From: epowers@spock (POWERS,  ERIK  LEE )
Subject: Re: Easter whodunnit
Organization: New Mexico State University
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1993 05:41:36 GMT

In article <1993Jan12.014326.15371@newsroom.utas.edu.au>  
Tim.ONeill@english.utas.edu.au (Tim O'Neill) writes:
> 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:

[graverobber scenario and my objections to them being "ordinary" graverobbers  
deleted]

> 									(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.

		Oh, I don't know.  The sense of the gospels to me does not seem to be one of  
convincing nonbelievers or even providing information useful in an evangelistic  
argument.  They seem more to be a summary of information for those who already  
believed.  Why bother with hefty detail for people who already believe,  
especially with the amount of time it took to copy text?  If convincing  
nonbelievers was the objective, then the absence of a lot of detail would be  
very suspicious (I mean, what happened to the rest of the sermon on the mount?   
It supposedly went on for an entire day, yet the account can be read in about  
four minutes.  Surely the early Christians weren't THAT stupid, to claim a four  
minute reading really took an entire day to deliver!).  I just don't think the  
purpose was to convince.  At least, that's not the feel I get when I read 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.

		I have seen the claim that because the soldiers reported back to the priests  
that they must have been temple guards.  That still strikes me as odd, since a  
if you found a temple guard asleep at his post, you were supposed to set fire  
to his clothes.

	 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.

		I'm not so sure it's implausible.  People will do a lot to retain power.  It  
is consistent, at least, with the stories of their other reactions to Jesus'  
miracles.  (BTW, I don't think the action would have been unanimous.  When was  
the last time a large body of rulers acted unanimously?  I don't think Matthew  
was trying to imply that every single one of them were so dense.)

> 
> 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.

			Remember Pilate's character, though.  He had been railroaded by the priests  
into doing something he had a lot of distaste for.  If he had wanted to be rid  
of the situation badly enough and not get the priests any more riled than they  
were, he'd have gone along with the story gladly.  Send the soldiers away, not  
make any big fuss (the disciples certainly weren't creating any stir about it),  
and hope to hell the priests didn't get him in trouble for that idiocy of  
marching on Jerusalem and trying (in the priest's eyes) to set up Roman gods  
there.  I see no reason, in this situation, for the guards to have been beaten  
to death.  It would have caused more trouble for Pilate than not.

> 
> 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. 

    As with the gospels, I don't think Paul was trying to convince  
nonbelievers.  The only book I can think of in the NT that comes close might be  
Romans.  So the lack of detail really doesn't bother me.


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.

		Perhaps so, but we still have to pick and choose what is relevant to the  
stealing of the body, which, after all, is the object of our Whodunnit.  There  
must be a reason to reject when we reject some details (like the presence of  
guards, which I'm not yet convinced should be given up) and accept others (like  
the idea that Jesus was ever really crucified, and that some other jailbird  
wasn't beaten to an unrecognizable pulp and crucified in his place).

                       I still think this is fun, inspector, and hope 
																							you will continue.
																																													Erik Powers
> 
> Tim O'Neill
> Tasmanian Devil
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