THE VIEW - THE DISCIPLES STOLE THE BODY

Matthew records the following as the theory which prevailed at his time to explain away the resurrection of Christ:

"Now while they were on their way, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and counseled together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, and said, 'You are to say, "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep." And if this should come to the governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble.' And they took the money and did as they had been instructed; and this story was widely spread among the Jews, and is to this day" (Matthew 28:11-15).

That the theft theory as recorded in Matthew was popular among the Jews for some time is seen in the writings of Justin Martyr, Tertullian and others.

Professor Thorburn makes the following observations:

"In Justin's Dialogue Against Trypho 108, the Jew speaks of 'one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified; but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven.'

"So also Tertullian (Apology 21) says: 'The grave was found empty of all but the clothes of the buried one. But, nevertheless, the leaders of the Jews, whom it nearly concerned both to spread abroad a lie, and keep back a people tributary and submissive to them from the faith, gave it out that the body of Christ had been stolen by his followers.' And, again, with a fine scorn he says [De Spectac. 30.], 'This is he whom his disciples secretly stole away that it might be said that he had risen again, or the gardener had taken away, in order that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowds of visitors!'

"This statement we find repeated in Jewish mediaeval literature [Jewish book in Eisenmenger, i. pp. 189 ff., etc.]. Reimarus repeats the same story: 'The disciples of Jesus,' he says, 'purloined the body of Jesus before it had been buried twenty-four hours, played at the burial-place the comedy of the empty grave, and delayed the public announcement of the resurrection until the fiftieth day, when the decay of the body had become complete.'

"The statements and arguments of this very old theory were fully answered by Origen [Conir. Cels.]."

"For indeed even this establishes the resurrection, the fact I mean of their saying, that the disciples stole Him. For this is the language of men confessing, that the body was not there. When therefore they confess the body was not there, but the stealing it is shown to be false and incredible, by their watching by it, and by the seals, and by the timidity of the disciples, the proof of the resurrection even hence appears incontrovertible."

THE REFUTATION

The empty tomb has to be explained somehow.

Professor E. F. Devan says that while the empty tomb does not necessarily prove the resurrection, it does, however, present two distinct alternatives. Kevan writes, "Those alternatives are that the empty tomb was either a Divine work or a human one." Both of these choices must be objectively considered and the one with the highest probability of being true must be accepted.

Kevan continues: "No difficulty presents itself, however, when the decision has to be made between such alternatives as these. The enemies of Jesus had no motive for removing the body; the friends of Jesus had no power to do so. It would have been to the advantage of the authorities that the body should remain where it was; and the view that the disciples stole the body is impossible. The power that removed the body of the Saviour from the tomb must therefore have been Divine."

Le Camus puts it this way: "If Jesus, who had been laid in the tomb on Friday, was not there on Sunday, either He was removed or He came forth by His own power. There is no other alternative. Was He removed? By whom? By friends or by enemies? The latter had set a squad of soldiers to guard Him, therefore they had no intention of causing Him to disappear. Moreover, their prudence could not counsel this. This would have made the way too easy for the stories of the resurrection which the disciples might invent. The wisest course was for them to guard Him as a proof. Thus they could reply to every pretension that might arise: 'Here is the corpse, He is not risen.'

"As for His friends, they had neither the intention nor the power to remove him."

Wilbur Smith says: "...These soldiers did not know how to explain the empty tomb; they were told what to say by the Sanhedrin and bribed that they might repeat in fear this quickly concocted tale."

A. B. Bruce remarks: "The report to be sent abroad assumes that there is fact to be explained, the disappearance of the body. And it is implied that the statement to be given out as to that was known by the soldiers to be false."

That the disciples stole Christ's body is not a reasonable explanation for the empty tomb.

The guard's testimony was not questioned. Matthew records that "...some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened" (Matthew 28:11).

Professor R. C. H. Lenski remarks that the message of Jesus' resurrection was delivered to the high priests through their own witnesses, "the soldiers they themselves had posted, the most unimpeachable witnesses possible." The testimony of the guard was accepted as being entirely true; they knew the guard had no reason to lie.

Wilbur M. Smith writes: "It should be noticed first of all that the Jewish authorities never questioned the report of the guards. They did not themselves go out to see in the tomb was empty, because they knew it was empty. The guards would never have come back with such a story as this on their lips, unless they were reporting actual, indisputable occurrences, as far as they were able to apprehend them. The story which the Jewish authorities told the soldiers to repeat was a story to explain how the tomb became empty."

