So I would just like to point out something I thought of... why were there guards at the tomb if no one had a motive to steal the body? Why else would guards be stationed in front of a tomb with a corpse in it and a huge rock in front of the entrance? To me this reeks of "someone had a motive to steal the body".
> Oh, excellent question. For that to have happened, we'll need to say who was there and why in that space of, what—about an hour? First of all, no one was expecting the resurrection, so there would be no reason we would expect anyone to be there at the time. Secondly, an earthquake and the passing out of the guards would instill fear, not courage. Third, why would this person think, "Oh, I'll steal the slaughtered body in this tomb!" What would be his or her motive for dragging Jesus' cadaver out of the tomb and into hiding, and then carefully arranging the graveclothes and head cloth into a nice pattern? While it's remotely possibly that some passer-by just happened to be there at the time (though not likely at all), we have trouble creating a motive that makes this alternative plausible. And then, of course, we still have to explain all the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.
So basically we can't rule out that a person took the body when the tomb was open and unguarded.
The analogy I use for this is: Suppose you had a pot of soup on the stove. And you have a chair next to the stove because you were getting up to a high cupboard, or whatever, and you have a container of rat poisoning next to the stove. And you have a kid who really likes to help out in the kitchen, so he's liable to have poured some of the rat poison into the soup. So, you leave the stove, and you come back, and although you cannot prove that your kid put rat poison in the soup (thinking it was pepper or whatever), would you eat the soup? This is a very common problem of leaving something unattended and something bad could have happened that you didn't want to have happened. And you can't prove it happened but you can't rule out the possibility it happened. So, you treat it as a worst case scenario to be safe. As firemen or a bomb squad or 911 operators would do for example. What does a 911 operator do when he gets a call and no one there on the phone, just silence? Has to assume the worst, tracks the call if he can, and sends people out—just to be safe. Some high percentage of 911 calls are false alarms, but that doesn't stop the emergency responders from still treating every call seriously.
So it's the same thing with the empty tomb. We have to treat this span of time with the stone rolled off and no guards seriously. Do you eat the soup?; Do you conclude Jesus rose from the dead in other words? We wanted to say "praise the lord Jesus rose from the dead" which is a very extraordinary claim, so we must be careful. And we cannot rule out that someone stole the body. In other words we simply lack the information to confirm or deny if someone stole the body. Footage from a 24/7 security camera on the entrance would be ideal, but we don't have this. We might not be able to exactly pinpoint a motive but I can see people wanting to take the body to do a proper burial or whatever—this is not unheard of. You can google this and see that this is not unreasonable... people do it is all that I'm saying. And what were the guards doing there if no one had a motive to steal the body? So essentially the resurrection hypothesis has a gaping hole in it... a gaping wide open tomb entrance, to use an appropriate metaphor. It's not a watertight argument that the corpse walked off. I think given what I know, and given the information about the events there, that someone stole the body. We similarly can't argue that the body wasn't resurrected (so blindly I could use my logic against myself and say "I must consider the case where the body was resurrected, and thus accept that this happened"), but I just prefer to go with the more plausible explanation. I know of corpses being stolen, I know of not one corpse that's walked off. I'm worried that my unattended soup pot I described above was ruined... I'm not so worried that the inanimate pot will sprout legs and walk away... if I lived alone for example, I would happily leave the soup unattended for 20 minutes and not worry that rat poison in the cupboard made it into the soup.
Board index ‹ Resurrection of Christ
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Re: There is no evidence of the resurrection
by Introverted Intuito » Wed Mar 01, 2017 1:03 pm
- Introverted Intuito
Re: There is no evidence of the resurrection
by jimwalton » Wed Mar 01, 2017 1:33 pm
Great conversation. Thanks.
> Why else would guards be stationed in front of a tomb with a corpse in it and a huge rock in front of the entrance? To me this reeks of "someone had a motive to steal the body".
Good question. Matthew is the only one who says anything about a guard, so we have to go there for our only information. You're right that they specifically say (Mt. 27.64), "Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell people that he has been raised from the dead." So you're right that the Jewish leaders suspected the disciples might have a motive.
But let's look at it from the disciples' viewpoint. Did they have the motive, the means, and the opportunity?
