourself why the pagans converted. What did the pagans see that caused them to say, “Yeah, you know what, I should become a Christian”?
I’ve pointed out the answer to you before, but you apparently didn’t pay any attention to it. So this time, I won’t give you the answer. I’ll let you figure it out. Then, when you have, and when you compare the cultures of pagan Rome to 21st-century America, maybe you can see why your essay is not particularly relevant to anyone outside the choir loft.
I take it that you place yourself outside the choir loft. Why, then, do you waste your time on this discussion?
And you clearly consider it a waste of time, given your dismissive final paragraph. Other people are following and participating in this conversation, who may be unaware of what compelling answer you provided to Mark. Why deprive us of your insights, just so you can fire off a zinger at Mark?
You make much of the apparent lack of stories about the guards converting. In three of the four Gospels, they don’t appear at all around the empty tomb. In John, we are told that, at the opening of the tomb, the guards became “as dead men”. Especially if they were Roman guards, they would have been ignorant of Jewish teachings on the Messiah, and would have had no context to help them understand what was happening. If they lost consciousness, they would have been unaware of what was happening. In any event, they disappear from the story at this point. One cannot conclude that this means none of them came to believe. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Finally, you ask why pagans (by which I believe you mean non-Jews) converted. The many miracles performed by the disciples drew people who had no knowledge of Jewish teachings.
Steve, first, is the fact there is no presently known evidence of any of the guards becoming followers of the resurrected Jesus proof that none did?
Second, I hope you will forgive my lapse of memory and I further hope that in your forgiveness you will do me the blessing of repeating your answer so that I can consider and respond to it here.
What would Jesus do? Does this not sound like pharisaical religiosity and scrupulosity of the kind he eschewed? How does this ultra-literal exegesis foster one’s love of God and neighbor?
Try reading The Jesus Hoax by Professor David Skirbina. Paul and friends created a hoax to strike back at the hated Roman Empire. Best debunking of the myth of Christianity, and by extension, the entire bible itself. As to the writers of the 4 gospels, please see page 94 and forward.
The success of this plot led to the eventual fall of the Roman Empire as the new religion corrupted Roman society. Instead of an age of science and learning, we got the dark ages, the so-called Age of Faith.
Skirbana sounds like a rehash of Gibbon. How does Skirbana claim Paul convinced the disciples (who claimed two years prior to the Damascus road encounter to have seen and talked with the risen Christ) that the resurrection was a hoax and to become part of the conspiracy against Rome?
Mr. Parker, that argument doesn’t fly. It’s just a re-hash of the “science vs religion” conspiracy plot put forward by Andrew Dickson White and Edward Gibbon before him.
There were no Dark Ages, unless none instituted by Christians. The early medieval period saw the introduction of three-crop rotation, the horse collar and the heavy plow. These developments between 500 and 1000 AD were absolutely foundational to the blossoming of invention and culture that followed in the High Middle Ages.
You can’t very well blame Christians for the rampaging Vikings or the rise of Islam. That’s like blaming Florida for getting hit by hurricanes. It’s silly.
You make much of the Roman Guards issue. Luring them away would have been simple, given Jesus’s many female followers. Once that was done, absconding with the body would be relatively simple. Burial of the body in a pauper’s grave or within the grounds of a private home would be simple enough. The fewer involved in the transfer/reinternment of the body, the more likely that the secret would remain secret.
As I said to TexasDude, I encourage you to check out “The Military Discipline of the Romans From the Founding of the City to the Close of the Republic.” Given the strictness of the Legions, such scenarios are highly unlikely.
And what evidence do you have that the guards at the tomb were not the Sanhedrin’s own Temple Guards?
The Romans would not likely make the defense of Rome’s honor dependent upon the whims of the leaders of a notoriously rebellious province like Judea. Even if we stipulate that it was a Temple guard, there is no reason to assume the disciples would be assured of overcoming or fooling them.
My great-aunt, Janet Caldwell, wrote a book years ago called “Jesus: a Psychobiography and Medical Evaluation” that is basically the fourth alternative described above, that Jesus did not die on the cross but went into a coma, and that the piercing of his side with a soldier’s spear actually relieved a build-up of pressure on his internal organs.
My great-aunt is no longer on this earth, so I guess she knows by now whether she was correct.
Corruption among the guards is a possibility. Pay them off and take the body.
Lax guarding might be also an explanation. The guards weren’t there.
