Stolen body hypothesis
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The stolen body hypothesis posits that the body of
The hypothesis has existed since the days of Early Christianity; it is discussed in the Gospel of Matthew, generally agreed to have been written between AD 70 and 100. Matthew's gospel raises the hypothesis only to refute it; according to it, the claim that the body was stolen is a lie spread by the High Priests of Israel.
Historicity and gospel account
The primary sources of details about Jesus are the Gospels. Roman records provide less information – there is no extant contemporary record of the execution of Jesus, for example, not that such a thing would be expected, and thus no details about what was done with the body afterward. As such, accounts of the days between Jesus's execution and the discovery of the empty tomb are almost exclusively based on the Gospel accounts and knowledge of society at the time, and it is difficult to say more than scenarios such as the stolen body hypothesis are "plausible" or "unlikely," rather than "proven" or "disproven".[1]
According to the
The Gospel of Matthew includes a distinct account of the period between Jesus's death and the discovery of the empty tomb not in the other gospels, and directly addresses skepticism about the resurrection. In Matthew's account, the chief priests and the Pharisees know of prophecies that Jesus will return in three days, and fear that his disciples will steal the body to make it appear that he has been resurrected. They ask Pilate to secure the tomb, and Pilate sends a guard to watch the tomb. When Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb, unlike the accounts in the other gospels, there is an earthquake and the tomb rolls open in front of her. An angel appears and scares away the guards, and the empty tomb is revealed. When the guards report this to the chief priests, the priests bribe the guards to lie about the events:
...some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, telling them, "You must say, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.' If this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.
— Matthew 28:11–15 (NRSV)
This is the chief reference to the stolen body hypothesis in the New Testament.
Potential culprits
The disciples
According to this version of the stolen body hypothesis, some of the disciples stole away Jesus's body. Potential reasons include wishing to bury Jesus themselves; believing that Jesus would soon return and wanting his body in their possession; a "pious deceit" to restore Jesus's good name after being crucified as a criminal; or an outright plot to fake a resurrection.
A Jewish anti-Christian work dating from the 5th-century, the
Later works suggesting this include some of the "form critics" and the predecessors in Germany. One early example is Hermann Samuel Reimarus, who wrote in the 1700s. According to Reimarus, Jesus himself never imagined a religion like Christianity, and both he and his followers had been revolutionaries working for an earthly Kingdom of God after an overthrow of Roman rule. After Jesus's death, his devastated followers who had expected important roles in a coming government still wished to wield power, and transformed Jesus's political message into a spiritual one. In order for the switch in focus to work, they stole the body and left an empty tomb so that they could be respected leaders of a new religion, chosen by a resurrected prophet.[6]
Sincerity of the disciples
Christian apologists find the idea that the disciples stole the body unconvincing. Both
"It is difficult to accuse these sources, or the first believers, of deliberate fraud. A plot to foster belief in the Resurrection would probably have resulted in a more consistent story. Instead, there seems to have been a competition: 'I saw him,' 'so did I,' 'the women saw him first,' 'no, I did; they didn't see him at all,' and so on. Moreover, some of the witnesses of the Resurrection would give their lives for their belief. This also makes fraud unlikely."[8]
Graverobbers
Jewish leadership
Historian Charles Freeman posits that Caiaphas and members of the Sanhedrin removed Jesus's body to stave off possible civil disorder from Jesus's followers. By emptying the tomb, the Sanhedrin hoped to prevent it from becoming a shrine. Also, he noted that the gospels of Matthew and Mark both record that one or more young men (or angels) dressed in white appeared to the myrrhbearers and told them to seek Jesus in Galilee. Freeman argued that these young men or angels could have been priests from the Temple in Jerusalem, as their Gospel description matches that of temple priests (white clothes). By encouraging Jesus's followers to return to Galilee, then, the priests were trying to get them to leave Jerusalem and avoid unrest.[16]
Jesus's family, or unknown thieves
According to this version of the stolen body hypothesis, there was no conspiracy; Jesus's body was moved from the tomb for unknown or irrelevant reasons. The apostles then found an empty tomb and became genuinely convinced that Jesus had been resurrected, which would explain their later fervor in the spread of Christianity. Author and
Another possibility, if a rather bizarre one, is the
Other issues
The guard at the tomb
According to the Gospel of Matthew, a guard was sent to the tomb: "Pilate said to them, 'You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.' So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone." (Matthew 27:65–66) It is unclear whether Roman soldiers were used, or if the priests were to use their own temple guard. Nevertheless, Christian tradition has generally claimed that Roman guards were used. Apologists consider it implausible that grave robbers would risk robbing a guarded tomb when surely many unguarded ones existed. Furthermore, while traditionally depicted as two guards, Matthew does not specify how many there were; since "some" guards report the tale to the chief priests, it's plausible to assume there may have been more than two, which would render a raid even chancier. Apologists also doubt that the disciples could possibly have sneaked past a Roman guard at a sealed tomb, and that attacking the guards would be even more implausible. In response, it could be hypothesized that the guard was not on duty at night, and thus the thieves would be able to have struck then. A bribe to the soldiers is also possible, although most of the disciples were of modest means.