The disciples had no motive to steal the body. The Bible says they were filled with fear, ran away, and went into hiding. The power of Rome was lethal, and the drive of the Jewish leaders was oppressively intimidating. In addition, the disciples were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead, and were filled with terrifying grief at his execution. There is nothing in the biblical account that tells us they had any motivation to fabricate a resurrection by stealing the body.
But aside from not being impelled to steal the body, did they have anything to gain from doing such and then claiming he had risen? Fame could not have been their motive. At the time the disciples knew nothing about the new community that would be formed, the Church, as an assembly of like-minded believers who would be a brotherhood of encouragement and support. The respect they would know from believers was unknown at the time and unknowable, so this could not have been a possible motive for them.
Nor did any of them ever become wealthy because of his claim, and none attained a position of governmental power. They were publicly ridiculed, arrested, imprisoned, and killed. Even today, atheists and skeptics regard the disciples as liars, deluded, subject to hallucinations, and deceivers. What did they have to gain from stealing the body and perpetrating a lie? Aside from some respect from believers that they had no way to foresee was coming, they had no motive to steal the body and nothing to gain from wild and fabricated tales of resurrection. They would have had to sow those tales themselves, even though they had no understanding that was what should and did happen. It doesn’t make sense.
But even if we remotely grant they may have had motive, did they have the means? Since the gravesite was guarded by soldiers, they would have to have had enough people armed with enough weapons to overpower the guard and dispose of their bodies without getting caught. Such a plan would be a capital crime. They would have needed a strategy that history tells us must have worked flawlessly, since they were never arrested. Nor was there any record of any guards being killed, which would have raised suspicions against the disciples, one of whom was a Zealot. While there were enough of them to lift the stone out of its place, is it reasonable to think they pulled this off so spectacularly that they were never caught, never charged, never suspected, and then held their conspiracy together for the rest of their lives? Not likely.
Lastly, did they have opportunity? They had about 18 hours between the burial and when a guard was posted. Technically they had an opportunity in the middle of the night on Friday, but they would have had to have devised a plan quickly and executed it flawlessly. They would have had to have been highly motivated and organized, devised a lie to which they would all hold until death, and somehow also to stage other convincing appearances of Jesus, including miracles. While it is questionably possible, it is not the most logical conclusion, nor is it a reasonable one.
Could they have stolen the body between the brief segment of time when the earthquake came, when the guards "fell as dead men," and dawn? First of all, we would have to assume they had a motive to steal the body and claim a resurrection, which I have already shown is not likely. Then they would have had to have been already there at the site with plan and weapons in place when the earthquake happened, which also doesn't fit the profile of their mindset. Third, they would have had to take the time to position the grave clothes and head cloth in a decorative manner, all the while not knowing when the guards would come back to consciousness.
But of course, if they did steal the body, this doesn't explain how other people saw him (Mary Magdalene, some of the other women, and the two on the road of Emmaus) completely separately from any testimony of the disciples. Nor does it explain their complete willingness later to die for a lie.
But it's as you say: NOBODY comes back from the dead. They were not expecting it, had a hard time believing it, and ran into real trouble preaching it, because everyone knows it's impossible. And that's exactly the point. They know it's impossible, but they also know it happened, and that's why their lives were completely changed, why they preached with such passion, and why they were all willing to die for their story. The resurrection doesn't make sense, and we all know it doesn't happen, except that it did.
It's not just a matter of "wondering if the rat poison got in the soup." They actually saw Jesus after the empty tomb, and it blew them away. They didn't know how to deal with it. It took a complete rewiring of their brains. Resurrection was also not a possibility in their culture, their religious beliefs, or their philosophy of life. That's why it's so striking that all of the disciples were hard-core believers, not a single one cracked under pressure, and thousands also turned to Christ in the same city (Jerusalem) within just a number of weeks. The evidence for them had to be extraordinary. When we see how the church started, and how Christianity expanded, a real resurrection is actually a more reasonable conclusion than the disciples stole the body, were great actors for the rest of their lives, staged convincing appearances of Jesus for others, and were willing to be tortured and die for a known lie.
> Why else would guards be stationed in front of a tomb with a corpse in it and a huge rock in front of the entrance? To me this reeks of "someone had a motive to steal the body".