Professor Albert Roper, speaking of Annas and Caiaphas, says: "Their hypocritical explanation of the absence of the body of Jesus from the tomb proclaims the falsity of their allegation, else why should they have sought to suborn the perjured testimony of the soldiers?"

The Jews, then, by not questioning the veracity of the guard's testimony, give tacit assent to the emptiness of Christ's tomb. Their concocted tale that the disciples stole Jesus' body is only a lame excuse, put forth for lack of anything better.

Much precaution was taken in securing the tomb against the theft. To the disciples, such measures would have been an insurmountable obstacle in any plan of grave robbery.

Professor Albert Roper says: "Let us be fair. We are confronted with an explanation which to reasonable minds cannot and does not explain; a solution which does not solve. When the chief priests induced Pilate to "command...that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day,' the factual record justifies the conclusion that the sepulchre was in very truth made 'sure.' Reasoning, therefore, from that record, we are inescapable faced with the conclusion that the measures taken to prevent the friends of Jesus from stealing His body now constitute unimpeachable proof that they could not and did not steal it."

Fallow's Encyclopedia says, "The disciples could not resist Roman power. How could soldiers be armed, and on guard, suffer themselves to be overreached by a few timorous people?"

John Chrysostom, in speaking of the women who came early Sunday morning to Jesus' tomb, writes: "They considered that no man could have taken Him when so many soldiers were sitting by Him, unless He raised up Himself."

The depression and cowardice of the disciples is a hard-hitting argument that they could not have suddenly become so brave and daring as to face a detachment of soldiers at the tomb and steal the body. They were in no mood to try anything like that.

Wilbur M. Smith says: "...The disciples who had fled from Jesus when He was being tried, neither had the courage nor the physical power to go up against a group of soldiers."

Smith continues: "...These disciples were in no mood to go out and face Roman soldiers, subdue the entire guard, and snatch that body out of the tomb. I think, myself, if they had attempted it, they would have been killed, but they certainly were in no mood even to try it. On Thursday night of that week Peter had proved himself such a coward, when a maid twitted him in the lower hall of the palace of the high priests, accusing him of belonging to the condemned Nazarene, that, to save his own skin, he denied his LORD, and cursed and swore. What could have happened to Peter within those few hours to change him from such a coward to a man rushing out to fight Roman soldiers?"

Concerning the theft theory, Fallow writes in his encyclopedia: "It is probable they would not, and it is next to certain they [the disciples] could not [rob Jesus' grave].

"How could they have undertaken to remove the body? Frail and timorous creatures, who fled as soon as they saw Him taken into custody; even Peter, the most courageous, trembled at the voice of a servant girl, and three times denied that he knew Him. People of this character, would they have dared to resist the authority of the governor? Would they have undertaken to oppose the determination of the Sanhedrin, to force a guard, and to elude or overcome soldiers armed and aware of danger? If Jesus Christ were not risen again (I speak the language of unbelievers), He ahd deceived His disciples with vain hopes of His resurrection. How came the disciples not to discover the imposture? Would they have hazarded themselves by undertaking an enterprise so perilous in favor of a man who had so cruelly imposed on their credulity? But were we to grant that they formed the design of removing the body, how could they have executed it?"

Professor A. Roper says: "There is not one of that little band of disciples who would have dared to violate that sealed tomb even if there were no Roman soldiers guarding it. The thought that one of them could accomplish such an undertaking in the face of the preventive measures which had been adopted is utterly fantastic."

If the soldiers were sleeping, how could they say the disciples stole the body?

The following commentary on the theft theory appears in Fallow's Encyclopedia: " 'Either,' says St. Augustine, 'they were asleep or awake; if they were awake, why should they suffer the body to be taken away? If asleep, how could they know that the disciples took it away? How dare they then depose that it was stolen?' "

A. B. Bruce says of the Roman guard: "...They were perfectly aware that they had not fallen asleep at their post and that no theft had taken place. The lie for which the priests paid so much money is suicidal; one half destroys the other. Sleeping sentinels could not know what happened."

Professor David Brown remarks: "If anything were needed to complete the proof of the reality of Christ's resurrection, it would be the silliness of the explanation which the guards were bribed to give of it. That a whole guard should go to sleep on their watch at all, was not very likely; that they should do it in a case like this, where there was such anxiety on the part of the authorities that the grave should remain undisturbed, was in the last degree improbable..."

Paul Little says of the theory concocted by the Jews: "They gave the soldiers money and told them to explain that the disciples had come at night and stolen the body while they were asleep. That story is so obviously false that Matthew does not even bother to refute it! What judge would listen to you if you said that while you were asleep, your neighbor came into your house and stole your television set? Who knows what goes on while he's asleep? Testimony like this would be laughed out of any court."