Alternatively, the entire account of the guard and the chief priests can be discounted as likely to be an ahistorical addition written by Matthew to make the stolen body hypothesis appear implausible. Among scholars, it "is widely regarded as an apologetic legend";[21] L. Michael White and Helmut Koester argue the story was probably added as an attempt to refute the Jewish claims that the disciples stole the body which were circulating at the time.[22][23] Atheist and historian Richard Carrier writes:
The authors create a rhetorical means of putting the theft story into question by inventing guards on the tomb ... it is most suspicious that the other gospel accounts omit any mention of a guard, even when Mary visits the tomb (compare Matthew 28:1-15 with Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-12, and John 20:1-9), and also do not mention the theft story—this claim is not even reported in Acts, where a lot of hostile Jewish attacks on the church are recorded, yet somehow this one fails to be mentioned. Neither Peter nor Paul mention either fact, either, even though their letters predate the gospels by decades. Worse, Matthew's account involves reporting privileged conversations between priests and Pilate, and then secret ones between priests and guards that no Christian could have known about (27.62-65, 28.11-15). This is always a very suspicious sign of fiction... (Matthew) had the motive to make it up, to answer the objections of later skeptics (just like the Thomas story in John), and the story looks like an invention, because it narrates events that could not be known by the author.[24]
Christian apologist William Lane Craig considers the historicity of the guards plausible, although he suspects it was more likely Jewish temple guards, especially considering the chief priests' promises to keep them "out of trouble" would mean little to Roman soldiers who might be executed for claiming to have slept on duty.[21] The best objection to Matthew's version, to Craig, is that Matthew's account "presupposes not only that Jesus predicted his resurrection in three days, but also that the Jews understood this clearly while the disciples remained in ignorance."[21] While the gospel accounts give good reason to believe that the disciples would not understand the resurrection until it happened, Craig grants that it is indeed harder to explain the chief priest's actions, although far from impossible – perhaps it was simply an attempt to ensure no trouble started. In favor of the existence of the guards being historical, however, Craig notes that the non-canonical Gospel of Peter also includes a story of guards being placed at the tomb, yet one that is quite different, suggesting that the guards are less likely to have been invented entirely by Matthew. Additionally, Matthew's account isn't as foolproof as an invented or exaggerated account could be – the Gospel of Peter has an explicitly Roman guard guarding the tomb sent immediately on Good Friday (rather than Matthew's Saturday), the tomb is sealed seven times, and the Jewish elders keep watch the entire time. On Easter Sunday, Jesus rises, flanked by two angels, in front of the Jews and a crowd from Jerusalem out to see him.[21] This account, given credence by neither Christians nor historians, clearly makes a secret theft of the body impossible. Additionally, Craig writes that the polemic mentioned by Matthew suggests that Jews didn't contest the existence of a guard at the time. In other words, if the guard didn't exist, the logical Jewish counterargument would be to argue against that Christian claim; instead, Matthew's story has the Jewish side using the weak "but the guards were asleep when the theft occurred" argument, suggesting the Jews of the time knew guards had been placed.[21]
The guards were used as an apologetic argument in Early Christianity as well; various Christian works expanded the Gospel of Matthew's account, albeit in a fashion considered unreliable by modern readers. An example is the
Burial cloths