It’s a belief, granted as this shows, a belief that has a bit more substance than many other religions.
TexasDude, check out “The Military Discipline of the Romans From the Founding of the City to the Close of the Republic.” Given the strictness of the Legions, such scenarios are highly unlikely.
J. Warner Wallace deals with these arguments against the resurrection in his videos on Cold Case Christianity. The one argument regarding Christ actually not having died but rather “swooned” and then revived fails to consider the characteristics of death. Next to no one today deals with the responsibility of preparing a body for burial. In that era families HAD to do it. Three physical realities of a dead body were well understood and hard to mistake: rigor mortis (stiffened muscles), livor mortis (blood pooling because of gravity), and algor mortis (the body cooling to room temperature). Families had little trouble accurately diagnosing a corpse just as Dr. McCoy would as he informed Captain Kirk- “He’s dead, Jim”
Who rolled away the stone?
Check out “Who Moved The Stone” by Frank Morrison.
If the perpetrators of the hoax–presumably Peter, Paul, Jesus’ kinsmen, etc.–were willing to die for the new faith (even though, as hoaxers, they knew it was all hogwash), what possible account explains that? Yes, people die for lies all the time, but they don’t usually die for lies that THEY made up. This theory argues that they were willing to go the gates of death and beyond to perpetuate their newly hatched hoax.
Why?
As St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (or most pitiable). In other words, if what we say is not true, and yet we believe it, we are without hope and without anything.
Obviously, Paul did not believe that, because as he said of himself, he had run the race, he had kept the faith till the end. And now, he says, “Already I am poured out like a drink offering upon the altar, and the time of my departure is at hand.”
And if Paul knew the Resurrection had been faked, he would have been a bald-faced liar. Would he have endured beatings, imprisonment, lashings, stoning, hunger, cold and the constant threat of assassination had he known the Resurrection had not actually happened? I don’t think so.
My approach looks at the myth as it grows, from the theosophical writings of Paul, to the later additions of mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Reality tends to progress from detail to meaning. Myth starts off with meaning, and detail is added over time to answer questions. Paul’s meaning was given detail by Mark and Acts, and later hucksters invented an empty tomb for religious fleecing of pilgrims.
That’s quite a collection of assumptions you got there, Donald! I take it you assume Paul invented the Resurrection myth, which would mean he knew it was a hoax. But he also endured years of abuse, persecution, stonings, beatings, imprisonment, hunger and poverty. Why would he have endured such suffering for so long for something he knew to be a hoax?
What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. That’s probably so even more for fibs, half-truths and wishful thinking than for outright lies. They all take on lives of their own.
Was Paul ferociously motivated? Obviously. Is that necessarily a slam-dunk rebuttal? Maybe not.
Is it also obligatory to believe in a literal Exodus? Why or why not?
Whether and how you accept Scripture is your choice.
Regarding the fate of Paul, please see page 38 in Hoax. Skrbina, if I’m reading him correctly, says that it wasn’t until much later that the stories of Paul’s execution begin to appear. I don’t beleive that there is any outside corroboration of Paul’s sufferings.
Skirbina believes that all of the stories of the apostles, resurrection, were added to the narrative over time by Paul and his cabal, including later writers.
As to Gibbon, guilty. Gibbon was one of the greatest writers of the Enlightenment, and the debunking of his epic Decline has hit a lot of potholes along the way. My Roman history professor, now long dead, was convinced that if Christianity had not arisen, we would have had interstellar travel by the 1500s, if not sooner.
Skirbina is welcome to believe whatever he chooses, but he’s not entitled to inventing his own set of alleged facts. I encourage you to to give a hearing to Dr. Gary Habermas’ “The Minimal Facts Argument for the Resurrection,” which is based upon the key facts about the event that virtually all scholars of whatever perspective agree upon. Here’s the link: https://www.hillfaith.org/agnosticism/the-minimal-facts-evidence-for-the-truth-of-jesus-resurrection/
To clarify the question and your reply, you affirm that every Christian has that freedom? That salvation does not depend on adopting a strictly literal exegesis of the Old and New Testaments? I ask, respectfully, because you seem to put a great deal of energy into advocating the literal mode.
Its veracity doesn’t depend in any way upon whether or not I believe Scripture, but my answer to your question is this: Romans 10:9 – ” If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Very well. Thankfully, that leaves us plenty of room for interpretation.