Talk:Stolen body hypothesis

Article Abuse
The Resurrection of Jesus can be controversial to some non-Christians. Therefore, this article has suffered several revisions of abuse. I want to remind the Wiki Community to reference your material. Opinions need to be sourced by recognized material (Scripture or otherwise). —Preceding unsigned comment added by HBCALI (talk • contribs) 13:17, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

RELIABILITY OF THE TEXT
All Good points about the article. However, I have one issue about the "Scriptural Sources" comment. Many manuscripts of the Gospels (in existence) have been historically dated within the lifetime of the original authors. The oldest date to 40-70 C.E. (portions of John & Luke). While most others date to around 200 - 300 years after the Apostles. That's about the same distance in time between Present Day and the Revolutionary War. We don't doubt the major events that took place during the war, even though we record them in modern history books almost 300 years later. What's my point? A span of 200+ years (of itself) has not proven to pose a problem with "factual integrity" or reliable record keeping.

Let's be open and honest. The "Integrity of Scripture" aurgument is based largely on personal opinion. There is no concrete evidence that the Biblical text has been "degraded" or "altered" from it's original form. We simply have no proof of that. In contrast, an honest, academic and unbiased investigation will show that the Biblical text has been very well preserved throughout the centuries. Even many non-Christians can agree on this point. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.242.1.50 (talk) 14:41, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.242.1.50 (talk) 18:50, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Response: As far as I am aware, the OLDEST surviving manuscript of the Bible is a fragment from 'John' dating to the circa A.D. 125, known as the 'Rylands Library Papyrus P52' (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/search-resources/special-collections/guide-to-special-collections/st-john-fragment/what-is-the-significance/). Also, the ending of 'Mark' found in most modern Bibles does not appear in our oldest copies (see https://www.biblica.com/bible/?osis=nlt:Mark.16:1%E2%80%938:1). [User: Draxacoffilus|Draxacoffilus] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Draxacoffilus (talk • contribs) 07:54, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

POV check and unreferenced tags
I've added the above tag due to a general lack of neutrality, despite the edit that someone used to try and remove some of the bias. This article could also be classified as being very controversial, however I lack the specialist knowledge to update and resolve the potential issues in this entry. --82.152.4.187 16:20, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

As I understand it from other articles the exact dating of the earliest gospel texts is subject to a fair degree of dispute. Meanwhile the idea that facts don't get mythologised within a couple of hundred years is clearly untrue - in US history for example much popular history is quite often wholly or mainly untrue: Plymouth Rock, Lincoln's cherry tree, Paul Revere's ride, the invention of baseball, 'All men are Created equal' (except black men), the confusion of 'the Patriots' a political party with actual patriotism, and that the supposed 'patriots' were in fact all Britsh citizens and therfore in reality all traitors... the list of modern confusion is endless. How much faster would such mytholgising have happened two thousand years ago? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.12.43 (talk) 13:14, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup Section
The last paragraph is totally unnecessary and irrelevant, and the one before that needs to be better written and more clear, descriptive, and detailed. I'm sure there are more things wrong with this section. I may try to clean it up in the near future. -EdGl 04:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Observance of religious guidelines
''The disciples, as practicing Jews, could not and would not come at or near a dead body. So they could not have stolen His body in the night.'' - heh, to those of you who practice some religion or other: haven't you ever broken the rules of your faith? To claim that A could not commit B only because B is prohibited by his religion is totally ahistorical (as there are numerous accounts of virtualy EVERY religious and ideological rules o be bended or broken 'for a higher good' or some other cause (eg. profiteering on the believers). To claim that religious rules were never broken could also assume that HUMANS ARE INFALLIBLE, which is (2) simply not true from historical, factual, archeological, psychological and all other points of view and (2) against most theologies, especially Judaic, Christian and Muslim ones. It's obvious that they *could* break the rules of their religion in order to honor their Master and Teacher in some way. Critto

_____________________________________________________________________ Not sure any of the above is terribly helpful or enlightened. Back to the subject, Re: The Jews and dead body-thing, touching a dead body makes you ceremonially unclean (see Leviticus) hence priests in certain situations cannot bury their own dead. However, as long as you don't mind being unclean (as nicodemus and Joseph weren't) you can bury who you like- the disciples were therefore free to steal his body. Given that they were about to break the commandments, (false testimony?) being unclean would hardly be an issue. The disciples didn't steal the body for a whole bunch of other reasons. Rev Dr Jason Ward

