Johnny Skeptic

I look forward to reading comments from readers.

skepticdude

Matthew 28:15, Matthew admits that the guards at the tomb and the conspiricy they entered into with the Jews was a "story" that is still reported "to this day". That is not the way Matthew would have characterized such information if he believed it was really true. If you believe Bush conspired with Osama to plan the 911 attacks, do you then say "and this story is reported among Americans "even to this day"? Not if you truly believe it is more than just a story.

Matthew found it necessary to inform his Christian community that this guard-story is still reported among Jews "to this day"? If that story was sufficiently established that it was the standard answer of Jews to why the tomb was empty, it would be common knowledge to the Jewish Christians in his community, not something he needed to inform them about. This then means the guard-story was NOT sufficiently established so as to be common-knowledge. It rather appears to be an anomaly which, but for Matthew's mention, would never have been thought of by his Christian community.

This story also presumes something else that is unlikely, that the Jews cared so much about the resurrection testimony of the Christians that they would go through the trouble of requesting guards to make sure nobody steals the body. If I was the leader of a city, and one religion came to me and said "the leader of another religion has died, but his follower say he will rise from the dead. We fear they will steal the body and then proclaim his empty tomb as proof of their resurrection-claim, therefore, we pray you, authorize a few policeman to stand guard at his grave!", I would dispatch the policeman, not to stand guard at a grave, but to run these gullible idiots out of town. Further, if Jesus was as popular as the gospel say, the Romans would have known about his claim to rise from the dead just as much as Jews. Why do they express no interest in this matter until the Jews complain of it? What is there about such complaint that would warrant a dispatch of guards? Nothing.

The first hurdle is evaluating the credibility of the guards-at-the-tomb story:

1 - Mark says nothing about guards in spite of the apparent apologetic value of such pericope, and most scholars agree that Matthew is roughly 80% a cut and paste from Mark. Why is Matthew going beyond Mark's text? Since Mark is probably the earliest gospel, the later Matthian gospel's addition of guards can easily be explained as simple embellishment.

2 - Luke is probably later than Mark, but also doesn't mention guards. Now we have an author using Mark's text, but who also doesn't find it necessary to speak about guards at the tomb. The apologetic value of the guard story cannot be denied, and if we assume Matthew wasn't just embellishing, then the guard-story was also known to Luke. Why then is Luke consciously choosing to disregard the guard-story, when there is nothing about his "purpose" that would favor such exclusion? One rational conclusion is that Matthew is simply embellishing the core of tradition that Mark's text supplied him with.

3 - That Matthew embellished is supported by independent arguments. He deliberately excluded 3 names from his genealogy of Jesus, but which appear in his 1st Chronicles source list, to help his messianic genealogy achieve the pattern of 3 sets of 14 names each (Matthew 1), which contained numerological significance as recognized by both church fathers and today's scholars. The literacy rate in the first-century was low ("...Thus, it is no exaggeration to say that the total literacy rate in the Land of Israel at that time (of Jews only, of course), was probably less than 3%. [M. Bar-Ilan, 'Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries C.E.', S. Fishbane, S. Schoenfeld and A. Goldschlaeger (eds.), Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, II, New York: Ktav, 1992, pp. 46-61.)] Therefore, it is not likely that his community of existing faithful Christians would notice the missing names since they wouldn't have been able to read 1st Chronicles.

4 - Gleason Archer, the late king of inerrancy, said inerrantists should maintain their faith in inerrancy even when they come across a problem they don't have an immediate solution for. Since such evangelicals insist that the original Christians had the same kind of faith which evangelicals have today, Matthew's faith-community, even if they could read and thus knew about the missing 3 names, would have been more likely to assume "God" had a good reason for "inspiring" Matthew to leave out those three names, so discovery of the missing info would not shock a follower of Matthew in the least.

5 - Matthew tells the infamous zombie resurrection story (Matthew 27:52), which is so unbelievable that it caused conservative evangelical apologist William Lane Craig, in a debate with a skeptic, to admit that this was not something for which he could mount any kind historicity-supporting argument. Thus Matthew embellishes.

