In order to avoid the evidence for the resurrection and its implications, skeptics have come up with several alternative hypotheses and theories to explain away the data that supports Jesus being bodily raised from the dead. Skeptics often claim that Jesus’ disciples made this whole resurrection thing up in order to create a new religion.
One well-known theory they posit is that the disciples were deceptive and that they either lied about the resurrection and stole Jesus’ dead body from the tomb, or they were deceived into thinking Jesus was risen because someone else stole Jesus’ dead body from the tomb.
I’ve actually had a former co-worker tell me that they believed the disciples invented Christianity! Unfortunately, thousands of skeptics online circulate this type of nonsense because the vast majority of them aren’t familiar with the arguments for the resurrection. How plausible is this alternative hypothesis? Have we really been tricked into believing that Jesus was raised from the dead?
Deceptive Disciples?
Let’s begin by breaking this into two categories: Deception and Deceit. We’ll start by examining the skeptic’s claim that the disciples were deceptive and that they stole Jesus’ body and invented the postmortem appearance stories of the risen Jesus.
To say this idea is problematic would be an understatement. Renowned historian Dale Allison says,
“This is not, to be sure, a very plausible hypothesis. Already effectively dispatched by William Paley in the eighteenth century, it has never deserved credence.”[1]
Scholars have rejected this idea because it doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny.
It’s also interesting to note that this is probably the oldest skeptical claim of them all, because we have been hearing about it ever since Matthew’s Gospel was written (Matt. 28:13). After hearing that Jesus’ body was missing from the tomb, the Jewish leaders spread a rumor saying that the disciples stole it!
Even the distinguished and skeptical Jewish scholar Geza Vermes, who believes that the empty tomb is historical, declares:
“The tale of a mischief perpetrated by the apostles is no doubt a later Jewish gossip circulating in Palestine in the time when Matthew wrote his Gospel.”[2]
Drastic Change in Disciples
If you recall, before the disciples claimed to have seen the risen Jesus, they were cowardly and abandoned Jesus after his arrest. But after seeing the risen Jesus, they suddenly transformed into bold proponents of the faith, and all of them were willing to experience intense suffering and persecution, many of whom were killed.
These reinvigorated men would not allow even death to prevent their proclamation that Jesus had risen. Although this doesn’t prove that the resurrection happened, it certainly demonstrates that they sincerely believed that they saw the risen Jesus.
The last time I checked, nobody has ever looked for ways to die torturous deaths for something they knew was a lie. People die for what they believe is true, not for what they know is false. This is an important distinction because it reveals to us that the disciples were not intentionally lying about what they reported. They truly believed they had encountered the risen Jesus.
If the disciples were deceptive and lied and stole the body, then certainly one of them would have recanted on the chopping block to avoid death. However, as historians Michael Licona and Gary Habermas point out, we have no records at all indicating that a single disciple withdrew their original claim that Jesus was alive again.[3]
Persecutor Paul’s Conversion
What about the Church persecutor Paul? How could Paul be convinced by the disciples that Jesus was alive again? Paul was on his way to persecute and kill more Christians. Never in a million years would Paul believe what the disciples had to say! And yet, we see that Paul actually converted to the very faith he sought to destroy. Incredible.
Paul’s own encounter with the risen Jesus is what made him convert to Christianity, not a sales pitch by some crazies he was about to exterminate. Eminent biblical scholar and leading authority on Paul, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor says,
“Paul now knew with the inescapable conviction of direct experience that the Jesus who had been crucified under Pontius Pilate was alive. The resurrection which he had contemptuously dismissed was a fact, as undeniable as his own reality.”[4]
What would it take for someone of Paul’s stature to forsake all that he had achieved within his religious aristocracy, and leave a life of comfort behind for a new one that ensured suffering and death? An encounter with the risen Jesus would be enough to do just that.
Skeptic James’ Conversion
As for James the brother of Jesus, he was openly skeptical towards the idea that Jesus was the Messiah. James was a devout Jew and would never believe that someone was resurrected before the end of the world. As theologian William Lane Craig points out,
“In Jewish thought, the resurrection was always the resurrection of all the righteous or all the people. They had no conception of the resurrection of an isolated individual.”[5]
Don’t forget, James grew up with Jesus! He may have thought Jesus was the favorite child since he did no wrong (ha ha), but James certainly didn’t think that Jesus was the chosen one who would eventually save Israel, let alone think that he was “God with us” (Isaiah 9:6).
Even the prominent atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann believes that James did not have a close relationship with Jesus prior to the cross, noting that James, “had not thought much of his brother during Jesus’ lifetime (Mark 3:21; John 7:5).”[6] Who knows, maybe James was jealous of his brother; I know I’ve been there before.
Although some scholars have said they aren’t sure if James converted to Christianity before or after Jesus’ resurrection, we have good reasons to believe that James did after he encountered the risen Jesus.
Recall, that at the crucifixion Jesus requests that the apostle John take care of his mother, rather than his own brothers which indicates their unbelief; but then, by the time Pentecost arrives shortly thereafter, the brothers are all in attendance as believers.
