There are certain facts about the death of Jesus that no serious student of history can dispute.
Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who walked planet earth, was crucified, died, and was buried in a sealed tomb. Check out the four Gospel accounts in the Bible (a Christian source), Josephus or the Jewish Talmud (Jewish sources), Pliny the Younger (a Roman, pagan source).
Where historians (and people—not that a historian isn’t a person, FYI) begin to differ though, is with what happened after the death of Jesus.
On the third day (Easter Sunday morning), the tomb of Jesus was empty for some reason.
Now the question you have to ask yourself is, for what reason did his body go missing? How do we account for the missing body of Jesus of Nazareth, given all the historical evidence we have?
What best explains how or why? What is the reason we are going to accept?
There are a lot of theories, but which theory best accounts for the data we have?
Theory #1: Jesus just fainted, he didn’t really die.
The “swoon” theory says that Jesus fainted during his crucifixion. When he woke up, he was in the tomb.
One of the main problems with this theory is that it doesn’t account for all of the painful trauma Jesus went through, which we have on historical record. He was beaten almost to the point of death by the order of Pontius Pilate (a Roman Governor who really existed in human history), just one lash short.
Then he was marched out to the site upon which his body would hang from a cross, with nails through his hands and one long nail through his lower legs. If you’ve ever been on an airplane for several hours, can you imagine hanging from a cross for several hours? To breathe, a victim had to push down on the nails to propel the body upward, in order to catch more air. A lot of crucified people died due to asphyxiation.
And since the Romans were expert executioners, if they didn’t break a victim’s legs to ensure a proper death they would stab the victim with a spear to make sure they are really dead. That happened to Jesus. A soldier speared him to make sure he wasn’t faking it (John 19:34).
But, let’s say he did fake it.
If he woke up inside of an empty tomb, there are a few more problems to consider. Given his poor health, Jesus would have needed to roll back a stone that blocked the entrance, and he would have needed to overcome an entire Roman guard too, by himself, just to escape. Which, by the way, with all that blood loss overnight and without having any water, that survival rate would be a miracle in itself, wouldn’t it?
Theory #2: The women and disciples were dumb and accidentally went to the wrong tomb.
Oops. The “wrong tomb” theory claims the disciples went to the wrong tomb and just thought it was empty. The foolish women, you know, who were the first ones to have witnessed the so-called resurrection—well, those women got it wrong, and then later the disciples messed it up too.
If this theory had a hint of truth to it, then all any enemy of Christianity would have had to do was point people to the right full tomb in order to prove that the women, and the disciples, were all lying about Jesus being raised from the dead.
The problem with this theory is that, instead of turning up the still dead body of Jesus, the earliest Jewish sources claimed that the disciples stole the body. Hmmm…
Theory #3: The body was stolen by someone.
The “stolen body” theory says the body of Jesus was stolen. Maybe someone sent Liam Neeson back in time to take it?
The only people who would have had any motive to steal the body of Jesus would have been the disciples, at least according to Jewish sources. So let’s consider this since it’s a popular claim.
All of the earliest accounts we have of the disciples paint a picture of the disciples as sad, grieving, and mourning. They just lost their Lord to death. They were not in good spirits but were absolutely defeated. Peter was embarrassed for denying that he even knew Jesus three times.
The only sort of thing that could change their despairing hearts is if something like the resurrection actually happened on Sunday. There’s a decisive shift in the behavior of the disciples from Friday and Saturday, to Sunday. After they hear the news that Jesus is alive, their spirits are lifted and they begin doing things that no person who is hiding a lie or stolen body cover-up would do: they are all willing to be beaten, tortured, mocked at, and killed for preaching that Christ was raised.
Nobody risks their own lives like that to cover up a lie. Study the Watergate scandal, you’ll see what I mean. The truth comes out when people are put under pressure. The problem with the disciples is, they weren’t lying.
Who else would have had the motive to take his body?
Not the Jews. Not the Romans.
