We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
How can you believe Matthew’s report about the Jewish cover up of the resurrection?
Question: In Matthew it’s reported that Jewish authorities tried to cover up the resurrection of Jesus by saying the disciples stole the body while the guards were sleeping. I don’t buy it. How would Matthew know about this story, since it was a secret conversation the authorities had with the guards? And how could they ask the guards to claim they’d fallen asleep since such a crime would have been punishable by death? The story just doesn’t fly.
Answer: Here’s the account your referring to.
Matt. 28:12-15: When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
It seems to me the text answers your question. Matthew could have easily known about the story since it was “widely circulated.” (Or he could have known about it by divine inspiration, if that was required). The guards ordinarily would have gotten in deep trouble for sleeping on the job, except that in this case the Jewish authorities promised to use their influence to “keep [them] out of trouble.” What the Jewish authorities didn’t want was the guards going around telling people what they actually saw!
What’s most interesting, I think, is that this lie is premised on the assumption that the tomb was in fact empty. What this tells us is that when Matthew wrote his Gospel (usually dated 70 to 80 A.D., but I would argue for a pre-70 A.D. date), those who were hostile to Christianity (and there were many) didn’t deny there was any empty tomb. They just offered a counter explanation as to how it became empty. If you don’t believe their counter-explanation, you have to come up with your own. And the best one available, I submit, is the one the disciples themselves offer: Jesus actually rose from the dead.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Jesus, Q&A
Topics: Biblical Reliability
Related Reading
How do you respond to Galatians 1:15–16?
“…when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me…I did not confer with any human being…” As with Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5), John the Baptist (Luke 1:13–17) and other God-ordained prophets, Paul was aware that God had decided on a…
Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?” Part I
I’m sure many of you have read Mark Driscoll’s recent blog titled “Is God a Pacifist?” in which he argues against Christian pacifism. I’ve decided to address this in a series of three posts, not because I think Driscoll’s arguments are particularly noteworthy, but because it provides me with an opportunity to make a case against what I’ve…
Pretty Little Vampires: Osheta Moore
We’re thrilled today to introduce you to Osheta Moore, blogger extraordinaire over at Shalom in the City. Osheta is in the middle of a wonderful series of blog posts on finding her “tribe”. We love this woman. Listen to a section from her “about me”: I’m an African-American, suburbanite Texan from the Bible Belt living in…
What Kind of God Did Jesus Reveal?
The ReKnew Manifesto exists to encourage believers and skeptics alike to re-think things they thought they already knew – hence our name, Re-Knew. I am currently working through the theology of the Manifesto in a series of posts that began a couple of months ago. Over the last few posts, we have been looking at the…
What’s the significance of Isaiah 63:8-10?
The Lord said (or “thought”) to himself, “Surely they are my people, chidren who will not deal falsely.” So, the text says, “He became their savior” (Isa. 63: 8). But “they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.” So the Lord “became their enemy” (9-10). If the future is exhaustively settled from all eternity, how could…
God and Our Political Platforms
Rachel Held Evans posted a blog today on the stir created when Democrats booed the passing of “an amendment to the party platform reinstating language that identified Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel and that referred to people’s “God-given potential” in its preamble.” Of course this fed into the belief that if you’re a…