The gospels of Luke and John record that the burial wrappings of Jesus were left inside the tomb. The head wrapping was folded and placed separate from the other linens (John 20:5–7). Christian apologists contend that a grave robber would probably have stolen everything, especially since Joseph of Arimathea was a man of means and the wrappings were likely to have been valuable. Further, carefully removing, then wrapping and folding the linens would be difficult and serve no useful purpose.[26] Thus these claims in the gospel are also brought into contention by the theory, especially if a grave robber is proposed as the culprit. Replies from proponents include noting that if the motive of the graverobbers was body parts for necromancy, the cloths might be irrelevant; and if the culprit was a conspirator out to "prove" Jesus's holiness, then the wrappings might have been deliberately left behind to foster the notion of the body miraculously disappearing. Richard Carrier also considers the mention of the cloths "a natural embellishment to such a narrative and thus cannot be trusted to be historical,"[27] since historians of the era would often illustrate such scenes with plausible minor details that lack a source, similar to military historians describing specific sword interplay.[27]
Ritual purity
Some apologists[who?] note that the disciples, as practicing Jews, could not come near a dead body without breaking ritual purity regulations. Exceptions included the nearest male relative could claim a dead body and women.[citation needed] Thus, the fact that women discovered the empty tomb first is seen as very plausible, and the (presumably devout) disciples taking the body is seen as a less likely explanation. However, if a genuine conspiracy was afoot, breaking purity is unlikely to have stopped the conspirators, and grave robbers violate this law constantly by profession. If Jesus's family reclaimed the body, this would not apply either. It does, however, make it less plausible other Jews would have stolen the body.
See also
- Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus
- Vision hypothesis
- Substitution hypothesis
- Swoon hypothesis
- Historical Jesus
- Historicity of Jesus
- Empty tomb
- Religious perspectives on Jesus
References
- ^ Carrier, "The Plausibility of Theft", p. 349. "...[this work] demonstrates the plausibility (but by no means the certainty) of the hypothesis that the body of Jesus was stolen."
- ^ deSilva, David A. (2012). The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. Oxford University Press. .
- ^ a b c Carrier. "The Plausibility of Theft", p. 352.
- ^ ISBN 0-89900-732-5
- ^ "Philip Schaff: ANF01. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus - Christian Classics Ethereal Library". ccel.org. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
- ISBN 9780062285232.
- ISBN 978-0-8423-4552-1.
- ^ "Jesus Christ." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 January 2007
- ^ Carrier. "The Plausibility of Theft", p. 365.
- ^ "Answers from Dr. Gary R. Habermas - Online Resource for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ". garyhabermas.com. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
- ^ a b Carrier. "The Plausibility of Theft", p. 350.
- ^ "Dale Allison on the Resurrection of Jesus - Reasonable Faith". Archived from the original on 23 February 2017. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
- Craig Keener: "...our evidence for the theft of corpses appears in Gentile regions, never around Jerusalem." The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), p. 341.
- ISBN 978-0-5676-9757-8.
- ^ Live Science (2023), Evidence of Roman-era 'death magic' used to speak with the deceased found near Jerusalem
- ISBN 978-0-300-12581-8
- ^ "Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? The Craig-Ehrman Debate | Reasonable Faith". reasonablefaith.org. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
- ^ "CHURCH FATHERS: De Spectaculis (Tertullian)". newadvent.org. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
- ^ Tatian. Diatessaron (in Syriac). Roberts-Donaldson translation. Section LIII. Retrieved August 26, 2012.
- ^ Carrier. "The Plausibility of Theft", p. 351.
- ^ S2CID 170368884. Archived from the originalon November 12, 2013. Retrieved November 12, 2013.
- ^ Ancient Christian Gospels Koster, Helmut; Trinity Press, (1992) pg 237.
- ^ "Symposium - the Historical Jesus | PBS". PBS.
- ^ "Richard Carrier Resurrection 2 » Internet Infidels". Internet Infidels. 1969-12-31. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
- ISBN 978-0-19-933522-0.
- ISBN 978-1-4347-6665-6.
- ^ a b Carrier. "The Plausibility of Theft", p. 353.
- ISBN 1-59102-286-X.
- Craig, William Lane (1997). "The Empty Tomb of Jesus". In Geivett, R. Douglas; Habermas, Gary (eds.). In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God's Action in History. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic. p. 259.