The theory that the body of Jesus was stolen implies a crime for which one must suggest viable criminal candidates. Richard Carrier in the chapter titled, "The Plausibility of Theft" offers essentially three suspects:

1. Occultists seeking a body -- any body.
2. Occultists seeking Jesus' body -- specifically.
3. Disciples of Jesus.

Because we have already started some time ago a related article on the grave robbery option, we will address arguments from this chapter there. However, we will address arguments with reference to the disciples of Jesus as suspects here, as well as other accessory arguments from this chapter related to the tomb guard.

General comments. Theft of Jesus' body certainly would be the most plausible of all Skeptical theories on the market to explain the empty tomb (though not the resurrection appearances, which of course Carrier does not, and does not have to necessarily, deal with to any depth in this chapter). However, it is clear that fundamentally, the rule used here is the same as in other chapters: Anything is more plausible than a resurrection, period, simply because it is not "supernatural". We will see that Carrier employs a number of props, some of them elaborate, to maintain a defense of the theft thesis -- in essence, offering another take that is methodologically no different than Schoenfield's Passover Plot, in which persons are introduced to the scene apart from any evidence of any sort, while the text itself is treated as a buffet from which information can be used or discarded as is convenient for the theory. Schoenfield himself introduced little, if anything, that a modern Skeptic would find "implausible"; yet the irony is that the constant use of props is something that apologists have been scourged for doing when it comes to such matters as harmonizing the Gospels, or the Bible with itself. So it again runs down not to what is plausible or not plausible, or what is or is not dictated by the evidence, but that a priori, a resurrection has been ruled out, and so any thesis -- theft, an evil Jesus twin, Jesus surviving -- must take its place, for it is automatically "more likely" by the mere virtue of being naturalistic.

In this light, it is telling that Carrier resorts to dismissal of Christian Theism in a mere line or two [355] of insulting rhetoric, with no specific argument and not even a footnote to sources. As someone who does not even grasp a simple concept like the Trinity and Wisdom theology properly, and who does not even know the difference between the virginal conception of Jesus and the immaculate conception of Mary, Carrier is in no position to accuse Christian Theism of having "tremendous problems" and offering "ad hoc solutions".

Are Carrier's alternatives for thefts plausible? They are not. As noted, we will deal with the "grave robbery" option in the link above. Here, we move now to the option of theft by disciples of Jesus.

• Carrier uses the same argument as Price regarding Tertuallian and De Speculatis [351], which we once answered thus: Presumably, Price thinks there is some latent tradition here that a gardener took Jesus' body. This is supported, allegedly, by the a counter-polemic in Tertullian. De Spectaculis, however, was written some 175 years AFTER the Gospels and, though it may reflect anti-resurrection polemic in Tertullian's time well enough, it tells us NOTHING about such polemic in the first century. Carrier tries to add some umph to the notion by claiming that Mary's query offers a presumption that a gardener would "have a reason" to move a body, but it does in fact say no more than that a gardener as an employee of the garden would have some knowledge of the affair -- and also reflects rather the desperate, emotional query of a grief-stricken person who is not offering something that can be viably turned into a sound argument. Nor is it worthwhile to say that the reference by Tertullian meant that "someone must have thought it plausible that a gardener had some motive to take the body" -- since Carrier himself denigrates those who find the resurrection a plausible event, the mere fact that someone used it means nothing whatsoever in terms of plausibility. Indeed, what would he say then of Pliny the Elder and his dog-headed people? Didn't Pliny regard those as "plausible" creatures?
• Ironically, Carrier repeats the essence of the very Impossible Faith article on mine that he attacks, when he avers that if the disciples could claim an ascension, it would "completely vindicate Jesus as a holy man of God" and this "despite being crucified like a common criminal"! Carrier has been arguing out of the other side of his mouth all this time, against TIF, that such "vindication" would not have been necessary at all!
• The core of the case for disciple-theft: Carrier simply says that it is "not improbable" that one of the seventy disciples would engage in the "pious deceit" of stealing the body. It is however extremely improbable, if not impossible, that this would happen. Carrier's attempt to build a moral hierarchy for his imagined Jewish theives fails on the theme articulated by Paul (1 Cor. 15:16): "Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." It would not merely be a matter of stealing a body to restore a rabbi's reputation; rather, it would be a greater matter of bearing false witness, and particularly, from YHWH. Carrier's imagined disciples would have to have known that their own lie meant their own eternal damnation for a hideous blasphemy.

