tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6805190.post550692464922874220..comments2024-03-01T07:35:49.740-08:00Comments on Come Reason's Apologetics Notes: Was Jesus' Tomb Really Empty?Lenny Espositohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04064209669748618955noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6805190.post-46394223829978462492016-02-16T19:42:03.083-08:002016-02-16T19:42:03.083-08:00Mk 16.8 is inconsistent with an oral or written tr...Mk 16.8 is inconsistent with an oral or written tradition history behind the grave narrative. Several theories or ideas have been proposed to counteract dissatisfaction with this ending and its prima facie implications: It was lost, it's in one of the other gospels, the Longer Ending is original, several variations of Mark didn't really mean what he said, etc.<br /><br />None of these strike me as convincing.<br /><br />Several scholars have connected the story with ideas of translation/assumption, arguing that it was originally a translation story which Mark adapted to resurrection, while others believe it is a creation of Mark (as 16.8 indicates). This latter is the view I believe is most plausible.<br /><br />Why did no one produce the body? Even if the right people (typically thought to be the Jewish leaders) knew where it was, there is little real reason to think they would have occupied themselves with refuting what would have been to them a ridiculous, irrelevant claim. If Christians were causing public disturbances, they had more direct means available of dealing with them. It's not plausibly the theological truth or falsity of the resurrection that would have bothered them at all, but upsetting public order. The notion that they would have been concerned with cult polemics, that they interpreted the resurrection to be the central factor in any Christian problems they had, or the idea that Christians were the center of (apparently the world's) attention such as to distract them from running their more exigent affairs enough to go parading bodies around or hosting tours to gravesites, is a perspective apologists derive entirely from early *Christian* literature (really, just Acts mostly), not from Jewish sources. It is also a quite ludicrous caricature of the time, directed at those nasty Jews who are the enemies of Jesus in the gospels.<br /><br />But if the claim really was somewhat important to them, revealing the location of the site (not even considering the historically goofy scenario of disinterring and parading corpses) would only have invited theft. There's no reason to believe they had any reason to think the Christians wouldn't do this, and if you accept Matthew's guard story, you'd have to agree. Wasting manpower and resources invigilating over the corpse day and night for who knows how long seems ludicrous and out of the question as well.<br /><br />Regarding Matthew's guard story, it requires nothing but that local opponents of Matthew were responding to the claims in Christian texts (i.e., Mark), and that Matthew fabricated an ignominious etiology for the existence of the claim in his day, in mimicry of OT stories (i.e., 'to this day'). The story hardly requires factual knowledge of a tomb known to be evacuated of Jesus's corpse.<br /><br />If there was no empty tomb, could Matthew's opponents have 'investigated' this and gave Matthew a rationalistic response, such as, 'There's no evidence for that!' like modern skeptics engaging in armchair battles with apologists would? Maybe, but there's no reason they should have, any more than Celsus or rabbinic literature should have offered this kind of response when addressing gospel claims. They were hardly in a position so late to know the truth of the matter either way. They responded to Christian claims as they were presented to them in Christian literature or propaganda. For all we know, Matthew's opponents were just mocking the Christians.Eric Besshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07900880562380706046noreply@blogger.com