If an enemy of Christianity wanted the religion to stay dead with its founder, all they had to do was keep that body in the grave. It was in their own best interest to protect the burial site of Jesus. That’s why the Jews had Pilate set a seal and guard on the tomb. It was intended to make it very difficult, even impossible, for anyone to mess with the tomb.
Who else?
I’ve heard another theory once. It’s called the alien stolen body theory. Of course, this theory hinges on the belief in aliens first, which is not historically proven and universally accepted to begin with. Then prove that aliens would have cared most about a Jew who lived in the first century, more than anyone else in human history, to beam up his body so that the rest of us would just ponder what really went down on Easter morning. It all sounds ridiculous. Next theory.
Theory #4: Jesus had an identical twin.
The “twin” theory (or “the prestige theory” as I call it—named after Christopher Nolan’s film, The Prestige, with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as nemesis magicians, with the ultimate trick completed by Bale’s secret twin brother that has Jackman’s character going crazy!) says that Jesus had an identical twin brother who hid and remained unknown until the end of Jesus’ life for the final act. When brother #1 really died, brother #2 swapped places with the corpse, ditched the body, and came out risen…err….resuscitated?
There is absolutely no evidence for Jesus having a twin brother, so this would be a Guinness World Record for the world’s best-kept secret. However, even if Jesus did have a twin, how does this theory account for his missing body? How did he manage to sneak into the tomb with the Roman guard there, and ditch the corpse of his brother?
Why would two twin brothers both agree to die to perpetuate a lie? The first brother at the cross, and the second brother after appearing in post-“resurrection” situations all across Palestine, until disappearing or dying so that there would be no physical trace of his body. As you start to unpack the logic of this theory, it’s a stretch with no shred of evidence. Maybe this is why many investigative journalists and researchers end up converting to Christianity?
Let’s keep going though.
Theory #5: People were on mass hallucinogenics (or something).
The “hallucination” theory says that the women, the disciples, and any other eyewitnesses (hundreds) all together experienced mass, community hallucination.
The thing about this theory is that it doesn’t account for the nature of hallucinations. Hallucinations happen to individuals, not large groups. Groups can sometimes experience what is called mass hysteria, or can be tricked as a group (think of a magic show where a whole crowd believes a person was cut in half), these things are different from hallucinations.
Once again, those who are operating under the pressures of hysteria won’t continuously, for years and decades, try to persuade the world in the ways that the first followers of Christ did. Many of these Christians were persecuted, died, or exiled for proclaiming the truth about the resurrection of Jesus.
But like with one of the earlier theories, the best way to handle people hallucinating on an individualistic level, or groups acting hysterically, is to provide evidence. Where did the body of Jesus go? How did a bunch of hysterical people manage to get rid of the body? All any reasonable person would have to do to prove Christianity wrong is produce the dead body of Jesus. That would have put an end to the God delusion.
But it didn’t. Because, well, we’ll get to that.
Theory #6: It’s just a fairy tale.
Can we just shrug off the resurrection of Jesus as a fairy tale, as something in the land of make-believe that gives us a good moral of the story?
Christianity itself, in the words and works of Jesus, doesn’t let us do that.
He never intended for us to only imagine that he existed, he intended for us to believe in him in reality—that we may have life.
But this theory tries to distinguish between the Jesus who lived in history and the Christ of faith, in whom people believe. One is historical, and the other is fictional make-believe. The thing is, there is too much evidence that the Jesus of history, as recorded and well-known in the first century is the same Jesus we are called to believe in.
When the apostle Paul writes to the churches around Corinth, he says that he “received” a tradition that has been passed down to him (1 Cor. 15:3-7). Paul probably professed faith in Christ around 31-35 CE, but the “tradition” he is referring to was already codified as tradition within a few years of the empty tomb. That’s very little time between the main event and Paul’s profession of faith—which means he had very close proximity to the Jesus of history in his life, death, and resurrection. If Jesus was just a fairy tale, well, Paul would have kept on going as a Pharisee because, as he says, “If Christ was not raised, our faith is in vain.”
Theory #7: Those who were there as eyewitnesses were all wrong.
