Amaleq13

"[M]ost common"? Really? More like "One of the least used objections for a couple decades".

Who have you been reading? Schonfield's The Passover Plot (or via: amazon.co.uk)?

Yes, it takes a unique detail only found in one story and, with no good reason, assumes it has some basis in fact.

He doesn't just mention it, he makes it a plot point. The other three authors betray no awareness of this aspect to the story and that, alone is sufficient to cause any rational individual to question its veracity. Just as Matthew's unique "Invasion of the Zombie Saints" story is unique to his version and, therefore, inherently dubious beyond the obvious silliness of the claim.

Nonsense. Matthew depicts Joseph rolling the stone into place alone:

And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. (Mt 27:60, KJV)

Are you aware that the reason round tomb doors were used was to make it easier to reopen them because the tombs with such doors were to be used for multiple family members?

There probably wasn't even a tomb, let alone guards.

Self-Mutation

Evidence for this assertion?

lpetrich

Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, and the Roman authorities often left bodies on crosses as an advertisement of how nobody seriously pisses them off and lives.

So if JC had been crucified, his body would likely have been left on the cross, or else tossed in a common grave.

Think of it -- why would a serious criminal and troublemaker be buried in a TOMB???

Why not leave his body out for the vultures and stray dogs?

manwithdream

The real proof of the resurrection would not be an empty tomb, but a living person who was dead before.

Since they could not show a living person, they made up the story of a guarded tomb, so the miracle would be an empty tomb guarded by soldiers instead of an actual living body as a miracle.

The Jewish leaders and Romans would have preferred to leave the tomb unguarded so that they could say to people that the tomb was empty because the body was stolen. No one would have believed that guy had been resurrected if the tomb was unguarded and empty, so there was no reason for anyone to want guards there in the first place.

It would have benefitted the Jewish and Roman leaders to let the followers steal his body, so they had no reason in the first place to guard it.

You can't prove a story is true from the details of the story because they could be false too.

Kenneth Greifer

http://www.messianicmistakes.com/

Baalazel

Dead on manwithdream. IMO the problem with the resurrection has always been the lack of a living body. Even now, two thousand years later the Christians can't come up with a living Jesus. The only conclusion must be that there is no living Jesus.

Baal

Switch89

SM, you ought to read "The Empty Tomb" or look up the subject in the internet infidels library.

cgordon

S-M, do you know the term 'Midrash'?

renassault

There would be no such elaborate story-telling as is evidenced by the Gnostic versions that want to depict this very phenomena. One would have to dig up such heavily buried inferences that the authors would have made it much clearer it was an allegory.

This is much like Earl Doherty's theory that the Gospel of Mark had been an extended allegory that later got misinterpreted as literal history. Whatever is to be said for that, this may nicely explain the virgin-birth doctrine.

The phrase obviously had various meanings as is evidenced by Paul (Galatians 3, believers are sons of God, but the special meaning of Christ as Son of God as in the Gospels is retained)

Because it was the Passover and this was not allowed as the Talmud records. Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body which is why he wasn't thrown in a common pit. Evidence that this is possible is the ossuary of a crucified Jew from around 70 AD, showing you didn't inevitably get thrown in a common pit.

One would wonder why the Sanhedrin which was so bent on disproving Jesus wouldn't guard the tomb to dispell such myths in case the body really was missing after three days. A single witness does not mean forgery.


It was probably very heavy if the women needed help, and Joseph probably had help (Nicodemus, etc.), but the 12 Apostles would have had no problem moving it, hence the rumor that was started and Matthew's need to point out its true origin.

It's not recorded that Jesus went to the chief priests and all of Jerusalem, but mainly to disciples (as Paul implies in 1 Corinthians 15). Seeing how the Scribes and Pharisees attributed Jesus' exorcisms to the devil, it would have made little difference if he had shown himself to them. Seeing how the priests preferred to have the soldiers say that the body was stolen than to report the truth, an appearance to them or all of Jerusalem apparently wouldn't have made a difference anyway, and why try to give further signs to a wicked generation that Christ knew would ultimately reject him anyway? He may of course have shown himself to them, but as shown above, it obviously wouldn't have/didn't made a difference.

The fact that this was being reported to that day means that Matthew was writing close to the time, within a few decades, certainly by 80 AD and afterwards, the alleged time of the composition of the Gospel, there would have been no such reports needed, but instead the general, "Christian superstition" would have been given (see Pliny and Tacitus, so clearly this was prior to 100 AD).

They had left seeing how the women found the stone rolled away.


You must be insane.

True, but the fact that there was this rumor instead of the claim that it was an invention means that there was an empty tomb, just like Trypho, debating Justin Martyr in c.150 AD attributes the doctrine of the Virgin Birth to a syncretism between Judaism and Hellenism, as well as the appearance of God in the flesh.

If Jesus ascended 40 days after his Resurrection how could they show an empty body? And even during the 40 days, apparently Christ did not choose to show himself.

No, because there would have always been those few who claimed Jesus fulfilled his promise, so they wanted to make sure none of it happened. When it happened anyway, the rumor was their last resort.

You can show internal consistency which favors authenticity and you can use form criticism to determine if it was a legend that grew out of a primitive Christian belief, itself being the creation of believers.

Diogenes the Cynic

I've never heard a single person seriously try to argue that the body was stolen. It's basically just an apologist strawman that it's a "common" objection. The question itse;f is alittle more than a ruse to get the opponent to accept that there was an empty tomb or missing body at all. First prove that Jesus' body went missing from a tomb, and then we'll talk about explanations.

You can't use Matthew to prove Matthew, by the way. That's just silly.

aa5874

You really have no idea what would have happened if a man that was believed to have been crucified, dead for three days , buried and under guard, showed up at Jerusalem in the presence of Pilate, Herod, the chief priest and thousands of Jews.


What happened close to the time gMatthew was written?

It cannot be shown, using credible external sources, that anything close to the Jesus stories actually happened as found in gMatthew during the time Pilate was governor of Judaea.

In addition, Pliny and Tacitus did not write about Jesus, and Tacitus and Suetonius wrote about people called Christians before any of the Jesus stories as found in the NT were written.

The Christians in Tacitus and Suetonius were during the time of Nero, perhaps around 66 CE, but the people who believed the Jesus stories are all after the Fall of the Jewish Temple, after 70 CE to coincide with the time of the writing of the Gospels.