6 - John doesn't mention the guard-story either, yet assuming Matthew didn't conjure it up, he surely was aware that this story existed. Now we have another gospel author who is aware of a guard story that has obvious apologetic value, but who consciously chooses to disregard it. Now it's even worse for the apologists because John allegedly wrote his gospel to combat unbelief (John 20:31). John knows of a reliable tradition about guards at the tomb, which has obvious apologetic value, and yet "chooses to exclude" such golden nugget that would lend obvious support to his purpose? Naw, the greater liklihood is that he either believed the story unreliable, or had never heard of it to begin with, making Matthew's use of it suspicious.

7 - The argument against miracles would make most of the gospels generally not worthy of belief. I therefore criticize skeptics who in the past have assumed the reliability of the gospel stories for the sake of argument, in their debates with skeptics. Sometimes, a story is so unbelievable that it is perfectly rational not to extend the benefit of the doubt.

8 - Matthew is anonymous, therefore we today are paralyzed from performing an evaluation of the author's credibility, placed at issue since the guard story is exclusively Matthian.

9 - The story itself, namely that guards were told to report that somebody had stolen the body, smacks of unlikelihood anyway. The penalty for sleeping on the job for Roman soldiers was death. If they truly were stationed there, they would not likely have honestly admitted acting in a way that would insure their own execution. If the story is true and they knew they were lying, they would be even less likely to lie in a way that assures their own execution. The bit about the chief priests calming the fears of the guards by promising to "win over" the governor, should the story reach his ears, is also unlikely. The Romans tolerated the Jews, but the two were by no means trusting of one another. The guards could have easily feared that the Jews would conveniently forget their promise to win over the governor, and complain that the guards deserve blame for the missing body. Since their lives were hanging in the balance, it is not likely they would just place their trust in the Jews. Thus the "deal" between guards and priests in this story doesn't ring true.

10 - Obvious apologetic purpose is agreed by all historians to lower, by a few degrees, the reliability of the story. If Matthew was writing for already-faithful Christians, his desire to smooth over any problems with the story and provide apologetics and rationalizations to prevent skepticism from taking root within the community would be very high. The idea that Matthew would have disclosed bits of tradition that might justify a measure of skepticism is not worthy of belief, and proves false by the constant apologetics and rationalizations we see coming from Christians today. Thus even if apologists today could prove Matthew reliable, there were very good reasons to suppress realities that might otherwise had given skeptics a toehold.

11 - It is difficult to disassociate political corruption from any kind of community. If Christian communities existed in Matthew's day, they must have had some rudimentary leadership, and I cannot think of a single case where the ruling of others does not involve political corruption, from the case of a boss dealing with employees, to a president leading a whole nation. As time goeth on, we hear about more and more high-ranking Christian leaders being themselves corrupt. As any leader will tell you, if there are problems, you can threaten the communities stability and existence if you just let all the problems go out into the open with brutal honesty and disclosure. Thus the leaders of the communities in Matthew's day, had they known of problems in the Jesus-story, would not risk the good thing they had by highlighting all the good and the bad the way a disinterested objective observer might be willing to disclose. Thus we may safely assume that Matthew would never have revealed things that would threaten his community's stability and faith even if he knew them to be true. Matthew 18 says you must first go to your brother privately if you feel he has done wrong. Why privately? Easy: if you resolve the matter, this unfortunate truth of reality need not come to the ears of the rest in the community, that's why. Again, had there been serious problems in some of the traditions Matthew included, we may safely assume he would have dealt privately with these for the express purpose of keeping these historical problems from the faithful community that he was apparantly a leader of.