The soldiers would not have fallen asleep while on watch - to do so would have meant death from their superior officers.

Professor A. B. Bruce writes: "The ordinary punishment for falling asleep on the watch was death. Could the soldiers be persuaded by any amount of money to run such a risk? Of course they might take the money and go away laughing at the donors, meaning to tell their general the truth. Could the priests expect anything else? If not, could they propose the project seriously? The story has its difficulties."

Edward Gordon Selwyn, cited by Wilbur Smith, comments on the possibility of the guards' falling asleep: "That without exception all should have fallen asleep when they were stationed there for so extraordinary a purpose, to see that the body was not stolen...is not credible: especially when it is considered that these guards were subjected to the severest discipline in the world. It was death for a Roman sentinel to sleep at his post. Yet these guards were not executed; nor were they deemed culpable even by the rules, woefully chagrined and exasperated as they must have been by failure of their plan for securing the body...That the Jewish rulers did not believe what they instructed and bribed the soldiers to say, is almost self-evident. If they did, why were not the disciples at once arrested and examined? For such an act as was imputed to them involved a serious offence against the existent authorities. Why were they not compelled to give up the body? Or, in the event of their being unable to exculpate themselves from the charge, why were they not punished for their crime?...It is nowhere intimated that the rulers even attempted to substantiate the charge."

William Paley, the English theologian and philosopher, writes: "It has been rightly, I think, observed by Dr. Townshend (Dis. upon the Res. p. 126), that the story of the guards carried collusion upon the fact of it: ' 'His disciples came by night, and stole him away, while we slept.' Men in their circumstances would not have made such an acknowledgment of their negligence, without previous assurances of protection and impunity."

The stone at the tomb was extremely large. Even if the soldiers were asleep and the disciples did try to steal the body, the noise caused while moving such a rock would surely have awakened them.

Professor Wilbur Smith says: "Surely these soldiers would have been awakened by the rolling back of a heavy stone, and the taking out of the body of Jesus."

David Brown writes: "...But - even if it could be supposed that so many disciples should come to the grave as would suffice to break the seal, roll back the huge stone, and carry off the body - that the guards should all sleep soundly enough and long enough to admit of all this tedious and noisy work being gone through at their very side without being awoke."

The graveclothes give a silent testimony tot he impossibility of theft.

Merrill Tenney remarks: "No robbers would ever have rewound the wrappings in their original shape, for there would not have been time to do so. They would have flung the cloths down in disorder and fled with the body. Fear of detection would have made them act as hastily as possible."

Professor Albert Roper says:

"Such orderliness is inconsistent with grave desecration and body-snatching. One brash enough to undertake such a mission, if one could have been found, would assuredly not have practiced such orderliness, such leisureliness, such calm. It is certainly not in keeping with similar felonious acts with which we are familiar that criminals practice such studious care to leave in a meticulously neat and tidy condition premises which they have looted or vandalized. On the contrary, disorder and disarray are the earmarks of a prowling visitor. Such acts, in the very nature of things, are not performed in a leisurely manner. Their perpetration calls for haste in which tidiness plays no part. The very orderliness of the tomb, testified to by John, proclaims the absurdity of the charge that the body of Jesus was stolen by His disciples."

Gregory of Nyssen, writing 1,500 years ago, commenting on these facts, says "that the disposition of the clothes in the sepulchre, the napkin that was about our Saviour's head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself, did not bespeak the terror and hurry of thieves, and, therefore, refutes the story of the body being stolen" (cited in Whitworth).

Chrysostom, also a fourth century author, writes in like manner: "And what mean also the napkins that were stuck on with myrrh; for Peter saw these lying. For if they had been disposed to steal, they would not have stolen the body naked, not because of dishonoring it only, but in order not to delay and lose time in stripping it, and not to give them that were so disposed opportunity to awake and seize them. Especially when it was myrrh, a drug that adheres so to the body, and cleaves to the clothes, whence it was not easy to take the clothes off the body, but they that did this needed much time, so that from this again, the tale of the theft is improbable.

"What? did they not know the rage of the Jews? and that they would vent their anger on them? And what profit was it at all to them, if He had not risen again?"

Simon Greenleaf, the famous Harvard professor of law, says:

"The grave-cloths lying orderly in their place, and the napkin folded together by itself, made it evident that the sepulchre had not been rifled nor the body stolen by violent hands; for these garments and spices would have been of more value to thieves, than merely a naked corpse; at least, they would not have taken the trouble thus to fold them together. The same circumstances showed also that the body had not been removed by friends; for they would not thus have left the graveclothes behind. All these considerations produce in the mind of John the germ of a belief that Jesus was risen from the dead."

