Did Jesus rise from the dead? (Part 3)

This is the third part of my series based on the booklet Verdict On The Empty Tomb by Val Grieve.

Click here for part 1.

Click here for part 2.

Chapter 3: What happened to Jesus?

The author takes for granted that the “facts” outlined in the previous chapter (that Jesus lived, was crucified and that his tomb was later found to be empty) are “admitted by friend and foe of Christianity alike.” As we have seen in the previous article, this is clearly not the case, as the very existence of Jesus is open to question. However, for the sake of argument, we shall assume for now that he was a real person.

The author goes on to assert that there are four possible answers to the question of why Jesus’ tomb was empty: “fraud, swoon, delusion and miracle.” These are not the only possible reasons for the tomb being empty, of course, but we shall examine some other reasons later. For now, let us look at what he has to say about these four possibilities.

Fraud

This is the idea that the disciples came to the tomb by night, when the Roman guards were asleep, and stole the body of Jesus. This story is mentioned in Matthew28:11-15, where the guards reported to the chief priests and the elders that Jesus had been resurrected. According to this account, they paid the guards a large amount of money to tell people that Jesus’ disciples had stolen his body.

The author finds this unbelievable, and so do I, though perhaps for different reasons. Would people who had witnessed a genuine miracle, the resurrection of a dead man, really be so easy to buy off to keep quiet about it? Also, if the chief priests knew that Jesus had really been resurrected, surely they would have realised that he was indeed someone special and wouldn’t have continued not believing in his message. No, it seems to me that this story was probably made up by the author of the Gospel of Matthew. Indeed, not one of the other Gospels (including the Gospel of Mark, from which Matthew’s Gospel was largely plagiarised) ever mentions that a guard was posted at the tomb, much less that they made up a story about the disciples stealing the body. After all, why guard a dead man?

It is possible that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, but I think it unlikely. If tradition is to be believed, many of the early disciples were martyred. As the author himself points out, “Men may die for what they sincerely think is true, but it is another thing to die for what you know is a lie.” That does not, of course, mean that the resurrection story was true. It merely means that they thought it was true, which would certainly not be the case had they stolen the body themselves.

Swoon

The second idea suggested is that Jesus did not actually die on the cross, but just lost consciousness due to loss of blood and exhaustion. He later revived in the tomb.

On this point, the author and I are in complete agreement. The Romans were experts in cruel torture and execution, and would be unlikely to have allowed Jesus to be taken off the cross and buried unless they were satisfied that he was dead. Then there is the fact that such a severely injured man, left on his own in a cold, dark rock-cut tomb for three days with no food, water, or medical care, would probably have died even if he did revive in the tomb.

Finally, even if he did somehow manage to survive for a whole weekend in this severely injured, weakened state, there is no way he would have had the strength to roll away the large stone covering the entrance to the tomb. Thus the idea that Jesus only lost consciousness rather than dying is a non-starter.

Delusion

Delusions often arise due to someone expecting something so much that eventually he believes it has happened. Like the wife who loses her husband. For years she has been used to him coming home from work at 6pm. Each night at this time she thinks of him and longs to see him again. Eventually she suffers from the delusion that her husband has come home and spoken to her.

According to this explanation, this is what happened here. The disciples expected Jesus to rise from the dead. This expectation led to hallucination. The whole thing was wish fulfilment and it was ‘all in the mind’.

The author goes on to argue that the disciples were not, in fact, expecting Jesus to rise from the dead. This is odd, because according to the Bible Jesus himself had told them this was going to happen (Matthew 26:32). However, even if we allow this, that does not rule out wishful thinking, as in the above quoted example.

The author goes on to point out that Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:6, states that over 500 people all saw Christ alive at the same time, and it is highly unlikely that they would all have had the exact same delusion. However, we only have the word of Paul for this, and he was not there at the time of this supposed miraculous occurrence. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Paul was either lying or simply got his facts wrong.

Miracle

This is, of course, the answer favoured by the author, who was himself a Christian. No evidence is given in this chapter, but he states that he will go on to give the evidence for this position in the next few chapters. We shall therefore return to this answer and consider the evidence over the course of the next few posts.

Other possible explanations

There are other possibilities that the author has not considered. First of all, although (if you believe tradition) most of the original disciples of Jesus were martyred for their faith, that does not mean that what they believed was actually true. Members of many faiths have been martyred because they sincerely believed, but that does not make their beliefs true.

There are no first-person accounts written by the first disciples, nor are there any eyewitness accounts of their deaths. Our only historical sources were written much later, based on hearsay. This is shaky ground on which to establish a truth claim.

Even if the disciples really were martyred, history is full of people who were martyred for a lie because they believed it was true. The disciples of Jesus would hardly be unique in this regard.

In the next post, continuing on the author’s theme of evidence for the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus actually taking place, we shall examine what he calls the direct evidence of the disciples.


Click here for part 4.