Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Good, so do you agree with me that the empty tomb on its own is not a reasonable argument for Christians to use?

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Clearly, Christians had not been hammered for decades by charges of grave-robbing or else the first Novel would have to narrate 'the true story of what happened'.

Originally Posted by Sea

That's a good point.

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

I think most Christians would agree that the empty tomb in isolation, i.e., without the appearances of the risen Christ to his followers, is not a sufficient basis for an argument for the resurrection.

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Even with appearances of the risen Jesus, if his identity could not have been reasonably proven without an empty tomb, how could his identity have been reasonably proven with an empty tomb?

Even with appearances of the risen Jesus, how could his followers have reasonably proven where he had been buried, and that the body had not been moved?

Originally Posted by William Lane Craig

But perhaps the strongest consideration in favor of the historicity of the guard is the history of polemic presupposed in this story. The Jewish slander that the disciples stole the body was probably the reaction to the Christian proclamation that Jesus was risen.......To counter this charge the Christians would need only point out that the guard at the tomb would have prevented such a theft and that they were immobilized with fear when the angel appeared.......If the existence of the guard were false, then the Jewish polemic would never have taken the course that it did. Rather the controversy would have stopped right there with the renunciation that any such guard had ever been set by the Jews.......Guard or no guard, no critic today believes that the disciples could have robbed the tomb and faked the resurrection. Rather the real value of Matthew's story is the incidental -- and for that reason all the more reliable -- information that Jewish polemic never denied that the tomb was empty, but instead tried to explain it away.

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

I think most Christians would agree that the empty tomb in isolation, i.e., without the appearances of the risen Christ to his followers, is not a sufficient basis for an argument for the resurrection.

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Even with appearances of the risen Jesus, if his identity could not have been reasonably proven without an empty tomb, how could his identity have been reasonably proven with an empty tomb?

Even with appearances of the risen Jesus, how could his followers have reasonably proven where he had been buried, and that the body had not been moved?

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

I suspect that this is tending towards the position that the resurrection of Jesus is prima-facie so improbable that the sort of evidence we typically have for events in the Ancient World is insufficient to make it plausible.

Originally Posted by aa5874

But, Justin Martyr did write about the charges of grave-robbing about 100 years later. It would appear Jesus believers were hammered in the 2nd century about "grave-robbing".

Originally Posted by William Lane Craig

Of the canonical gospels, only Matthew relates the intriguing story of the setting of a guard at the tomb of Jesus (Mt. 27. 62-66; 28. 4, 11-1 5). The story serves an apologetic purpose: the refutation of the allegation that the disciples had themselves stolen Jesus' body and thus faked his resurrection. Behind the story as Matthew tells it seems to lie a tradition history of Jewish and Christian polemic, a developing pattern of assertion and counter-assertion:

Christian: 'The Lord is risen!'
Jew: 'No, his disciples stole away his body.'
Christian: 'The guard at the tomb would have prevented any such theft.'
Jew: 'No, his disciples stole away his body while the guard slept.'
Christian: 'The chief priests bribed the guard to say this.'

Though Matthew alone of the four evangelists mentions the guard at the tomb,.......the gospel of Peter also relates the story of the guard at the tomb, and its account may well be independent of Matthew, since the verbal similarities are practically nil.

Matthew's account has been nearly universally rejected as an apologetic legend by the critics. The reasons for this judgment, however, are of very unequal worth. For example, the fact that the story is an apologetic answering the allegation that the disciples stole the body does not therefore mean that it is unhistorical. The best way to answer such a charge would not be by inventing fictions, but by narrating the true story of what happened.