12 - There is no evidence that Matthew intended his gospel to combat unbelief or the skeptical position on the story outside his community, and most Christian scholars agree that the apologetics in the gospel are more suited to those who already have faith. As such, when today's apologists cite Matthew in their attempt to combat skepticism of the gospel, they are going beyond the intent of the gospel authors, which is otherwise anathema within Christianity. If God inspired Matthew, and then his gospel was used to sustain the existing faith of his community, the burden of proof is on the apologist to show that God may also have intended his guard-story to be used to combat skepticism, a burden they have never even tried to fulfill.

Thus the guards-at-the-tomb story has sufficient problems that skeptics cannot be called irrational for rejecting it. It never had the level of plausibility that would have justified the earlier skeptic-Christian debates which assumed it true for the sake of argument. We can also assume a claim that the moon is made of green cheese, true for the sake of argument. But should we?

Doug Shaver

I don't see any dependence. If there were guards, that doesn't prove there was an empty tomb. If there were no guards, that doesn't prove there was no empty tomb.

Obviously, Matthew's credibility takes a hit if there were no guards, but that has no logical implications for the other three versions of the story.

Johnny Skeptic

It there were not any guards at the tomb, doesn't the "stolen body" possibility become more reasonable?

How much does the empty tomb story depend upon Jesus being buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb? Obviously, a lot. Other than the Gospels, what evidence is there that Jesus was buried in Joseph's tomb?

Doug Shaver

Assuming that Jesus actually was buried in a tomb, and assuming that the tomb was in fact discovered empty a few days later, and assuming that anybody had in fact alleged that the body had been stolen, then the absence of guards would have made the story more plausible than it would have been otherwise, I suppose.

Depend . . . for its credibility, you mean? All things considered, I don't see that it makes much difference whose tomb it was, if the main question is whether we should believe that any of it actually happened.

Johnny Skeptic

If guards were not posted at the tomb, doesn't that make the stolen body theory more plausible?

brianscott1977

Who stole the body? Are you saying that Peter and John were real people?

Johnny Skeptic

Are you not aware that the majority of skeptic Bible scholars believe that Peter and John were real people? Even if Peter and John were real people, that does not necessarily mean that they said and did everything that the New Testament says they did.

Whoever wanted to. Who would have stopped them? Only Matthew mentions the guards.

Another possibility is that the body was moved. Perhaps some followers of Jesus moved the body so that Jesus would not have been discredited.

brianscott1977

There's the rub. Based on what is known of people like Peter and John (and the rest of the people mentioned in the Gospels), it seems unlikely that any of them would steal the body of Jesus and claim that he was raised to life. Other than the people mentioned in the Gospels, who would have motive to steal the body?

However, all a skeptic has to do is say, “Well, Peter and John and those guys weren’t really the kind of people that are portrayed in the Bible and church history.” Once a skeptic says that the skeptic can then rewrite the character of Peter and John into anything s/he desires, and then any theory is as good as the next.

Johnny Skeptic

The empty tomb is a useless argument unless there is sufficient prior evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. In "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark estimates that there were only 7,530 Christians in the entire word in 100 A.D. In Christian apologist James Holding's article "The Impossible Faith," Holding quotes well-known Christian Bible scholar N.T. Wright as saying "This subversive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire."

In the first century, Christians were a very tiny, uninfluential group of people. Even Jesus' followers did not believe that he was going to rise from dead. Thus, they certainly would not have gone around boasting that he would rise from the dead. Almost no one would have paid any attention to a tiny group of religious fanatics even if they had known about them.

I previously said "the empty tomb is a useless argument unless there is sufficient prior evidence that Jesus rose from the dead." On second thought, even if Jesus rose from the dead, the empty tomb would only be a useful argument if it was well-known where Jesus was buried. Since Jesus' followers did not believe that he had risen from the dead, they would have wanted to keep the location of his tomb a secret since they expected his body to still be in the tomb after three days. The story of the guards is not useful since only Matthew mentions the guards. Some Christians have countered that argument by claiming that Jesus' enemies, such as the Pharisees, would have carefully watched the tomb, but as I said previously, "almost no one would have paid any attention to a tiny group of religious fanatics even if they had known about them."