Good question. Matthew is the only one who says anything about a guard, so we have to go there for our only information. You're right that they specifically say (Mt. 27.64), "Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell people that he has been raised from the dead." So you're right that the Jewish leaders suspected the disciples might have a motive.
But let's look at it from the disciples' viewpoint. Did they have the motive, the means, and the opportunity?
The disciples had no motive to steal the body. The Bible says they were filled with fear, ran away, and went into hiding. The power of Rome was lethal, and the drive of the Jewish leaders was oppressively intimidating. In addition, the disciples were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead, and were filled with terrifying grief at his execution. There is nothing in the biblical account that tells us they had any motivation to fabricate a resurrection by stealing the body.
But aside from not being impelled to steal the body, did they have anything to gain from doing such and then claiming he had risen? Fame could not have been their motive. At the time the disciples knew nothing about the new community that would be formed, the Church, as an assembly of like-minded believers who would be a brotherhood of encouragement and support. The respect they would know from believers was unknown at the time and unknowable, so this could not have been a possible motive for them.
Nor did any of them ever become wealthy because of his claim, and none attained a position of governmental power. They were publicly ridiculed, arrested, imprisoned, and killed. Even today, atheists and skeptics regard the disciples as liars, deluded, subject to hallucinations, and deceivers. What did they have to gain from stealing the body and perpetrating a lie? Aside from some respect from believers that they had no way to foresee was coming, they had no motive to steal the body and nothing to gain from wild and fabricated tales of resurrection. They would have had to sow those tales themselves, even though they had no understanding that was what should and did happen. It doesn’t make sense.
But even if we remotely grant they may have had motive, did they have the means? Since the gravesite was guarded by soldiers, they would have to have had enough people armed with enough weapons to overpower the guard and dispose of their bodies without getting caught. Such a plan would be a capital crime. They would have needed a strategy that history tells us must have worked flawlessly, since they were never arrested. Nor was there any record of any guards being killed, which would have raised suspicions against the disciples, one of whom was a Zealot. While there were enough of them to lift the stone out of its place, is it reasonable to think they pulled this off so spectacularly that they were never caught, never charged, never suspected, and then held their conspiracy together for the rest of their lives? Not likely.
Lastly, did they have opportunity? They had about 18 hours between the burial and when a guard was posted. Technically they had an opportunity in the middle of the night on Friday, but they would have had to have devised a plan quickly and executed it flawlessly. They would have had to have been highly motivated and organized, devised a lie to which they would all hold until death, and somehow also to stage other convincing appearances of Jesus, including miracles. While it is questionably possible, it is not the most logical conclusion, nor is it a reasonable one.
Could they have stolen the body between the brief segment of time when the earthquake came, when the guards "fell as dead men," and dawn? First of all, we would have to assume they had a motive to steal the body and claim a resurrection, which I have already shown is not likely. Then they would have had to have been already there at the site with plan and weapons in place when the earthquake happened, which also doesn't fit the profile of their mindset. Third, they would have had to take the time to position the grave clothes and head cloth in a decorative manner, all the while not knowing when the guards would come back to consciousness.
But of course, if they did steal the body, this doesn't explain how other people saw him (Mary Magdalene, some of the other women, and the two on the road of Emmaus) completely separately from any testimony of the disciples. Nor does it explain their complete willingness later to die for a lie.
But it's as you say: NOBODY comes back from the dead. They were not expecting it, had a hard time believing it, and ran into real trouble preaching it, because everyone knows it's impossible. And that's exactly the point. They know it's impossible, but they also know it happened, and that's why their lives were completely changed, why they preached with such passion, and why they were all willing to die for their story. The resurrection doesn't make sense, and we all know it doesn't happen, except that it did.
It's not just a matter of "wondering if the rat poison got in the soup." They actually saw Jesus after the empty tomb, and it blew them away. They didn't know how to deal with it. It took a complete rewiring of their brains. Resurrection was also not a possibility in their culture, their religious beliefs, or their philosophy of life. That's why it's so striking that all of the disciples were hard-core believers, not a single one cracked under pressure, and thousands also turned to Christ in the same city (Jerusalem) within just a number of weeks. The evidence for them had to be extraordinary. When we see how the church started, and how Christianity expanded, a real resurrection is actually a more reasonable conclusion than the disciples stole the body, were great actors for the rest of their lives, staged convincing appearances of Jesus for others, and were willing to be tortured and die for a known lie.
