In St. Jude 1:3, we read, "Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." [Emphasis mine]. Contending For The Faith is a series of posts dedicated to apologetics (i.e., the intellectual defense of the truth of the Traditional Catholic Faith) to be published the first Monday of each month. This is the next installment.
Sadly, in this time of Great Apostasy, the faith is under attack like never before, and many Traditionalists don't know their faith well enough to defend it. Remember the words of our first pope, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." (1Peter 3:16). There are five (5) categories of attacks that will be dealt with in these posts. Attacks against:
- The existence and attributes of God
- The truth of the One True Church established by Christ for the salvation of all
- The truth of a particular dogma or doctrine of the Church
- The truth of Catholic moral teaching
- The truth of the sedevacantist position as the only Catholic solution to what has happened since Vatican II
In addition, controversial topics touching on the Faith will sometimes be featured, so that the problem and possible solutions may be better understood. If anyone had suggestions for topics that would fall into any of these categories, you may post them in the comments. I cannot guarantee a post on each one, but each will be carefully considered.
***N.B. Special Note To My Readers: I ask you all in charity to please pray for the mother of one of my long-time readers---Poni. Her mom is seriously ill and needs our prayers for a full return to health and resignation to the Will of God. Please say a special prayer for Poni's mother and for Poni herself, that God may give her strength during this most trying and sorrowful time.
God bless you all, my dear readers---Introibo
Proofs of the Resurrection: Debunking the Conspiracy Hypothesis
There are numerous attempts by the enemies of Christ to deny His physical resurrection from the dead. There are four (4) basic arguments to explain away Christ's resurrection: (1) it was a hallucination of the Apostles; (2) the Apostles created a myth-- they did not mean what they taught to be literal; (3) the Apostles conspired to deceive the world; and (4) Christ didn't really die, he "swooned" and later fully recovered.
In this post, I will refute the so-called "Conspiracy Hypothesis." (N.B. The information contained in this post comes from myriad sources, both in print and online. I take no credit other than condensing the material into a terse and readable post---Introibo).
What is The Conspiracy Hypothesis?
The Conspiracy Hypothesis against the resurrection of Christ is also known as the stolen body hypothesis. It claims that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, and that His body was instead secretly removed from the tomb by His disciples, who then fabricated the story of a resurrection. According to the Gospel of Saint Matthew (St. Matthew 28:11–15), when the tomb was found empty, the chief priests and elders bribed the Roman guards on duty, telling them to say: "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep."
This narrative is one of the earliest recorded alternative explanations to the resurrection, used by critics of Christianity (most notably the Jews) in antiquity to account for the missing Body. Why would Christ's followers steal the Body of Our Lord and conspire to lie about Him rising from the dead? Several reasons are advanced:
• Fulfill Christ's Predictions: They would fabricate a scenario that matched Jesus's earlier prophecies that He would rise after three days. They didn't want to be humiliated that the One they followed did not have His predictions come true.
• Maintain the Movement: Keep their messianic hopes, authority, or movement alive after the demoralizing shock of His public crucifixion.
• Pious Deceit: Perpetuate a "noble lie" out of devotion or a desire to promote Christ's ethical teachings
The Conspiracy Hypothesis is demonstrably false.
What Constitutes Evidence for Historians?
Historians weigh various factors in assessing competing hypotheses. Some of the most important are as follows:
1. The best explanation will have greater explanatory scope than other explanations. That is, it will explain more of the evidence.
2. The best explanation will have greater explanatory power than other explanations. That is, it will make the evidence more probable.
3. The best explanation will be more plausible than other explanations. That is, it will fit better with true background beliefs.
4. The best explanation will be less contrived than other explanations. That is, it won’t require adopting as many new beliefs which have no independent evidence.
5. The best explanation will be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than other explanations. That is, it won’t conflict with as many accepted beliefs.
6. The best explanation will meet conditions (1)-(5) so much better than the others that there’s little chance that one of the other explanations, after further investigation, will do better in meeting these conditions.
(See C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions [1984], pg. 19; Emphasis in original).
Since a hypothesis may do really well in meeting some conditions but not so well in meeting others, figuring out which hypothesis is the best explanation may often be difficult and requires skill. However, if the explanatory scope and power of a hypothesis are very great, so that it does a much better job in explaining a wide variety of facts, then it’s likely to be the true explanation.
So let’s apply these tests to the typical hypotheses which have been offered down through history to explain the empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, and origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, and let’s see if they do better or as well in explaining these facts as the dogma of the Resurrection.
