COULD TRICKS HAVE BEEN DONE AT THE TOMB TO MAKE IT SEEM THEY BURIED JESUS THERE?

The gospels claim that Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem and buried there. He vanished from the tomb allegedly. 

 

If we could show that Jesus Christ was buried by people whose honesty was not up to scratch the evidence for a resurrection would be considerably weakened. It would make it most probable that there was an earthly and not heavenly reason for the disappearance of the corpse.

 

The gospels claim that a man named Joseph of Arimathea who was a leading light in the Sanhedrin removed Christ from the cross, wrapped him up and buried him in a tomb which only Matthew says was Joseph’s.

 

Joseph could have got a relative of Jesus to do that instead of showing himself up by seeking to bury a criminal hated by his people. Joseph must have deceitfully told Pilate that he was a relative. Pilate would have been unlikely to have granted a relative the body and even more unlikely to grant a stranger the body. Joseph lied so what else did he lie about? Did Joseph lie about being in the Sanhedrin too for he would have got somebody else to take control of the funeral on his behalf?

 

John 19:38 says that Joseph was a secret disciple of Jesus and a member of the corrupt and malign Sanhedrin which the gospels blame for Jesus being put to death. Joseph must have been as bad as the rest for he pretended to hate Jesus as they did. You do not stay in a murderous organisation when you deplore its activities. You resign.

 

Joseph did not convert between the trial and the death of Jesus for then he had no time to be a secret follower of Jesus.

 

He pretended to be a Jew and supported the doctrines of Jesus that were considered to be heretical by his people.

 

This man was callous and devious enough to engineer the fraudulent miracle of a vanishing corpse.

 

The Gospel claims that Joseph was decent and good. That does not prove that he might not have done this for it does not mean he was decent and good in they way a person would not carry out such a hoax would be.

 

There is no first-hand evidence for everything being as it should have been under Joseph’s supervision.

 

 

MISSING BEFORE THE MARYS CAME?

 

Christians habitually claim that the women who came to the tomb found it empty. This is an assumption that is unwarranted even by the Bible itself so it is heresy to insist it is right.

 

Jesus was allegedly anointed for burial after he died on Friday. Yet we are told women go to the tomb on Sunday to anoint him. That looks suspicious for he would have been smelly and rotting already. If they did not know he was already anointed then what else did they not know?

 

The women were told to look into the tomb by the men who shocked them with the news that Jesus had vanished and risen. They were startled to find the tomb open. If there had been an earthquake as Matthew says they would have been afraid to enter the tomb for long or to go deep inside it. It was dim outside and the women were in a state so they might have not looked in right and thought that the body was away though it was still there. Jesus could have escaped from the tomb or been stolen after the women went away. The gospels are careful to avoid saying that the women did look on the place where Jesus had been laid or that they could see it even if they did enter the tomb a bit. The Gospels never say that the women went all the way in or that anybody did. Anybody who sees a tomb open will automatically assume the body has been stolen.

 

Perhaps the men in white concealed the body inside the tomb when the ladies were seen coming and removed it after they had gone. The men had been in the tomb according to John.

 

SPICY DETAILS

 

The gospel of John (19) says a record number of spices and oils were used on the body. Even when he was alive and well, Jesus spoke of this marination in oil. Jesus in John 12 when he gets smeared with expensive oil says she is preparing him for burial which obviously hints that he will get expensive oil on the day of his burial some time later. You would wonder if all the exorbitant use of aromatic ointments and spice on the body was evidence that it was actually smelling - a lot! And it only dead for a little while? Was it Jesus at all? Was Jesus in fact not buried in that tomb but was the funeral a plot to hide expensive spices and precious oils? Was that what was really in the cloth? It explains both why the tomb might have been robbed and why there was no body. The aroma was asking for trouble.

 

PETER IN ACTS LIES

 

If the burial data came from the apostles then there is an issue with its reliability.

 

The early Church was clear that witnesses to tombs and visions were not enough to establish the resurrection of Jesus. It needed to be predicted by God in the Bible which then was the Old Testament. 

 

Peter found a psalm that he could use to argue that it spoke of a man rising from the dead. Peter is anxious to argue that the Psalm David wrote might be about him but is not for David is still dead and the Psalm says somebody will be raised.

 

King David allegedly wrote the psalm which undoubtedly he did not. That is a major error the argument depends on David writing the psalm.

 

Peter tells the people in the book of Acts that he is confident that David died and was buried. He asserts, not just says, his tomb still exists. See Acts 2:29-32. Nobody checked the tomb which is significant. Peter could not really be confident for he was not a scribe or a Jewish historian. So he lied. He was prone to going too far with assumptions. David's existence is not certain. Historian wise, all you have is a bald assertion in the Bible that David died and was buried in the city of David.

 

Moreover David, assuming he wrote the psalm, died appealing explicitly for the Law of God even specifically a command on revenge to be obeyed. That Peter considers David shows that David like Jesus was 100% in support of the Jewish Law.

 

We see then that Peter was stern about Jesus' Jewishness, Jesus did not water it down liberal style, and Peter was not reliable in interpreting the Bible and believed what he wanted to believe.

 

For several reasons, Peter is an argument against the authenticity of the resurrection of Jesus. He makes us doubt the burial.