Thus, it appears that James wasn’t a believer before Jesus died, but becomes a believer soon after Jesus’ death. James’ resurrection encounter as confirmed in 1 Cor. 15:7 also suggests this idea. Biblical scholar Scot McKnight says that although the evidence isn’t completely clear, it
“leans in the direction of James having become a believer after the death of Jesus and perhaps as a result of encountering the resurrected Jesus.”[7]
Bottom line: James gave up his comfortable life and sacred Jewish practices to become a Christian despite the imminent dangers involved. Ultimately, it would cost him his life. In 62 AD James was martyred for preaching that Jesus was the God of their beloved Hebrew Scriptures. Similar to Paul’s case, no disciple was ever going to con James into leaving Judaism to join a new and heavily persecuted Jesus movement.
Deceived Disciples?
What about the other idea that the disciples were deceived and tricked into thinking Jesus had been raised from the dead? Did someone else steal Jesus’ body? Some skeptics claim that the numerous tomb raiders would likely have tried to steal it for their cult practices of necromancy, or for taking valuables as we’ve seen other grave robbers do over the centuries. However, as Habermas notes, this option is flawed because “it cannot account for the vast majority of the known historical facts. Virtually all critics recognize this.”[8] Let’s see why.
Empty Tomb Isn’t Enough
There needs to be more than just an empty tomb to convince people that someone has risen from the dead. If I went to visit the grave of my recently deceased relative, and to my horror, discovered that the grave was dug up and empty, I would never jump to the conclusion that the individual was somehow alive again.
Likewise, the women and disciples who confirmed that Jesus’ tomb was empty, would never jump to the conclusion that Jesus was alive again. Instead, they would believe what we all would–someone must have stolen the body. Remember, they weren’t expecting Jesus to be resurrected, so they weren’t anticipating him being gone from the tomb!
It wasn’t until Jesus appeared to his disciples that they believed he was alive again. And even then, some doubted (Thomas) while others were terrified believing he was a ghost (Matt. 14:26) and not bodily risen. They ended up being convinced that he was risen after interacting with him. They spent time with him, walked with him, ate food with him, and so on.
Additionally, deceived disciples cannot account for the conversion of Paul and James. If someone else stole Jesus’ body and deceived the disciples, then how in the world did Paul and James interact with a living Jesus?
The obvious answer is that Jesus really did physically appear, and they were convinced that Jesus was alive again. This is why Paul and James were willing to give up their comfortable lives and start promoting the very thing they denied, ultimately dying because of it. If you were going to die for something, don’t you think you’d first make sure that what you were dying for was actually true? At least something you sincerely believed was true?
Paul and James were not going to die for no good reason, nor would they be tricked by an empty tomb. You need more than an empty tomb for someone to be alive again, and that is exactly what we have. We have an empty tomb and bodily appearances of the risen Jesus to friends and foes. That’s a big deal. Notable historian N. T. Wright explains:
“Neither the empty tomb by itself, however, nor the appearances by themselves, could have generated the early Christian belief. The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy. Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or hallucinations, which were well enough known in the ancient world.”[9]
It’s important for you to know that these appearances were not hallucinations or visions. If you would like to know how scholars have demonstrated the hallucination hypothesis to be completely false and another weak alternative explanation provided by skeptics—click here.
Lastly, we should remember what New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg points out: skeptical theories involving a stolen body can’t explain why hundreds of people saw Jesus alive again (1 Cor. 15:6).[10] Whether the disciples stole the body or someone else did, it doesn’t explain how this large group of eyewitnesses saw the risen Jesus.
Therefore, it is clear that the disciples were neither deceptive nor deceived and that the resurrection hypothesis still remains to be the best explanation we have. So, you can be sure that this stolen-body theory promoted by some skeptics has been largely refuted and is not taken seriously among scholars today. Thanks for reading!
Blessings,
Andrew Drinkard
[1] Dale C. Allison, Jr., Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (New York: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2005), 208.
[2] Geza Vermes, The Resurrection (New York: Doubleday Broadway Publishing, 2008), Loc. 1807. Kindle.
[3] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2004), 94.
[4] Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 1998), 78.
[5] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed (Wheaton: Crossway Publishing, 2008), 393.
[6] Gerd Lüdemann, “The Earliest Christian Belief in the Resurrection,” Historical Jesus in Recent Research, ed. James D. G. Dunn and McKnight, Scot McKnight (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 415. Renowned historian E. P. Sanders also believes James converted because of his encounter with the risen Jesus, saying, “it appears from I Cor. 15.7 that James had a separate resurrection experience, and presumably this accounts for his commitment to the early Christian movement.” See E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin Books), 329.
[7] Scot McKnight, The Letter of James (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 40.
[8] Habermas and Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, 95.
[9] N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 686.
[10] Carl Stecher and Craig L. Blomberg, Resurrection: Faith or Fact?: A Scholars’ Debate Between a Skeptic and a Christian (Chicago: Pitchstone Publishing, 2019), 127.