Not NPOV

 * This article fails NPOV horribly; all of the evidence supposedly levelled against this hypothesis relies on using the Bible as fact. Titanium Dragon 00:53, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's terribly biased; I have put forth my reasoning above. Most of all, it is UNACCEPTABLE to claim that any kinds of 'miracles' or other supernatural events are more plausible than real ones, which could be solved (proven or disproven) by scientific means. No pretense against ANY faith, but in ENCYCLOPEDIA we're either on the side of FACTS or the one of magic, miracles and supernatural acts. Regards, Critto

Indeed, total failure of NPOV. The entry makes no attempt to set out the stolen body hypothesis before listing criticisms: the first section is "Critique of the stolen body hypothesis" and the second "Rebuttal of the stolen body hypothesis". Surely it should start by setting out the history and/or central principles of the theory. Who proposed it? How old is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.172.19.20 (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I've added a POV-warning for the reasons you already described. The article is terribly biased and needs balancing. 62.1.168.3 (talk) 01:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The hypothesis itself assumes that the Bible is fact. If it were not, then there is no need to have an hypothesis. Since the Bible is our only record of what happened, without it you can make up anything you like, - Jesus never died, was never crucified, whatever. DJ Clayworth (talk) 18:54, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Why should we refute the Bible as a reliable source of information purely because it's a religious work? It's one of the most-- if not THE most-- scrutinized literary work(s) in the history of humanity, and the writers took extreme care to make sure that the quality of the copies were impeccable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.73.173.230 (talk) 06:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Anointing the body and some chronological questions of death and "resurrection"
The first question arising here is: until when were the guards told to deny entry to the tomb to anybody? Till the Sabbath ends? If so, anybody (or some people who were authorized to enter the tomb, eg. Joseph of Arimathea, Disciples of Jesus, women as Mary Magdalene, etc) could come after it's finished and legally take a body. Therefore there was no need to "steal the body", neither for the "swoon hypothesis", etc. The body could have just been legally and/or openly (or not) moved to another tomb after the guards were called off their duty (as it simply finished).

Also, what would happen to the guards -- considering the threat of death penalty that threatened them would the break their orders -- if Jesus really resurrected, moved the boulder away and quit the tomb? Would anybody among their commanders believe in such an explanation? Would it excuse their incompetence on they duty? Also, how on the Earth could women ever plan to go to ANOINT THE BODY of Jesus Christ (dead body, as no one plans to anoint a living person, as I am aware), if the tomb was guarded AND SEALED by the 2-tonne boulder? Could they have any plan to trick/bribe/etc the guards to help them to open the tomb (it seems unlikely that two fragile women could move a 2-tonne boulder; a strong group of men could cope with this task). Also, does it matter what happened to the guards? Would their fate be recorded anywhere, or were soldiers in such cases (of disobedience) just executed "at the spot", without any "paperwork"?

No side of the debate -- either apologist or critical -- seems to try to resolve this question. Critto (talk) 16:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I want to read more about the reasons why the theory is considered likely by some people
There is not enough on this. Also, has anyone considered that the gospel writers might just have (writing many decades after the events) made up the claim soldiers were on guard so as to counter the long-standing rumour that Christians stole the body?

Also, I looked at the death of Jesus article and did not see any link to this topic, which is supposedly a sub-page of it?Orlando098 (talk) 01:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Good point. However, many manuscripts of the Gospels (in existence) have been historically dated within the lifetime of the original authors. The oldest date to 40-70 C.E. (portions of John & Luke). While most others date to around 200 - 300 years after the Apostles. That's about the same distance in time between Present Day and the Revolutionary War. We don't doubt the major events that took place during the war, even though we record them in modern history books almost 300 years later. What's my point? A span of 200+ years (of itself) has not proven to pose a problem with "factual integrity" or reliable record keeping. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.242.1.50 (talk) 14:41, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Our oldest Bible - a fragment of 'John' - dates from c. A.D. 125, not A.D. 40-70! I discussed this in more detail in another response further up this page. USER: Draxacoffilus — Preceding unsigned comment added by Draxacoffilus (talk • contribs) 08:05, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Really?
A stolen body? Really? So maybe the guards were asleep. But why would all of the guards sleep at the same time? That right there should break the theory. Okay, so somehow all of the guards are asleep at the same time. How do you expect for a ragtag team of Apostles to swoop in, roll back a freakin huge stone, tippy-toe into the tomb, steal a full human body, and get away safely without the guards noticing? It simply does not make sense! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.73.173.230 (talk) 06:38, 30 December 2010 (UTC)


 * WP:NOTAFORUM. Basically, the talk page is for improving the article, not talking about the article subject.