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Re: There is no evidence of the resurrection
by Introverted Intuito » Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:55 pm
> The disciples had no motive to steal the body. The Bible says they were filled with fear, ran away, and went into hiding. The power of Rome was lethal, and the drive of the Jewish leaders was oppressively intimidating. In addition, the disciples were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead, and were filled with terrifying grief at his execution. There is nothing in the biblical account that tells us they had any motivation to fabricate a resurrection by stealing the body.
If you look at in from a different angle, this is exactly what people who stole the body would want us to think. If anyone is stealing the body to make it look like a resurrection, then they are going to play up how impossible it would have been to steal the body and how they had no means to, etc. It may not have been easy, but I would say that the story that eventually reaches us is going to be that it was a near impossible task. Telling a story of how hard it would have been to steal the body and playing up how bad the punishment would have been if they got caught perfectly lines up with the interest of a person stealing the body to fake the resurrection. And obviously, anyone who stole the body for this purpose would say "I didn't do it and had no motive to." If it were the truth that they stole the body and this secret got out, the stealing of the body would then have become pointless. We have to consider this.
> But aside from not being impelled to steal the body, did they have anything to gain from doing such and then claiming he had risen?
The presence of the guards at the tomb still suggests to me the answer to this is yes. Look at how popular Christianity is today, and how crucial a role the story of the resurrection has played in Christianity's development. I'd say that if there were evidence that the body was stolen, there are still today, 2000 years later, people whose interests would be to destroy this evidence. There is certainly something to gain from claiming a resurrection occurred.
> While there were enough of them to lift the stone out of its place, is it reasonable to think they pulled this off so spectacularly that they were never caught, never charged, never suspected, and then held their conspiracy together for the rest of their lives? Not likely.
Without having any idea of the logistics of this plan, I'm not so quick to come to this conclusion. I would want to know things like how far it is from the tomb to the road, how far the tomb is from the guardhouse, what the terrain was like, how fast people were able to get to the tomb, what the visibility was (for instance were there hills, walls, trees, etc), was the tomb in a high traffic area, how often did other police (or 1st century equivalent) patrol the area, all these sorts of things. I don't even know if the tomb was in the middle of a city or if it were in the outskirts somewhere.
> Technically they had an opportunity in the middle of the night on Friday, but they would have had to have devised a plan quickly and executed it flawlessly.
If they knew ahead of time that there was going to be an opportunity they could plan for it. I'm sure they had some capability of planning ahead. If the crucifixion was spontaneous, ie they just grabbed jesus off the street and crucified him, maybe not. From earlier going off of what you provided "Jesus was crucified beside a road west of Jerusalem (Mk. 15.29). His trial had garnered some attention around town (Mk. 15.8-15), because he had entered the city a few days previous in the manner of a king (Mt. 21.1-11; Mk. 11.1-11; Lk. 19.28-44; Jn. 12.12-19). His arrest piqued the curiosity of some of the population of Jerusalem", there was an arrest and a trial and all that would probably have taken some time. And I think they put the body of Jesus in his family tomb, right? So the burial place was known and ways to steal the body from that location had time to be fleshed out.
> somehow also to stage other convincing appearances of Jesus,
Well, I guess this is a rather key point isn't it? It's pretty certain that Jesus was crucified to death. If he was walking around talking to people after the crucifixion, then that's all the evidence we need of a resurrection. I don't know that the Bible can be considered evidence of a resurrection because it is a religious text and has many myths and metaphors in it. In other words I don't care who wrote what in any book, because anyone can write anything they want. That's very much a blanket statement I'm aware. It's just curious to me that the appearance of the resurrected Jesus doesn't get much attention in the bible. It's only told about directly in maybe the last chapter or so of the four gospels of matthew mark luke and john. If Jesus were resurrected I would personally (I don't know about other people) expect a LOT more to be written about where he went, who he talked to, etc, when he would have been the only human in history who'd died and came back to life. I don't feel the gospels in the Bible are doing justice to what would be an extraordinary and amazing event such as this. If you saw the resurrected Jesus before you, wouldn't you have a hell of a lot to write about?
