by Eric Metaxas
But for argument’s sake, we may imagine that by some unforeseen and unimaginable fluke the body could have been taken. We already know the Romans had no motive to do this, so what might be the motives of our other two candidates for this theft?
The Jewish religious leaders were in the same position as the Romans. For them, keeping Jesus dead was the very point of going to the considerable trouble of having him killed. Proving that he was not the Messiah, and proving that his disciples were religious nuts unhinged by the patently ridiculous idea that their Lord would rise from the dead was a large part of the reason for having Jesus executed. But it was also the way to end the unrest Jesus and his followers had been causing them. He had been a troublemaker of the first order, had thrown sand in the gears of the well-oiled political order of which they were an integral part. But as Jesus became more prominent and daring and troublesome, they saw that the only way to deal with him was by having him executed in a way that seemed legitimate and legal. When Jesus had entered Jerusalem on a donkey to the adulation of the palm-strewing crowd, he had dared to identify with the Messiah prophesied in their Scriptures. This was too much and now there was no other way: He must be executed. Once dead he must be shown beyond any doubt to have remained dead. The slightest whiff of his possible resurrection would upend all of these best-laid plans.
In fact, that was the only risk in having Jesus killed, that someone might afterward say that he had risen from the dead, as he had reportedly claimed he would do. So what could be the motive of the religious leaders for stealing his body, were that possible? Also, if they had for some reason stolen the body, wouldn’t they eventually have produced it to silence everyone who was claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead? If the religious leaders or the Romans had produced his corpse, they would have ended everything once and for all. That could be the only reason they would have stolen the body, if ever they did. But if they didn’t produce the body, why didn’t they? We must conclude they didn’t produce it because they didn’t have it—and were themselves bamboozled by its disappearance. So the only thing they really could do when the tomb was shown to be empty and the body nowhere to be found was to claim that the disciples had stolen his body, to claim that the disciples had done this to create the impression that Jesus had in fact risen from the dead.
The third candidates and certainly the most oft-cited for this supposed theft were Jesus’s disciples themselves. They would have had a far harder time penetrating the Roman guard than the Romans or the Jewish religious authorities. But once again, for argument’s sake, let’s assume they somehow succeeded in this. The question remains: Why would they have done it in the first place?
The religious authorities said that they would have done it to keep the magic going, so to speak, to keep the “movement” alive. But what movement was that? This was not a political movement or a “cause” of some kind. The only disciples who might have thought of it as a political movement was Judas, who by this time had already taken his life. The remaining disciples and the many other followers of Jesus devoutly believed he was who he said he was: a king from another kingdom. Why would they all suddenly leap to the idea that it was okay to throw away all they believed for the sake of continuing something? If Jesus was dead, what was there to continue? If they believed he was dead, which they obviously did, they would have been crushed, which by all accounts they were. What could be the point of trying to fool the world that he had risen from the dead if they themselves didn’t believe it? What in their previous actions would lead us to believe they were hucksters of that sort?
But once again, for argument’s sake, let’s assume that this wild idea somehow made sense, that these earnest devotees had suddenly changed everything we know about them and had tried to “keep things going,” whatever those things were. Wouldn’t one or more of them have told the truth eventually? Can we really believe that in all the years that followed, through all the horrific persecutions, not one of them would have changed his story? It’s also a well-established fact that the more people involved in a conspiracy the harder it is to keep it quiet. If this were a conspiracy, it would have involved scores of people. But human beings crack under torture and under threat of death and, as the years pass, under the weight of their own consciences. So how could it be that these many disciples and the other devout followers of Jesus could have all continued to lie along the same lines for years and years? With the exception of John, all of the disciples were put to death for claiming these things. Can we really imagine that not one of them would have recanted, would have spilled the proverbial beans to save his own skin?
Can’t we see from their own reactions to the news of Jesus’s resurrection that they themselves didn’t believe it was possible, that they were flabbergasted when they heard about it? Can’t we see from all the narratives of this period that they were not conniving and canny revolutionaries, but guileless followers of someone beautiful and good and true, whom they really thought God’s promised Messiah, who would lead them into the kingdom of Heaven—but who was now dead, for they had seen him killed and sealed in a tomb, and who could lead them no more, breaking their hearts beyond breaking?
But if Jesus really had actually risen from the dead, despite their initial and obviously understandable skepticism toward it, can we imagine these disciples behaving any other way than exactly as they behaved? If they had seen him resurrected, and then had seen him in his resurrected body many times, and if upward of five hundred had seen him in the forty days that followed and were all talking about it, can we not imagine that nothing could have deterred them from telling the world about it, even though they were persecuted and murdered one by one over the years that followed?
THE “SWOON THEORY”
One other theory that now must raise its bald, sunburned head is the so-called swoon theory, or, to dignify it even further, the swoon hypothesis. This was first proposed and popularized about two hundred years ago. It maintains that Jesus never really died but just went into a “swoon” or temporary coma. Although this is generally now—because of medical science and other evidence—thought risible, we should compose ourselves to consider it, because it still makes its appearance in books every few years.