  Further problems to be brought up:

  1. How did the story make a transition from being an ascension (which is what Carrier seems to think was proclaimed) to a resurrection, when the former is easier to defend, and much more in tune with what Jews and pagans alike could have swallowed?
  2. How many disciples were in on this? Carrier thinks that "one or two persons" [353] would be sufficient, as his answer to Craig's point about conspiracies being hard to keep quiet; but "one or two persons" are not going to move a one-ton stone. At this point it would be good to remind readers of Carrier's errors with respect to this issue in an earlier performance:

     It is concluded that "the odds are effectively 100%, if he survived, that [Jesus] could move a tombstone given a day of trying..." Given the probable size of the stone (probably no more than 4 feet in height) and what it was likely made of (limestone), Broken Vector acknowledges that it would weigh about a ton. It is insisted that while this would be "too heavy to lift," it would not be "too heavy to push over (for comparison, consider how easy it is for one person to rock a car--the average automobile weighs at least a ton). It was easy to open a tomb from the inside: all one had to do was shove, and the stone would fall away under its own weight."

     An oddity indeed. A car is easy to rock because it has accessories called shock absorbers. Was the tomb rock equipped with shock absorbers or wheels? ....Broken Vector obfuscates somewhat, trying to reduce that stone to a pebble: "The Gospels of Mark and Matthew even describe a single elderly man rolling the stone into place (Mk. 15:46, Mt. 27:60), so if we believe them, the stone in question could not have been too hard to manage..." Certainly. And the Gospel of John has Pilate scourging Jesus (19:1). Has Broken Vector never learned of the language of representation? A man of Joseph's stature had servants (or paid burial tradesmen); only the naive would suppose that Mark and Matthew have him doing the actual dirty work. But he is some more obfuscation: "...[B]ased on the use of the word 'roll' throughout the narratives, the actual stone that the Gospel writers had in mind was the thin, round type which fell into use after the Jewish War, long after the time of Jesus. This was lighter and very easy for one person to move by rolling it on its edge." This becomes rather interesting as here and elsewhere, Broken Vector appeals to the study of Amos Kloner showing that at the time of Jesus, 98% of the tombs (the other 2% belonging to the very rich) the stone would have been a sort of "plug" or "cork" that viewed from above had the shape of a T with a thick stem. Broken Vector makes capital of the "rolled" language, supposing further that it is evidence that the Gospels were written late, had no knowledge of the real tomb, and anachronistically assumed that the post-70 type of tomb, which was predominantly of the "rolling disc" variety, was what was used. Such uni-dimensional thinking! Barring an incomparable flurry of tomb-building or perhaps (if I may just suggest) renovation, if 98% of tombs prior to 70 were not of this type, then it would still take a significant time for the "rolling disc" sort to become the type the made the higher percentage, and the older ones would still be there and set the main example -- and I would assume, I think legitimately, that this would take longer than anyone would suppose the Gospels were written at latest. Second, it is noted that Kloner prefers to read "rolled" as "dislodged" in line with the idea of a squared stone. Broken Vector petulanty dismisses this thesis, saying there is no proof anywhere else of the word "rolled" being used this way, and re-asserting the premise of a disc-like stone. Let's think beyond the box or prejudice and presumption, shall we? If something must be round to be rolled, then why can automobiles "roll over" and why can planes do a "roll" manuever? In modern times at least, shape is not the determining factor for what defines a "roll": what defines a "roll" is the consecutive movement of an object so that it presents successive surfaces upward. Broken Vector needs to show that this does not obtain in Greek, and does not do so. Thus the Synoptics tell us (John merely says "taken away") that the squared stone was not merely moved away, but was in such a state that it had clearly been flipped over on at least two surfaces. My, but Jesus was a strong fellow! (As opposed to a "Stringfellow" -- as a side note, one may see in Mark and Luke's "rolled away" an allusion to Josh. 5:9, "And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you." I suppose reproach was round in those days. And for what it is worth, Matthew hints at a non-disc sort of stone when he says that an angel sat on it; there would not be much room for an angel to take a seat on a disc that most likely went back into a recess.)

     It is telling enough as well that Carrier's only answer to why a conspiracy by disciples would not be uncovered amounts to, because ancient people were stupid. [354] Carrier has still not appreciated how deviant movements and their members would be harrassed, questioned, and persecuted, in such a way that a modern press or "billion-dollar political machine" of today would find enviable -- because unlike the modern press, the ancient deviant-suppressor would not be as constrained by such things as the immorality of torture or in persecution.

