Again, how did this handful of folks or this guy steal the body? And why? Again, there's no credible answer. The only reasonable explanation for the missing body is that the disciples stole it. But is this plausible? These are the same men who scattered when Jesus was arrested. They were cowardly. They were disillusioned and depressed. And they would need to overpower the Roman guards. It is not likely that they would have had the courage or motivation to carry out such a plan. Why would they steal it? Possibly they wanted to start a new religion, to gain fame and fortune. This is possible but not likely as we've seen in previous posts. The disciples would have put themselves in great risk to steal the body. The Jews and Romans both wanted this disruption stopped, had they believed that the disciples stole the body they would have dragged them into prison and beaten them until they confessed and produced the body. No such thing happened.Mulu wrote:Vaelahr wrote:
Thousands of people do not die for what they know to be a lie.
Only a handful would have known it was a lie, perhaps only one, the guy who made up the story in the first place.
The early Christians rested their belief not only on the fact of the empty tomb, but on the fact that they themselves had seen Jesus alive after his burial. He was seen not once or twice, but at least ten recorded times; and not just one at a time, but in groups of two, seven, ten, eleven, and five hundred. How their lives changed after they had seen the risen Jesus is another mark of the story's truthfulness. The disciples became the forerunners of a new movement that swept the world. They spoke out for the message. They were persecuted for the message and they ultimately gave their lives for this message: Jesus Christ rose from the dead.Mulu wrote:Vaelahr wrote:Furthermore, there was no motive for such a lie. Lies are always told for some selfish advantage. What advantage did the "conspirators" derive from their "lie" ? They were scorned, imprisoned, enslaved, tortured, exiled, crucified, boiled alive, burned alive, beheaded, disemboweled, and/or fed to lions in the Colosseum.....hardly a list of perks.
You could say the same thing about Al Qaida, the insurgents in Iraq, etc. Their members have faced tremendous adversity. Being willing to die for a belief does not make that belief truthful.
Reliable historical sources tell us that all twelve of the disciples except John died as martyrs. Peter was crucified in Rome. Paul was beheaded. And James was stoned to death, to name a few. This is of crucial importance. If they had pulled off a hoax, why would they go to their graves proclaiming that it actually happened. Certainly, many have died for a lie. Nazis gave their lives for what was false. Plenty of other religious followers die and have died for their faith, but the crucial point here is that the disciples would have known it was a lie, if they had stolen the body or made up the story. They all would have died for what they knew was a lie. Is it plausible to believe that not one of them, under the threat of death would have admitted, "we made the whole thing up?" What they saw changed their lives. They believed they had seen Jesus Christ rise from the dead.
And because of what they believed they saw, these men who were meek suddenly became powerful spokesmen for Jesus Christ. Peter who denied Christ a few weeks earlier preached to over three thousand people in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The resurrection was not a later addition to the Christian faith, but the very cause and incentive for it. They rested their faith, not on historical records, but on what they had seen with their own eyes. The records were the result of their faith, not the cause of it. Christianity hinges on the historical fact of Christ’s resurrection, for without it the entire faith is found fraudulent. Had there been no resurrection, there would have been no New Testament, and no Christianity.
So not only were they now bold spokesmen, but of a fundamentally different religion than Judaism. For a Jew of the first century to change his religion or preach some heretical doctrine would be to risk eternal damnation. For us today, we're not surprised by new cults, but this kind of hoax is almost unthinkable in first century Judaism whose culture and beliefs changed slowly. They were convinced that what they saw and experienced was true.
If the empty tomb and resurrection was a fabrication, why did not at least one of the many disciples break away from the rest and reveal the claim as a lie? The Temple authorities were willing to pay good money to anyone who would provide such information. Or if money was not alluring enough, what about the possibility of proving the resurrection a lie in order to draw disciples away to follow some enterprising would-be cult leader? History has shown that this role is a popular one, and this would have been a golden opportunity. Without the strong and persuasive evidence of the resurrection, the continued unity of the early Christian leaders is inexplicable in light of the human tendency to want to promote oneself. The assumption that they were all committed to the truth of their message is the only adequate explanation of their continued unity and the lack of any revelation of fraud. Those who lie for personal gain do not stick together very long, especially when hardship decreases the benefits.
Because of the strength of the evidence that something did happen that changed the disciples' lives, some critics have suggested the idea that what they saw was an hallucination. There are two problems with this theory: it doesn't match what we know of the account and it doesn't match what we know of the psychology of hallucinations. The idea of mass hallucinations has been disproven in modern psychology. If you hold that what the disciples saw was an hallucination, then you must acknowledge that they experienced this hallucination in groups of three, four, twelve, and even five hundred people. Moreover, the hallucination theory does not fit what we know of the disciples' expectations. As I have said earlier, the disciples were not expecting Christ to rise from the dead. They had no concept in Judaism of the Messiah rising physically from the dead with the same body, a body they could touch and interact with. Nor do the descriptions given in the gospels reflect the kind of vagueness that makes up an hallucination. What they experienced was concrete. They could recall and explain it clearly. And because many of them experienced the same thing, separately and together, they could confirm their experiences with each other. The hallucination theory also fails to explain one other fact: the empty tomb. Had the disciples, and many others, hallucinated Jesus' appearances, the commotion they were causing in Jerusalem could have been easily stopped by producing the body. This is an argument from silence. In other words, there is nothing said in history about whether the Romans and Jews tried to produce Jesus' body. But it is crucial in this case that there is nothing said in recorded history about what happened to Jesus' body other than what we find in the gospels. Had Jesus' body been exhumed by the Jews or Romans and presented to the mass of people who were deluded about his resurrection, it is hard to believe that the early church could have gotten started. But the movement did start and the resurrection of Jesus was the grounds on which it began.
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