Henry Latham, who gives a good description of the graveclothes, remarks that they were in one spot, and makes further observations on "...the hundred pounds' weight of spice. This spice was dry; the quantity mentioned is large; and if the clothes had been unwrapped, the powdered myrrh and aloes would have fallen on the slab, or on the floor, in a very conspicuous heap. Peter, when from the inside of the tomb he described to John, with great particularity, what he saw, would certainly have not passed this by. Mr. Beard bears the spice in mind, and speaks of it as weighing down the grave-clothes, but he misses the point, - to me so significant, - that if the clothes had been unfolded the spice would have dropped out and made a show. That nothing is said about the spice favours the supposition that it remained between the wrappers where it was originally laid, and consequently was out of sight."

The disciples would not have moved Christ's body.

Wilbur Smith comments: "...The disciples had absolutely no reason for taking away the body, which had been honorably buried. They could do no more for the body of their LORD than had been done. Joseph of Arimathea never told them to remove the body from its first burial place; it was not suggested by anyone else; and therefore, if they had undertaken such a task, it would only be, not for the honor of the LORD, or for their own preservation, but for the purpose of deceiving others; in other words, to foist a lie concerning Jesus upon the people of Palestine. Now whatever else these disciples were, who had followed the LORD for three years, they were not liars, with the exception of Judas, who was already dead. They were not mean men given to deceit. It is inconceivable that the eleven, after having companioned with the Holy Son of GORD who, Himself, condemned falsehood and ever exalted the truth, after hearing Him preach a gospel of more exalted righteousness than had ever been heard anywhere in the world before, it is inconceivable that these eleven disciples should all suddenly agree to enter into such a vile conspiracy as this."

They did not realize the truth of the resurrection as yet and so would not have been seeking to make it come true (cf. Luke 24).

As John F. Whitworth observes, "...They did not seem to understand that He was to rise the third day; they certainly were surprised when they found that He had risen. These circumstances negate the thought that they would even contemplate stealing the body to create the impression that He had risen."

Professor A. B. Bruce writes: "The disciples, even if capable of such a theft, so far as scruples of conscience were concerned, were not in a state of mind to think of it, or to attempt it. They had not spirit left for such a daring action. Sorrow lay like a weight of lead on their hearts, and made them almost as inanimate as the corpse they are supposed to have stolen. Then the motive for the theft is one which could not have influenced them then. Steal the body to propagate a belief in the resurrection! What interest had they in propagating a belief which they did not entertain themselves? 'As yet they knew not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from the dead'; nor did they remember aught that their Master had said on this subject before His decrease."

"The disciples were men of honor," says James Rosscup, "and could not have foisted a lie upon the people. They spent the rest of their lives proclaiming the message of the resurrection, as cowards transformed into men of courage. They were willing to face arrest, imprisonment, beating, and horrible deaths, and not one of them ever denied the LORD and recanted of his belief that Christ had risen."

Paul Little, in discussing the theft theory, remarks: "Furthermore, we are faced with a psychological and ethical impossibility. Stealing the body of Christ is something totally foreign to the character of the disciples and all that we know of them. It would mean that they were perpetrators of a deliberate lie which was responsible for the misleading and ultimate death of thousands of people. It is inconceivable that, even if a few of the disciples had conspired and pulled off this theft, they would never have told the others."

J. N. D. Anderson, the British lawyer, in commenting on the idea that the disciples stole Christ's body, says: "This would run totally contrary to all we know of them: their ethical teaching, the quality of their lives, their steadfastness in suffering and persecution. Nor would it begin to explain their dramatic transformation from dejected and dispirited escapists into witnesses whom no opposition could muzzle."

Concerning the theft theory, Kevan writes: "It is here that even the opponents of the Christian view come to its help, for Strauss [1808-1874], the skeptic, rejects the hypothesis of imposture on the part of the disciples as morally impossible. 'The historian,' says Strauss, 'must acknowledge that the disciples firmly believed that Jesus was risen' " (Leben Jesu, 1964, p. 289).

Wilbur Smith says, "Even many orthodox Jewish scholars today utterly repudiate this story, including Klausner himself, who will have none of it, and who himself admits that the disciples were too honorable to perform any piece of deception like this" (Jesus of Nazareth; His Life, Times, and Teaching, New York, 1925. p. 414).

Was it a "stolen body" that gave Peter boldness in his refutation in Acts 4:8?

"Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers and elders of the people, if we are on trial today for a benefit done to a sick man, as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom GORD raised from the dead, - by this name this man stands here before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the very corner stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved' " (Acts 4:8-12).

Wilbur Smith explains: "The power of GORD so came down upon Peter on the day of Pentecost that on that one day, in a sermon occupied, for the most part, with the truth of the Resurrection of Christ, three thousand souls were won to the LORD. One thing is true: Peter was at least preaching what he believed: that GORD had raised Christ from the dead. You cannot conscientiously preach lies with power like this. The disciples went on preaching the Resurrection, until the whole world was turned upside down by faith in this glorious truth. No, the disciples did not and could not have stolen the body of our LORD."

Each of the disciples, except John, died a martyr's death. They were persecuted because they tenaciously clung to their beliefs and statements. As Paul Little writes: "Men will die for what the believe to be true, though it may actually be false: They do not, however, die for what they know is a lie." If the disciples had stolen Jesus' body, they would have known that their resurrection proclamation was false. However, they "constantly referred to the Resurrection as the basis for their teaching, preaching, living and - significantly - dying." The theory that the disciples stole the body, then, is utterly absurd!

I agree with John R. W. Stott: The theory that the disciples stole Christ's body "simply does not ring true. It is so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. In anything is clear from the Gospels and the Acts, it is that the apostles were sincere. They may have been deceived, if you like, but they were not deceivers. Hypocrites and martyrs are not made of the same stuff."

The theory that the Jews, the Romans, or Joseph of Arimathea moved Christ's body is no more reasonable an explanation for the empty tomb than theft by the disciples.

Did the Jews move the body?

J. N.D. Anderson says, "Within seven short weeks [after Christ's resurrection] - if the records are to be believed at all, and I cannot see any possible reason for Christian writers to have invented that difficult gap of seven weeks - within seven short weeks Jerusalem was seething with the preaching of the resurrection. The apostles were preaching it up and down the city. The chief priests were very much upset about it. They said that the apostles were trying to bring this man's blood upon them. They were being accused of having crucified the LORD of glory. And they were prepared to go to almost any lengths to nip this dangerous heresy in the bud."

If the Jews had issued an official order to have the body moved, why, when the apostles were preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem, didn't they explain:

"Wait! We moved the body - Christ didn't rise from the grave."

If such a rebuttal failed, why didn't they explain exactly where His body lay?

If this failed, why didn't they recover the corpse, put it on a cart, and wheel it through the center of Jerusalem? Such an action would have destroyed Christianity - not in the cradle, but in the womb!

William Paley, the English theologian and philosopher, says, "...It is evident that, if His body could have been found, the Jews would have produced it, as the shortest and completest answer possible to the whole story. For, notwithstanding their precaution, and although thus prepared and forewarned; when the story of the resurrection of Christ came forth, as it immediately did; when it was publicly asserted by His disciples, and made the ground and basis of their preaching in His name, and collecting followers to His religion; the Jews had not the body to produce..."

John Whitworth writes of the Jews' silence as to the whereabouts of Jesus' body: "While this story [of the theft] was afterwards commonly reported among the Jews, yet, as Dr. Gilmore observes, 'not once is it adverted to on those trials of the Apostles which soon took place at Jerusalem, on account of their bold and open proclamation of their Master's resurrection.' Thought the Apostles were cited before that very body who had given currency to the report of the disciples' theft, they are not even once taxed with the crime; not even a whisper escapes the lips of the Sanhedrin on the subject; and the story was soon abandoned as untenable and absurd."

Did the Romans move the body?

It would have been to the governor's advantage to keep the body in its grave. Pilate's main interest was to keep things peaceful. Moving the body would have caused unwanted agitation to arise from the Jews and the Christians.

J. N. D. Anderson says of Pilate: "He...was upset about this strange teaching. If he had had the body moved, it seems incredible that he wouldn't have informed the chief priests when they were so upset."

Pilate merely wanted peace.

Did Joseph of Arimathea move the body?

Joseph was a secret disciples and as such would not have moved the body without consulting the other disciples first.

If Joseph had ventured to move Christ's body without consulting the rest, he surely would have told the other disciples afterward, when the resurrection message was being published, what he had done.

In conclusion, the facts of the case speak loudly against the theory that Christ's body was moved.

As George Hanson says: "The simple faith of the Christian who believes in the Resurrection is nothing compared to the credulity of the sceptic who will accept the wildest and most improbable romances rather than admit the plain witness of historical certainties. The difficulties of belief may be great; the absurdities of unbelief are greater."

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