> But it's as you say: NOBODY comes back from the dead. They were not expecting it, had a hard time believing it, and ran into real trouble preaching it, because everyone knows it's impossible. And that's exactly the point. They know it's impossible, but they also know it happened, and that's why their lives were completely changed, why they preached with such passion, and why they were all willing to die for their story.
I don't consider the disciples bad people for (in my conclusion) having stolen the body and used the resurrection story to piggyback the ideology that Jesus had. I would myself be very interested to hear directly the teachings of Jesus and I can't really get this from the Bible for whatever reason, I don't know why. The wording and context isn't clear to me. As I was suggesting before I think the passion and drive that they had to steal the body, is the same passion that they had to preach the message of Jesus.
I mean I can see how seeing a resurrected man could change you and cause you to act in funny ways. I have to ask you at this point though, what was it that they were preaching at this point exactly?
If you look at in from a different angle, this is exactly what people who stole the body would want us to think. If anyone is stealing the body to make it look like a resurrection, then they are going to play up how impossible it would have been to steal the body and how they had no means to, etc. It may not have been easy, but I would say that the story that eventually reaches us is going to be that it was a near impossible task. Telling a story of how hard it would have been to steal the body and playing up how bad the punishment would have been if they got caught perfectly lines up with the interest of a person stealing the body to fake the resurrection. And obviously, anyone who stole the body for this purpose would say "I didn't do it and had no motive to." If it were the truth that they stole the body and this secret got out, the stealing of the body would then have become pointless. We have to consider this.
> But aside from not being impelled to steal the body, did they have anything to gain from doing such and then claiming he had risen?
The presence of the guards at the tomb still suggests to me the answer to this is yes. Look at how popular Christianity is today, and how crucial a role the story of the resurrection has played in Christianity's development. I'd say that if there were evidence that the body was stolen, there are still today, 2000 years later, people whose interests would be to destroy this evidence. There is certainly something to gain from claiming a resurrection occurred.
> While there were enough of them to lift the stone out of its place, is it reasonable to think they pulled this off so spectacularly that they were never caught, never charged, never suspected, and then held their conspiracy together for the rest of their lives? Not likely.
Without having any idea of the logistics of this plan, I'm not so quick to come to this conclusion. I would want to know things like how far it is from the tomb to the road, how far the tomb is from the guardhouse, what the terrain was like, how fast people were able to get to the tomb, what the visibility was (for instance were there hills, walls, trees, etc), was the tomb in a high traffic area, how often did other police (or 1st century equivalent) patrol the area, all these sorts of things. I don't even know if the tomb was in the middle of a city or if it were in the outskirts somewhere.
> Technically they had an opportunity in the middle of the night on Friday, but they would have had to have devised a plan quickly and executed it flawlessly.
If they knew ahead of time that there was going to be an opportunity they could plan for it. I'm sure they had some capability of planning ahead. If the crucifixion was spontaneous, ie they just grabbed jesus off the street and crucified him, maybe not. From earlier going off of what you provided "Jesus was crucified beside a road west of Jerusalem (Mk. 15.29). His trial had garnered some attention around town (Mk. 15.8-15), because he had entered the city a few days previous in the manner of a king (Mt. 21.1-11; Mk. 11.1-11; Lk. 19.28-44; Jn. 12.12-19). His arrest piqued the curiosity of some of the population of Jerusalem", there was an arrest and a trial and all that would probably have taken some time. And I think they put the body of Jesus in his family tomb, right? So the burial place was known and ways to steal the body from that location had time to be fleshed out.
> somehow also to stage other convincing appearances of Jesus,
Well, I guess this is a rather key point isn't it? It's pretty certain that Jesus was crucified to death. If he was walking around talking to people after the crucifixion, then that's all the evidence we need of a resurrection. I don't know that the Bible can be considered evidence of a resurrection because it is a religious text and has many myths and metaphors in it. In other words I don't care who wrote what in any book, because anyone can write anything they want. That's very much a blanket statement I'm aware. It's just curious to me that the appearance of the resurrected Jesus doesn't get much attention in the bible. It's only told about directly in maybe the last chapter or so of the four gospels of matthew mark luke and john. If Jesus were resurrected I would personally (I don't know about other people) expect a LOT more to be written about where he went, who he talked to, etc, when he would have been the only human in history who'd died and came back to life. I don't feel the gospels in the Bible are doing justice to what would be an extraordinary and amazing event such as this. If you saw the resurrected Jesus before you, wouldn't you have a hell of a lot to write about?