According to this hypothesis, the disciples stole the body of Jesus and lied about his appearances, thus faking the resurrection. This was the very first counter-explanation for the empty tomb, as we’ve seen, and it was revived during the eighteenth century by European Deists. Today, however, this explanation has been completely given up by modern scholarship. We can see why when we assess it by the standard criteria for testing historical hypotheses.
1. Explanatory scope. The Conspiracy Hypothesis does seem to cover the full scope of the evidence, for it offers explanations of the empty tomb (the disciples stole the body), the post-mortem appearances (the disciples lied about seeing Jesus), and the origin of the disciples’ (supposed) belief in Jesus’ resurrection (again, they lied).
2. Explanatory power. How probable is the evidence, given the Conspiracy Hypothesis? Here doubts begin to arise about the adequacy of the hypothesis.
First, consider the story of the empty tomb. If the disciples stole Jesus’ corpse, then it would be utterly pointless to fabricate a story about women finding the tomb to be empty. Such a story would not be the sort of tale Jewish men would invent. Moreover, the simplicity of the story is not what one would expect, given the Conspiracy Hypothesis—where are the Scriptural proof-texts, the evidence of fulfilled prophecy? Why isn’t Jesus described as emerging from the tomb, as in later forgeries like the so-called "Gospel of Peter"? Neither is the dispute with non-believing Jews well-explained. Why isn’t St. Matthew’s guard already there in St. Mark’s story? Even in St. Matthew’s story the guard is set too late: the body could have already been stolen before the guard arrived on Saturday morning, so that they were guarding, unbeknownst to them, an empty tomb! For a failsafe alibi against theft of the body, see again the forged Gospel of Peter, where the guard is set immediately upon interment of the corpse.
As for the appearance stories, similar problems arise. A fabricator would probably describe Jesus’ resurrection appearances in terms of Old Testament visions of God and descriptions of the end-time resurrection (as in Daniel 12.2). But then Jesus should appear to the disciples in dazzling glory. And why not a description of the resurrection itself? Why no appearances to Caiaphas the high priest or to the villains on the Sanhedrin, as Jesus predicted? They could be then branded as the real liars for denying that Jesus did appear to them!
However, the explanatory power of the Conspiracy Hypothesis is undoubtedly weakest when it comes to the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. For the hypothesis is really a denial of that fact; it seeks to explain the mere semblance of belief on the disciples’ part. But as critics have universally recognized, you can’t plausibly deny that the earliest disciples at least sincerely believed that Jesus was risen from the dead. They staked their very lives on that conviction. The transformation in the lives of the disciples is not credibly explained by the hypothesis of a conspiracy. This shortcoming alone has been enough in the minds of most scholars to sink the old Conspiracy Hypothesis forever.
3. Plausibility. The real Achilles’ Heel of the Conspiracy Hypothesis is, however, its implausibility. One might mention here objections to the unbelievable complexity of such a conspiracy or the supposed psychological state of the disciples; but the overriding problem that dwarfs all others is that it is wholly anachronistic to suppose that first century Jews intended to hoax Jesus’ resurrection. The Conspiracy Hypothesis views the disciples’ situation through the rearview mirror of Christian history rather than through the eyes of a first century Jew.
In the first place, there was no expectation in Judaism of a Messiah who, instead of establishing David’s throne and subduing Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed by the Gentiles as a criminal. Moreover, the Jewish idea of resurrection was just unconnected with the idea of Messiah and even incompatible with it, since Messiah was not supposed to be killed. As N. T. Wright nicely puts it, if you’re a first century Jew, and your favorite Messiah got himself crucified, then you’ve basically got two choices: either you go home or else you get yourself a new Messiah.
Secondly, the Jewish conception of resurrection of the dead differed in at least two fundamental respects from the resurrection of Jesus.
It is a fact that in Jewish thinking the resurrection to glory and immortality always occurred after the end of the world. Jews had no idea of a resurrection within history. That’s why, I think, the disciples had so much trouble understanding Jesus’ predictions of his own resurrection. They thought he was talking about the resurrection at the end of the world. Look at St. Mark 9:9-11, for example:
And as they were coming down from the mountain, He gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen, until the Son of Man should rise from the dead. And they seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead might mean. And they began questioning Him, saying, “Why is it that the scribes say that first Elijah must come?”
Here Jesus predicts His resurrection, and what do the disciples ask? “Why is it that the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” In first century Judaism it was believed the prophet Elijah would come again before the great and terrible Day of the Lord, the judgment day when the dead would be raised. The disciples could not understand the idea of a resurrection occurring within history prior to the end of the world. Hence, Jesus’ predictions only confused them.
Thus, given the Jewish conception of the resurrection, the disciples after Jesus’ crucifixion would not have come up with the strange idea that he had been already raised. They would in all probability have looked forward to the resurrection at the last day and, in keeping with Jewish custom, perhaps preserved his tomb as a shrine where his bones could rest until the resurrection.