• An example of a prop is found in that Carrier explains away the leaving of the graveclothes in the tomb by offering two excuses: 1) a pious thief would leave these behind to offer the illusion of an ascension, which only assumes what needs to be proven; 2) it is just an "embellishment" to the story, not reflecting reality, which is merely a contrived convenience and rather hypocritical in light of Carrier's numerous uses of "embellishment" to create a theory.
• Carrier's claim and reductio ad absurdum that the "space alien" theory [354] has "more explanatory scope" as an explanation for "all monumental and other unusual ancient architecture" is absurd in reality as well: It does not have more explanatory scope, for it also requires explanations of space-faring technology (when we are now told that faster-than-light speed is impossible), and so the attempt to dismiss the resurrection as having more explanatory scope than theft fails.
• Yet another prop offered is that Matthew's "stolen body" polemic "could be evidence that the theft actually occurred and was discovered" [355] and merely asserts that the devout would believe the disciples over the elite. Perhaps so: But this fails to account for the problem of others converting thereafter; it also fails to account for the lack of record of dispute moving into terms relevant to the scenario: "They did steal the body, and we proved it." "No, that wasn't Jesus' body" and so on. (Hyporctically for one who decries "ad hoc" solutions, Carrier uses his forked tongue to "solve" this problem for his position by simply positing the "Da Vince Code Solution": All the records we need were destroyed! He even goes so far as to make the wild suggestion that Josephus did record the theft accusation, but that it was erased by "the Christian editor" of the Testimonium!) His further parallels to the Heaven's Gate cult, Jim Jones, and Rastafarianism, only prove my point: All of these either remain small, non-growing groups (he even admits that Heaven's Gate had only 39 members before, and the article he cites about its continuation even after the suicides does not even say how many people are in it!); or else have mutated to accomodate the problem (some Rastafarians now deny that Selassie was divine, while others say he works on in the spiritual realm). Carrier's final excuse, that Christianity is different than these because it "found itself in ideal conditions for social growth" [357] is a falsehood that he has perpetrated in response to TIF, and which we continue to prove false.

  Later it is also added [359] that "most Jews would be in no position to know whether there were guards, so a denial [of the guards being there] would be risky, and unfruitful," and so Carrier believes that Jewish opponents would merely grant that the guards were there (without knowledge) and reply that the guards were asleep. But by the same "logic," Christians too would be "in no position to know" and so subject to no different a risk. Indeed, they had a greater risk since they would merely be inventing the story of the guards. Furthermore, saying the guards were asleep is just as "risky" and "unfruitful" because the average Jew would be in no position to say that the guards were asleep either! Carrier solves nothing for his case with this ad hoc solution he offers. It is far more likely that the priests circulated the full report that guards were there and somehow aware of the theft.

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  There is a further aspect of Carrier's chapter in which he argues for the fictionality of the guards at the tomb. His arguments are:

  • Even if the guard story is true, the tomb was left unguarded for at least some time (Matt. 27:62) before the guard arrived, allowing time for a theft to occur. This is a ridiculous prop, for two reasons:
    1. All this tells us is that there was no one assigned by Pilate to guard the tomb. The suspicion of the priests hardly emerged at just that moment before they went to Pilate; and given the availability of thousands of Temple functionaries, it is in fact absurd to suppose that they did not have someone watching the tomb (even if from afar) from the very start -- merely unarmed, untrained "gofers" who would observe from hiding and report anything suspicious, as opposed to the formal koustodia that were being requested.
    2. Carrier also believes that the text indicates that the tomb was not checked prior to the stationing of the guard. If this is so, then he is offering the hypothesis that we have people who put the (one-ton) stone in, people who later took it out (to steal the body), put it back in (to hide the theft), and then someone else (why??) took it out again (which fooled the disciples). The absurdity of this thesis I think is summed up well by my own reply on TheologyWeb to Johnny Skeptic, Carrier's paymaster who may have been the impetus for Johnny here in the first place:

       You put your tomb stone in,

       you take your tomb stone out,

       you put your tomb stone in and

       you shake it all about!

       You do the Johnny Skeptic and you get all turned around,

       and that's what it's all a-bout!

       Who would have expected that Carrier himself was the one who proposed the "Tomb Stone Hokey Pokey"!