> But it's as you say: NOBODY comes back from the dead. They were not expecting it, had a hard time believing it, and ran into real trouble preaching it, because everyone knows it's impossible. And that's exactly the point. They know it's impossible, but they also know it happened, and that's why their lives were completely changed, why they preached with such passion, and why they were all willing to die for their story.
I don't consider the disciples bad people for (in my conclusion) having stolen the body and used the resurrection story to piggyback the ideology that Jesus had. I would myself be very interested to hear directly the teachings of Jesus and I can't really get this from the Bible for whatever reason, I don't know why. The wording and context isn't clear to me. As I was suggesting before I think the passion and drive that they had to steal the body, is the same passion that they had to preach the message of Jesus.
I mean I can see how seeing a resurrected man could change you and cause you to act in funny ways. I have to ask you at this point though, what was it that they were preaching at this point exactly?
- Introverted Intuito
Re: There is no evidence of the resurrection
by jimwalton » Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:28 am
> If you look at in from a different angle, this is exactly what people who stole the body would want us to think.
While this is certainly possible from the vantage point of do-able, we have to infer the most reasonable conclusion. Given what we know about the atmosphere that weekend, the personality of the disciples, and the astounding change that came over them in just a short amount of time, the prospective of theft doesn't fit the picture. They believed and taught (and died for) the story of resurrection.
> The presence of the guards at the tomb still suggests to me the answer to this is yes.
I think you're looking at this situation both anachronistically and regressively. WE know Christianity became popular; WE know it met with success. But what did THEY know? What were THEIR realistic perceptions of the movement. Their leader was betrayed, tried, and executed by both Roman and Jewish authorities in cahoots with each other. Does this give them reason to think positively? With their leader dead (the teacher, the miracle worker), does this give them motivation to carry on? Did they think there would be money to gain? Good sex? Fame and power? With no crystal ball to the future, I think it's fair to assume they were not thinking, "Let's do this! We'll be so popular and respected!"
> I would want to know things like how far it is from the tomb to the road
We would all like to know that, but we don't really know in our modern era where the tomb was, or even where the road was. Generally Roman crucifixion victims were erected at roadside to intimidate prospective perpetrators, and the Gospel of John (the account with the most eyewitness morsels) tells us that the tomb was "at the place where Jesus was crucified" (Jn. 19.41). We get the idea it was like right there within view, but we don't have the specific information.
> how far the tomb is from the guardhouse
Two factors here. We don't know exactly where the tomb is, but traditional sites (from the 300s AD) give us a hint. Second, we don't know if it's a Jewish guard or a Roman guard (even though I think the evidence for a Roman guard is stronger). If it's a Roman guard, they usually barracked in the Antonia fortress near the Temple Mount, about a quarter mile from the traditional site of Jesus' death and burial. If it's a Jewish guard, still about a quarter mile, but from a different angle. Antonia was north of the Temple Mount; the Sanhedrin section south of it.
> what the terrain was like
Jerusalem is on a hilltop, so everything is "down" from center city (Old Jerusalem). It doesn't descend too quickly in that part, though. It's almost level, but not really; it's still a descent (you could probably coast a bike down it).
> how fast people were able to get to the tomb
We don't know where the disciples were holed up on Saturday night, so that's tough to say. The Gospels indicate it was fairly close because (1) Mary was able to get to them fairly quickly, and odds are she was no athlete, and (2) they ran to the tomb (Jn. 20.2).
> what the visibility was (for instance were there hills, walls, trees, etc)
There's no way to know what it looked like then. No cameras or paintings.
> was the tomb in a high traffic area
The traditional site of the tomb is on the west side of the city, which makes sense. There's a photograph from the late 1800s of a rock formation on the west side that looks like a skull ("The Place of the Skull"), and there's a road right beside it. We don't have much to go by.
