From: Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill)
Subject: Re: Easter whodunnit
Organization: University of Tasmania (Australia)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 01:43:26 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.202349.931@nmsu.edu>, epowers@mccoy (POWERS,  ERIK  LEE ) writes:
> 
> In article <1ipt02INNcti@wupost.wustl.edu> oser@fermi.wustl.edu (Scott Oser)  
> writes:
> > 	Let's assume for the moment that Jesus did not rise from the dead.
> > One possible and often repeated explanation of the subsequent events is that
> > graverobbers took the body, resulting in an empty tomb.  (Calm down, theists.
> > If you don't want to assume these things, you don't have to play.)
> > 	If this is what actually happened, then let's play Sherlock and try
> > to see whodunnit?  I've come up with four possibilities:
> > 
> > 1) Ordinary graverobbers.  Perhaps ordinary graverobbers, unconnected to
> > Jesus or his disciples, took the body to sell to medical students or whatever
> > they did with robbed corpses.  This theory has the advantage that it allows
> > Jesus' disciples to honestly believe that he may have risen.  After all, the
> > body had mysteriously disappeared, and their upset emotional state as well
> > as certain things Jesus might have said could have led them to believe that
> > he rose from the dead.
> 
> 		  The two major problems I see here are that there does not seem to be any  
> reason for them to take the body.  There is no indication that any valuables  
> were on the body.  The only possible value would have been in any expensive  
> perfumes or oils or whatever used to prepare the body (an ancient conspiracy of  
> poor morticians?)...but then why leave the wrapping behind, which would have  
> contained most of these materials?  The only value other than that would be in  
> the hoax itself, which you address later.  The other major problem is the  
> presence of the guards.  Failure to carry out guard duty had serious  
> consequences, death for those in the Roman military, so it seems unlikely the  
> guards would allow anyone to waltz off with the body, at least without a hefty  
> bribe and an attempt to conceal the robbery, which they obviously did not do,  
> since several people found the tomb open.

									(Other possible senarios and Erik's objections about the guards deleted)

I wouldn't let the business about the guards bother you too much Erik, it's
pretty likely there were no guards at all. The guards are only mentioned in
one gospel, Matthew: there isn't so much as a hint of them in the other
three. The early christians would have been faced with the objection that
Yeshua's body could simply have been stolen or moved. Matthew seems
to be particularly keen to counter this objection, so he tells us that the tomb
was sealed and that a Roman guard was appointed specifically to prevent
this from happening. This story is suspect on several grounds.

To begin with, all of the evangelists would have been aware that many
people didn't believe the resurrection story and thought that the body had
simply been stolen. If there had been a guard and a seal as Matthew claims
it is very strange that none of the other gospels mention them.

Secondly, the fact that the Saduccees request the guard from Pilate, and that
the guards later report back to him would seem to indicate that they were 
Roman soldiers. Matthew tells us that after the resurrection these hard-bitten
veterans go to the Priests and elders and tell them quite specifically that Jesus
rose from the dead. Now, the Priests may not have been fans of Jesus, but surely
a squad of Roman legionaries stating straight out that the guy had come back
to life would make them stop and think. But no, their first reaction is to bribe
the soldiers and create a cover-up. They get the soldiers to tell everyone that
they had fallen asleep and that the disciples  had then stolen the body. This
is pretty implausible.

But the idea of them telling their commanding officer that they had fallen
asleep on duty is even more implausible. The penalty for this in the Roman
Army was to be slowly beaten to death. I don't care if the Priests did bribe
these ficticious guards, no bribe would be worth being beaten to death with
vine staffs! To sum up: the story of the guards is a fiction cooked up by the
author of Matthew to try to counter a common objection to the resurrection
story.

This is not to say that I believe the body was stolen, however. I think any
detective work which takes the stories about the resurrection given in
the gospels too seriously is going to get no-where. These tales developed
long after the fact (as their many contradictions indicate) and the earliest
account of the resurrection, Paul's in 1Corinthians 15, mentions nothing
about bodies, tombs, guards and angels, it just talks about ethereal 
'appearances' to the disciples in Jerusalem and to himself on the road to
Damascus. The rest of the trimmings came later. Compare Mark's (early)
account with Matthew's much more complex and dramatic (later) one.
Isn't funny how Mark's young man in white becomes an angel with a
face like lightning. It's also odd that he forgot to mention the earthquake,
the guards, and the people who rose from their tombs and wandered into
the city. Sounds like a story which grew in the telling to me.

Tim O'Neill
Tasmanian Devil

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