  • If the guards can be bribed to keep quiet, why not also to allow the body to be stolen? Of course Carrier thereby undermines his own "one or two people" thesis, so if he wants to cut off his nose to spite his face, that's fine. But there's a vast difference here, because in the present scenario, the guards are already in trouble and desperate to get out of it; in Carrier's scenario, they are not -- and have no motive for and every motive against accepting a bribe.
  • The guard could not be there; they did not challenge or oppose the women. As Keener notes in his commentary on Matthew [689], this bears little weight: women were given greater latitude in mourning; moreover, Carrier's point rests on an exceptionally "fundamentalist" reading of Matt. 28:4 and 11, and so reaches the unsupportable conclusion that the guards were still present when the women arrived (as opposed to fleeing in fear as soon as they had the sense to, as any sensible person would when confronted by an angel who kicks a one-ton stone around), his protestations of "specious liberties with the narrative" [358] notwithstanding.
  • Matthew reports "secret conversations" between the priests and the guard that no Christian would know. [359] Carrier misses the obvious conclusion that one of the guards would be a perfect candidate to turn "state's evidence" and become a Christian, thus providing the needed information; or else, this is the sort of information that someone like Joseph or Nicodemus, or one of the priests who later became a Christian (Acts 6:7) would have access to. There are simply too many potential "points of entry" for this sort of knowledge to take Carrier's objection seriously.
  • Matthew has a motive to invent the story. And of course, he also has the same motive to report a true one. If "motive" is used as an argument here then it is useful everywhere, and we can also accuse Carrier's cohorts of inventing whatever we please, and also accuse Jews of inventing the "stolen body" argument (because they had a motive to do it).
  • "...[A]pparent and deliberate parallels with the story of Daniel in the lion's den" [349] point to the story as fiction. Little needs to be said about this, for Carrier has merely repeated the same error of Randel Helms and Dennis Ronald McDonald: He has made the illicit jump from "it imitates X" to, "therefore it must not be history". However, as we show in some detail in the linked items, this conclusion is simply gratuitous and unwarranted.

  Addendum: The True Purpose of the Guard at the Tomb? Recently in personal correspondence with my Scholarly Diplomacy debate partner Matthew Green, and based on some comments he made at TheologyWeb, I have constructed a thesis about the guard at the tomb which may explain certain alleged anpmolies. In particular, it has been asked why Matthew is the only Gospel that reports this story. While I think it is sufficient to point out that only Matthew had the apologetic need to report the presence of the guard, another motive for the exclusion of the guard emerges upon consideration of Byron McCane's paper explaining Jesus' shameful burial.

  Let us first consider some points from McCane. The intent of crucifixion was to shame the accused. Usually this meant that their corpse would be left to rot on the cross and denied an honorable burial. McCane notes:

  In typical Roman fashion, opponents and enemies are not merely subdued but utterly vanquished and even made an example of. Certainly the limp, putrefying body of a crucifixion victim would have displayed the might of Rome in viscerally graphic fashion. Something else was also at work in these practices, however, something which had to do with the Roman social order. Ordinarily, death is an event which disrupts the functioning social order, for the death of any particular individual tears away a member of a social member of a social network and forces the network to reconstitute itself. Death rituals--i.e., burial customs and rites of mourning--are social processes which heal the wounds which death inflicts on the social group. By burying the dead and mourning their absence, members of a society affirm that someone significant has been lost. When the Romans did not permit the burial of crucifixion victims, then, they were doing more than merely showing off the power of Rome: they were also declaring that the deaths of these victims were not a loss to Roman society. Far from it, the deaths of condemned criminals actually served to strengthen and preserve Rome, protecting and defending the social order of the Empire.

  McCane notes that the Romans would have made certain allowances for Jewish sensibilities; the bodies would not be left on a cross over a religious holiday like Passover, but there would be more that could be denied such victims:

  Rites of mourning were not observed for these criminals, either. Family members were supposed to keep their grieving to themselves...From the Hebrew Bible through the rabbinic literature, dishonorable Jewish burial meant two things: burial away from the family tomb, and burial without rites of mourning. (emphasis added)

  In light of these points, a hypothesis emerges that validates the claim of guards at the tomb (whether Romans or, more likely, Jewish temple guards): The purpose of the detail was perhaps to prevent theft of the body, but historically, it is just as likely that the detachment was there to prevent rites of mourning at the tomb -- to stop any public displays such as we see at other funerals in the NT (eg, public crying and shouting) and thus enforce the penalty prescribed by the powers that be. No one could be allowed to mourn the death of this condemned criminal, and certainly not, because of his prominence. (Matthew Green has also noted that the guard also could have served to "insure that no one in Jesus' family or his disciples would come by to try and bribe the guards for the body of Jesus." Indeed, the guard if authentic would serve far more than one purpose, and this could have been one of them; I fully expect that theft or other outside removal of the body was on the minds of the authorities.)

  In this light, the lack of mention of the guard in three of the Gospels -- and perhaps even Matthew's emphasis on the angle of theft -- becomes immediately intelligible. The guard detail would have been a shameful thing to have to admit to, yet one more insult heaped upon a day filled with insults to Jesus' honor. Naturally there was already quite enough shameful about what happened to Jesus that is reported, but it is also an intelligible argument that what could be left out to minimize that shame, would be. The guard at the tomb would not have to be reported (indeed, there was a clear motivation to leave it out) and only the eventual apologetic value of the guard that emerged in Matthew's contexts -- once the story began to circulate in certain areas that the body had been stolen -- made it viable to play that as a card.

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