> how often did other police (or 1st century equivalent) patrol the area?
Probably not much at all. That's why a special unit had to be assigned.
> If the crucifixion was spontaneous, ie they just grabbed jesus off the street and crucified him, maybe not.
This is pretty much what happened. He was arrested late one evening, tried through the night, and on a cross by 9 a.m.
> His arrest piqued the curiosity of some of the population of Jerusalem", there was an arrest and a trial and all that would probably have taken some time
Yes, and this would have been between 6-9 a.m.
> I think they put the body of Jesus in his family tomb, right?
Wrong. Joseph of Arimathea put Jesus' corpse in *his* family tomb. Joseph was a wealthy man, a member of the Council (either a governmental body or the Sanhedrin), so most likely worked in Jerusalem, lived in nearby Arimathea, and had a family tomb on the west side of the city.
> So the burial place was known and ways to steal the body from that location had time to be fleshed out.
The crucifixion happened very quickly. Arrested Thursday night, on trial through the night, convicted by early morning, and on the cross by 9 a.m. Dead by 3, and only then does Joseph step forward to ask for the body, to place it in his family tomb. Extremely little time to develop a flawless plan to be fleshed out.
> I don't know that the Bible can be considered evidence of a resurrection because it is a religious text and has many myths and metaphors in it.
Hmm. It doesn't have any myths in it. It does use metaphoric language on occasion, but there's no question that the disciples taught he was raised from the dead and appeared to individuals/groups, and Jesus' disciples intended for us to interpret the resurrection as an actual event, not a metaphor.
> If Jesus were resurrected I would personally (I don't know about other people) expect a LOT more to be written about where he went, who he talked to, etc.
He was only around intermittently, not continually, after the resurrection. We only have account of 11 appearances.
> I would myself be very interested to hear directly the teachings of Jesus and I can't really get this from the Bible for whatever reason, I don't know why. The wording and context isn't clear to me.
This is an interesting comment. The four Gospel accounts are the history of the ministry and teachings of Jesus. Can we talk about this more. What is it that isn't clear to you?
> As I was suggesting before I think the passion and drive that they had to steal the body, is the same passion that they had to preach the message of Jesus.
They preached Jesus as physically risen with a fervor that went against governmental leaders trying to shut them down, and eventual persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Have you seen Zero Dark Thirty? Everybody breaks eventually when tortured and threatened. Everybody. But not a single one of the disciples did. Do you know the history of Watergate? They kept the conspiracy together for a short while, but when real threat came, they sang like canaries.
> I have to ask you at this point though, what was it that they were preaching at this point exactly?
It would probably be best for you to read it yourself.
Acts 2.14-36
Acts 3.12-26
Acts 4.8-12
Acts 10.34-43
Those will get you started. I don't want to bury you with too much reading.
While this is certainly possible from the vantage point of do-able, we have to infer the most reasonable conclusion. Given what we know about the atmosphere that weekend, the personality of the disciples, and the astounding change that came over them in just a short amount of time, the prospective of theft doesn't fit the picture. They believed and taught (and died for) the story of resurrection.
> The presence of the guards at the tomb still suggests to me the answer to this is yes.
I think you're looking at this situation both anachronistically and regressively. WE know Christianity became popular; WE know it met with success. But what did THEY know? What were THEIR realistic perceptions of the movement. Their leader was betrayed, tried, and executed by both Roman and Jewish authorities in cahoots with each other. Does this give them reason to think positively? With their leader dead (the teacher, the miracle worker), does this give them motivation to carry on? Did they think there would be money to gain? Good sex? Fame and power? With no crystal ball to the future, I think it's fair to assume they were not thinking, "Let's do this! We'll be so popular and respected!"
> I would want to know things like how far it is from the tomb to the road
We would all like to know that, but we don't really know in our modern era where the tomb was, or even where the road was. Generally Roman crucifixion victims were erected at roadside to intimidate prospective perpetrators, and the Gospel of John (the account with the most eyewitness morsels) tells us that the tomb was "at the place where Jesus was crucified" (Jn. 19.41). We get the idea it was like right there within view, but we don't have the specific information.