Skepticism about what went down in the first century came around long before the Enlightenment. Between 609-632 CE, the Qur’an, which is the textbook of Islam, denies not only a historical resurrection but even denies that Jesus was properly crucified. In Sura 4:157-158, the Qur’an says, “they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but so it was made to appear to him . . . Rather, Allah raised him up toward Himself, and Allah is all-mighty, all-wise.”
This religious text was written six hundred years after the much earlier historical sources I mentioned at the beginning of this article. When we study history, to get an accurate understanding of what happened we start with primary sources (texts like the Bible, Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, etc.) not secondary sources (texts like the Qu'r’an or the Book of Mormon, which were written much later in time and context).
Sort of like with the alien theory, why? Why would God deceive everybody who was historically present at the cross and/or tomb (the text doesn’t really specify exactly when Jesus was lifted to Allah, somewhere between that I guess?) by making it look like he was raised? What’s the point of that, really though, other than to discount an earlier religion so another, much later religion can account for what came before it? Based on the evidence, it would make more sense to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, which had multiple biblical and coherent reasons for it than it would to believe in this theory.
Theory #8: Who cares, why do I need to disprove the resurrection? Resurrections don’t happen because they cannot happen.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
There have been a lot of alternative theories throughout history to try to account for the missing body of Jesus. Most of them are pretty laughable though, and that’s why a lot of skeptics have just decided to throw their hands up in the air and say, “Who cares?”
As William Lane Craig notes about scholars today, saying “what explanation of the empty tomb do modern critics offer who deny the resurrection? The fact is that they are self-confessedly without any explanation to offer.”
Since no one alive in the 21st century has witnessed a bodily resurrection from the grave, the a priori belief is reinforced that resurrections don’t happen because they can’t happen. Instead of believing in the resurrection, since there is as Craig says, “simply no plausible natural explanation today to account for Jesus' tomb being empty,” some scholars choose to live with this as “an inexplicable mystery."
The common response to the question of the resurrection is basically, “Well, we just don’t know do we?”
But there is a grave problem to this response. (Yes I know, I’m punny.)
The greatest problem with this theory is, like Paschall’s wager goes, what if you’re wrong?
Suspending judgment is fine when it comes to questions like, “Why do we have an appendix?” The answer to that question doesn’t result in life or death for us, it’s just annoying to us that we really don’t know why. Or another one that bothers us, “Why do men have nipples?” Once again, living your life trying to seek an answer to that question is very different from deciding whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who lived, died, and was raised from the dead.
The resurrection of Jesus, if it is true and it happened, is of greatest importance because it means that everything Jesus said and did is also true. If he was raised, then he is the King not only of the Jews as the soldiers and Pontius Pilate of Rome mocked, but of the whole creation, as king of creation he is worthy of all praise from his whole creation. It also means, uncomfortably so, that one day soon he is going to return not in salvation like he did the first time by dying for us on a cross in weakness but coming in final judgment of sin, evil, and all injustice everywhere.
So we have to care about this question. One day, we will be called to account for our answer and response to the greatest question on earth and throughout the universe. Do I believe in Jesus?
The Unbelievable Truth is Actually Believable
The theory that accounts for the evidence we have and makes the most sense out of all of the data we have on hand is that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth happened. The unbelievable, that a person who claimed to be God was God and proved it by killing death and rising forth from out of the grave, is most believable.
D.H. Van Daalen has gone on record saying, "It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions."
I know the bodily, physical, historical resurrection of Jesus is a hard pill to swallow. It’s difficult to take in because there is an element of faith or trust that goes along with it. That’s because what is being offered to you is not a principle to assent to with your mind, but you’re being offered a person to believe in with your heart, mind, soul, and strength. God in Jesus Christ is calling out to you, he is calling you by name to believe in him with everything you’ve got and with all that you are. Do you believe in him?
Jesus rose from the dead for the justification of all who believe in his name on Easter Sunday. The stone was rolled back. The tomb was empty. He is risen indeed.