It is important to recall that Jesus was scourged horrifically and must have bled considerably as a result, so much so that he was too weak to carry the crossbeam to the site of the crucifixion. A scourging by cruel Roman soldiers armed with a flagellum is not something anyone should wish to contemplate. The flagellum had a number of cords, at the end of each of which was affixed a piece of bone or metal, which would hook and tear the flesh of the person scourged. The third-century historian Eusebius tells us that the “veins were laid bare, and . . . the very muscles, sinew, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.” We don’t get the impression from history that most other victims of crucifixion were first scourged and brutalized this way. Many of the poor souls who were crucified lived in agony for two to four days or more upon their crosses. Jesus is said to have died in six hours, so that when Pilate himself heard of it, he marveled that Jesus was already dead. (Pilate’s reaction to hearing of Jesus’s death is one of many such details in the Gospel narratives that seems too quirky to be invented.)
We also know that Jesus’s hands and feet were nailed to the cross with spikes. Can we imagine that these spikes piercing his hands and feet would not have drawn considerable blood? We also know that because sundown was approaching on that Friday afternoon, the soldiers wanted the three crucified victims dead before sundown. Actually, we should clarify that the religious authorities wanted them dead before sundown, because to have them on the crosses on the Sabbath would, in their eyes, have desecrated the Sabbath. So it was because of this monstrous religious fussiness that the men crucified on either side of Jesus now had their legs cruelly broken at the shins, the soldiers smashing them with a heavy iron mallet. Having their legs thus broken made it impossible for these men to push u
p in order to draw breath, so they would have suffocated much sooner. But the Roman soldiers would only do this if the victim was still living, of course. To their eyes, Jesus appeared to be dead, but to make sure, one of the soldiers stabbed him in the side with his spear. Jesus did not flinch, so it seemed clear that he was indeed dead. At least it was proof enough for the Roman soldiers, for whom this detail was very important, and who had much experience along these lines. As further proof to us that he was dead, the Gospel writers say that something that looked “like blood and water” flowed out of the wound. Two thousand years ago the eyewitnesses to this and the Gospel writers would have had no idea what this signified, but medical science today tells us that after someone has died the blood inside the body begins to clot, so that the blood separates from the watery serum. So we can now know what they did not: that by the time the Roman soldier stabbed Jesus with his sword, he already had been dead for some time.
We also have to think about what happened after Jesus was confirmed to be dead. Most victims of crucifixion had their bodies left on the crosses, where birds would eat their flesh. These gruesome sights served as a warning to anyone thinking to defy the Roman authorities. If and when these bodies were taken down, they would be thrown into a pit, where dogs and other animals would eat them. But we know that Joseph of Arimathea, who was very wealthy, worked up the courage to approach Pilate himself and “beg” for the body of Jesus. Pilate granted this and Joseph of Arimathea then accorded Jesus the dignity of being buried in a tomb that he himself had owned. Conveniently, the tomb was nearby.
Taking a dead body down from a cross could not be easily done. The great spikes must be removed. If there were the slightest life in Jesus, surely Joseph of Arimathea or Jesus’s mother, Mary, or the others on hand would have witnessed it, indeed would have strained to see it. But how could that be possible, given what he had been through, and given that the Roman soldiers were satisfied that he was dead? The text tells us that they were in a hurry to bury him in the tomb, because sundown was coming. Jesus died at three in the afternoon, so there wouldn’t have been much time to take him down from the cross and transport him to the tomb. The normal procedure for a body being buried would be to anoint it with spices, but although Mary and some other women did what they could in the short time they had, they couldn’t finish it, so they planned to return as soon as possible after the Sabbath was over, which is to say at sunup on Sunday morning.
So we have to see that all that the Gospels record makes sense. Where are the holes in those accounts? They are all logical, given everything we now know. If fact, because we know so much more today, we can say that these accounts are far more logical now than they would have seemed two centuries ago when the Swoon Theory was first proposed.
SUNDAY MORNING
We may also consider the several accounts of what happened early that Sunday morning. Everything we can know about that morning points to the fact that on that Sabbath, all of Jesus’s disciples considered him dead. There isn’t any inkling that anything else was possible, and given his having spoken of his resurrection, this is itself strange and sad. Whatever faith they might have had in this direction seems to have evaporated by the events of the previous days. In accordance with this assumption, Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s mother and a woman named Salome proceeded sadly but dutifully to the Garden Tomb at sunup on Sunday, to finish what they had been unable to finish on Friday evening. If any of the disciples had spirited him away, surely these women would have known it. But they expected to find Jesus’s body there. In the first verses of chapter 4 in Mark’s Gospel, they ask one another who will help them to roll away the stone. We know that it was a very large stone, entirely covering the entrance, which was itself four and a half to five feet high. Some have suggested it would take many men to move it. But when the women arrived, the stone had been rolled away already.