> how far the tomb is from the guardhouse
Two factors here. We don't know exactly where the tomb is, but traditional sites (from the 300s AD) give us a hint. Second, we don't know if it's a Jewish guard or a Roman guard (even though I think the evidence for a Roman guard is stronger). If it's a Roman guard, they usually barracked in the Antonia fortress near the Temple Mount, about a quarter mile from the traditional site of Jesus' death and burial. If it's a Jewish guard, still about a quarter mile, but from a different angle. Antonia was north of the Temple Mount; the Sanhedrin section south of it.
> what the terrain was like
Jerusalem is on a hilltop, so everything is "down" from center city (Old Jerusalem). It doesn't descend too quickly in that part, though. It's almost level, but not really; it's still a descent (you could probably coast a bike down it).
> how fast people were able to get to the tomb
We don't know where the disciples were holed up on Saturday night, so that's tough to say. The Gospels indicate it was fairly close because (1) Mary was able to get to them fairly quickly, and odds are she was no athlete, and (2) they ran to the tomb (Jn. 20.2).
> what the visibility was (for instance were there hills, walls, trees, etc)
There's no way to know what it looked like then. No cameras or paintings.
> was the tomb in a high traffic area
The traditional site of the tomb is on the west side of the city, which makes sense. There's a photograph from the late 1800s of a rock formation on the west side that looks like a skull ("The Place of the Skull"), and there's a road right beside it. We don't have much to go by.
> how often did other police (or 1st century equivalent) patrol the area?
Probably not much at all. That's why a special unit had to be assigned.
> If the crucifixion was spontaneous, ie they just grabbed jesus off the street and crucified him, maybe not.
This is pretty much what happened. He was arrested late one evening, tried through the night, and on a cross by 9 a.m.
> His arrest piqued the curiosity of some of the population of Jerusalem", there was an arrest and a trial and all that would probably have taken some time
Yes, and this would have been between 6-9 a.m.
> I think they put the body of Jesus in his family tomb, right?
Wrong. Joseph of Arimathea put Jesus' corpse in *his* family tomb. Joseph was a wealthy man, a member of the Council (either a governmental body or the Sanhedrin), so most likely worked in Jerusalem, lived in nearby Arimathea, and had a family tomb on the west side of the city.
> So the burial place was known and ways to steal the body from that location had time to be fleshed out.
The crucifixion happened very quickly. Arrested Thursday night, on trial through the night, convicted by early morning, and on the cross by 9 a.m. Dead by 3, and only then does Joseph step forward to ask for the body, to place it in his family tomb. Extremely little time to develop a flawless plan to be fleshed out.
> I don't know that the Bible can be considered evidence of a resurrection because it is a religious text and has many myths and metaphors in it.
Hmm. It doesn't have any myths in it. It does use metaphoric language on occasion, but there's no question that the disciples taught he was raised from the dead and appeared to individuals/groups, and Jesus' disciples intended for us to interpret the resurrection as an actual event, not a metaphor.
> If Jesus were resurrected I would personally (I don't know about other people) expect a LOT more to be written about where he went, who he talked to, etc.
He was only around intermittently, not continually, after the resurrection. We only have account of 11 appearances.
> I would myself be very interested to hear directly the teachings of Jesus and I can't really get this from the Bible for whatever reason, I don't know why. The wording and context isn't clear to me.
This is an interesting comment. The four Gospel accounts are the history of the ministry and teachings of Jesus. Can we talk about this more. What is it that isn't clear to you?
> As I was suggesting before I think the passion and drive that they had to steal the body, is the same passion that they had to preach the message of Jesus.
They preached Jesus as physically risen with a fervor that went against governmental leaders trying to shut them down, and eventual persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Have you seen Zero Dark Thirty? Everybody breaks eventually when tortured and threatened. Everybody. But not a single one of the disciples did. Do you know the history of Watergate? They kept the conspiracy together for a short while, but when real threat came, they sang like canaries.
> I have to ask you at this point though, what was it that they were preaching at this point exactly?
It would probably be best for you to read it yourself.
Acts 2.14-36
Acts 3.12-26
Acts 4.8-12
Acts 10.34-43
Those will get you started. I don't want to bury you with too much reading.
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