Secondly, in Jewish thinking the resurrection was always the resurrection of all the righteous dead. Jews had no idea of the resurrection of an isolated individual apart from the general resurrection. Moreover, there was simply no connection between the individual believer’s resurrection and the prior resurrection of the Messiah. That’s why we find no examples of other failed messianic movements claiming that their executed leader was risen from the dead.
First century Jews had no idea of the resurrection of an isolated individual, especially of the Messiah, in advance of the general resurrection at the end of the world. So the idea of stealing Jesus’ corpse and saying that God had raised him from the dead is hardly one that would have entered the minds of these Jewish disciples of Jesus nor seemed to them a plausible strategy for evangelizing their fellow Jews!
What about influences from outside Judaism? A suggestion widespread on the Internet today is that early Christians came up with the idea of Jesus’ resurrection through the influence of pagan mythology. This suggestion is an old one. Back around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, scholars in comparative religion collected parallels to Christian beliefs in other religious movements, and some even thought to explain Christian beliefs, including the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, as the result of the influence of such myths. The movement soon collapsed, however, principally due to two factors:
(a) Scholars came to realize that the parallels are false. The ancient world was a virtual fruit basket of myths of various gods and heroes. Comparative studies in religion require sensitivity to their similarities and differences, or distortion and confusion inevitably result. Unfortunately, those who were eager to find parallels to Jesus’ resurrection failed to exercise such sensitivity.
Many of the alleged parallels are actually stories of the assumption of the hero into heaven (Hercules, Romulus). Others are disappearance stories, which claim that the hero has vanished into a higher sphere (Apollonius of Tyana, Empedocles). Still others are seasonal symbols for the crop cycle, as the vegetation dies in the dry season and comes back to life in the rainy season (Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis). Some are political expressions of Emperor worship (Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus).
None of these ideas is parallel to the Jewish idea of the resurrection of the dead. Indeed, most scholars have come to doubt whether, properly speaking, there really were any myths of dying and rising gods at all. For example, in the myth of Osiris, which was one of the best known symbolic seasonal myths, Osiris doesn’t really come back to life but simply continues to exist in the realm of the dead.
Scholars have come to realize that pagan mythology is simply the wrong interpretive context for understanding Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus and his disciples were first century Israelite Jews, and it is against that background that they must be understood. The collapse of the alleged parallels is just one indication that pagan mythology is the wrong interpretive context for understanding the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection.
(b) There is in any case no causal connection between the pagan myths and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection. Jews were familiar with the seasonal pagan deities (Ezekiel 8.14-15) and found them abhorrent. That’s why there is no trace of cults of dying and rising gods at all in first century Israel. It’s pretty unlikely that the original disciples would have come up with the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was risen from the dead because they had heard pagan myths about dying and rising seasonal deities. So scholars have universally abandoned this approach. Internet sceptics are over 100 years out of date.
Notice that this criticism undermines not only conspiracy theories, which suppose that the disciples insincerely proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection, but also any theory which suggests that, on the basis of pagan or Jewish influences, they sincerely came to believe in and preached his resurrection.
4. Less contrived. Like all conspiracy theories of history, the Conspiracy Hypothesis is contrived in supposing that what all the evidence seems to point to is, in fact, mere appearance only, to be explained away by hypotheses for which there is no evidence. Specifically, it postulates motives and ideas in the minds of the earliest disciples and actions on their part for which there is not a shred of evidence. It can become even more contrived, as hypotheses have to be multiplied to deal with objections to the theory, for example, how to account for the appearance to the 500 brethren or the women’s role in the empty tomb and appearance stories.
5. Disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs. The Conspiracy Hypothesis tends to be disconfirmed by our general knowledge of conspiracies, their instability and tendency to unravel. Moreover, it is disconfirmed by accepted beliefs such as the sincerity of the disciples, the nature of first century Jewish messianic expectations, and so on.
6. Exceeds other hypotheses in fulfilling conditions (1)-(5). This condition is obviously not met, since there are better hypotheses (such as the Hallucination Hypothesis), which don’t dismiss the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection as a blatant lie.
No scholar would defend the Conspiracy Hypothesis today. The only place you read about such things is in the popular, sensationalist press or on the Internet.
Conclusion
The Conspiracy Hypothesis has no plausibility. Consider the Apostles behavior after the resurrection. The change in their lives from fear to faith, despair to confidence, confusion to certitude, runaway cowardice to steadfast boldness under threat and persecution, not only proves their sincerity but testifies to some powerful cause of it. Can a lie cause such a transformation? Obviously not. The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is a fact of history and not some conspiratorial fraud.