The four Gospel accounts vary in a few details. In the Gospel of Matthew it says that there had been a great earthquake and “an angel of the Lord descended from Heaven and came and rolled back the stone.” The text continues, saying that his “appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.” One has to wonder what these guards would have thought if there were a tremendous earthquake, followed by an angel in blazing white descending and rolling away the huge stone. Surely they hadn’t expected this, and surely their innate sense that something overwhelming and genuinely supernatural was happening would have turned their training to jelly. In the Gospel of Mark it says that when the women came to the empty tomb and saw the angel in the tomb, they were themselves frightened. After the angel had spoken to them, “they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them.” Is it any wonder? We are obliged to realize that these guards and these women were no more used to seeing such things than we are today. Would we be surprised to surmise that these guards had befouled themselves for fear and had then run into Jerusalem to tell the chief priests “all that had taken place,” as the text tells us? What were their options after the tomb had been opened and the dead man they had been charged to guard had flown the coop with seismic and angelic fanfare? The text goes on to say that the Jerusalem elders gave the guards enough money to guarantee that they would stay mum about what they had seen and would thenceforth say that the disciples had stolen the body, an effective canard bruited about for centuries and still today.
We also learn that it was these women who informed the disciples that Jesus was not in the tomb, who told the disciples that an angel had appeared to them and had told them what happened. In that patriarchal culture, it makes little sense to put this detail in the Gospel accounts unless it had actually happened as described. If this were made up, surely the women would be the last ones entrusted with being the first to see the tomb. In fact, in keeping with what we might expect, after these women run to tell the disciples what happened, even Peter and the others do not believe them. To the disciples, “these words seemed to them an idle tale and they did not believe them.” This underscores the simple fact that at this point no one thought Jesus could be anything but dead.
There are so many difficulties with each of these theories that as crazy as it might sound and does sound, the most plausible alternative, following the facts we know and the logic that flows from them, is that Jesus rose from the dead. Unless, of course, one dismisses this idea out of hand, which many certainly do. But if one does so, and dismisses the possibility of all miracles, what then can the explanation be for all that we now know? And how is dismissing this idea out of hand any different from accepting it or any other idea without thinking it through critically and examining all the alternatives? On what basis can we do this?
We again and again must remember that resurrection from the dead was as implausible then as it is today, and we must remember that it was as staggering to those who came to believe it as to those who did not believe it. This and only this can account for the sudden boldness with which those who did believe it spoke of it. It is only because they had witnessed an outrageous miracle that they had the courage to talk of it incessantly, despite being threatened with death if they did not stop. For them, the reality of the resurrection was how the authority of God manifestly trumped all earthly authorities. It wasn’t merely a theological idea but a reality to which they were eyewitnesses. They had themselves witnessed the power of God—and the person of God—in the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth. After that, nothing in this world could dissuade them from believing it, and no authority in this world could frighten them from proclaiming it. They had no fear of death because they had seen Death itself triumphed over by the one who claimed to be “the resurrection and the life.” They might have claimed to believe it before, but after the crucifixion and resurrection, they had no doubt.
What can you do with people like that? As the Romans learned, not much. Part of the miracle of the resurrection is that it so empo
wered a ragtag band of fishermen and tax collectors that they were emboldened to stand against all earthly authority and power, and ultimately would upend the once inviolable order of the mighty Roman Empire. History tells us that this happened. So what better explanation can be offered for how it happened? Unless we have missed something, there exists none. And if there exists none, we are invited to submit to the logic of what we now know: that this most celebrated and most scorned miracle of miracles actually happened—and, perhaps most miraculously of all, can even be understood to have happened.
PART TWO
THE MIRACLE STORIES
INTRODUCTION TO THE MIRACLE STORIES
In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis rather famously said that when it came to deciding who Jesus Christ was, we really only had three choices. First, we could say he was a liar, that all of the things he said were simply lies. Second, we could say he was not a liar but a lunatic, so he couldn’t be held responsible for saying the things he said. And third, we could say he was actually who he said he was, the Lord of Heaven and Earth.
Lewis said that there were no other options besides those three—Lord, liar, or lunatic—because Jesus hadn’t left us any other options. To regard Christ as a wonderful moral teacher is not possible, because he said so many things that a sane and wonderful moral teacher would never say, such as when he cursed a fig tree or raised people from the dead or said that he was the promised Messiah of the world, or when he forgave sin or healed the blind, to name a few examples. Socrates didn’t do any of those things or claim to do any of those things, but if he had claimed to, we would rightly say he was an outright liar or a fraud—or simply non compos mentis. And so it must be with Jesus. He can hardly be someone who pronounces deeply sane and wise things on the one hand and a madman or deceiver on the other. We are forced to choose. Lewis here holds our feet to the logical fire.