 * That said, and to be clear I am not exactly a proponent of the hypothesis myself, the response would be that the theory already denies parts of the Bible account (like, say, the resurrection). It's not a stretch to also simply deny that there were Roman soldiers guarding the tomb - such an action would be nearly unprecedented for the time, as there are more valuable things for soldiers to do than guard tombs.  Similarly, a stone so huge as to be totally immobile would also have been weird.  Ultimately, there's actually consistency here between a "Christian" account and a "historian's" account: the historian would say that the guard / stone / resurrection sound weird, unlikely, and unusual for the time period.  The Christian would *agree* that the situation was weird, but such is to be expected when you're really talking about the Messiah who might well merit such graveyard guards and a miraculous resurrection.


 * As for the historicity comments you made above, the Bible isn't discounted "simply because it's a religious book." However, weird events in the Bible are given a more skeptical eye from a non-Christian perspective, the same as any other source.  I believe that according to some of the official Roman sources in Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Emperor possessed magic powers to command the animals in the Games.  Most historians - including Christian historians - agree that the Games definitely happened, but that it's unlikely the Emperor had magic.  Same with, say, Romance of the Three Kingdoms where the war described definitely happened, but Zhuge Liang being actually able to change the direction of the wind through Taoist magic is unlikely.  Basically, look at "mixed" works from other religions and ask if you believe 100% the religious flavored stuff in them.  It's no shock if non-Christians don't entirely believe the religious parts of the New Testament (but fine for Christians to do so, from a Christian perspective!). SnowFire (talk) 08:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Bribery and ritual cleanliness
This article is somewhat dismissive of the idea that the disciples could have afforded to bribe the guards, but later on, under the linen clothes, it states that Joseph of Arimathea was a man of means. I think that it should be revised to show that it's not entirely unlikely that the followers of jesus had the means to do so.

Also, I would like to point out this, which I would usually just keep to myself, but since the last section on ritual cleanliness is entirely unsourced, I think it's worth mentioning in the discussion that I doubt that, assuming that there are conspirators, they probably wouldn't think touching the dead body of the son of god is unclean. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.6.84.236 (talk) 03:31, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

The Guards and Pilate as Suspects
Two other obvious suspects are (i) the guards and (ii) Pilate. The Bible says or implies that the guards worked for the Jewish authorities, but they may well have been Romans working for Pilate, who had perhaps himself decided that the body should be made to disappear - as per Bin Laden's remains. As for what Mary Magdelene did or did not see - doesn't the Bible say that Jesus had earlier removed seven demons from her, which rather suggests she had some serious psychiatric problems. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.12.43 (talk) 12:51, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Source improvement:
The sources in this article are a mixed bag and should be improved. I'm thinking that articles relating to Jesus and religion might have to move towards using acadaemic only books published by university presses and journal articles. There's too much apologetics and counter-apologetics. Strictly speaking, why should I or anyone else care what they have to say?

William Lane Craig is a theologian and philsopher, not a historian. Him posting on reasonable faith is not a reliable source. That's just random apologetics. Now, William Lane Craig writing in a book published by an academic press or journal might matter. Josh McDowell's book More than a Carptenter is just pure apologetics and not remotely a scholarly or academic source.

Bart D. Ehrman is a reliable source, and his books are published by an Academic press. However, a debate between him and William Lane Craig probably isn't a reliable source. He could have made any claim in that debate. He could have argued that Jesus was a space alien from Mars. There's no peer review or oversight in a debate.

Richard Carrier is massively over represented on Wikipedia in general. He has a PHD sure. But his views are a minority. It's just that he's an atheist and does counter-apologetics. But if he's just writing in infidels.org, it's just as bad as apologetics sources. I'm not sure if Prometheus books is a good publisher either. They are a small time publisher.

So I'm saying raise the bar, remove both the apologetics and counter-apologetic and focus on high quality sources. Harizotoh9 (talk) 20:03, 6 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm at "fault" for some of these references - I rewrote a bunch of the article after it was nominated for deletion to, you know, actually have sources at all rather than be just unsourced blather. I do agree that more/better sources would be nice, although I don't think most of those are quite as bad as you make them out.  I also think that if you focus heavily on the "historical" side - i.e. Jesus Seminar type sources - you're going to get NPOV complaints that the "Christian" perspective isn't included.  So some apologetics is going to be par for the course when 99% of the "Christian" perspective on a resurrection-denying narrative is going to be apologetics.


 * Craig is among the best of actually-academically-scholarly apologetics side. I'm not the one who added the reasonablefaith blog citation, for what it's worth, and would be happy to see it replaced by a journal article or the like - but it happens to be precisely on the topic of discussion, and is a way better refutation than Habermas, who is basically doing an argument from incredulity.  I'd can Habermas before Craig here.


 * Citing a debate isn't perfect, but Ehrman is a good source, as you noted, so I feel it's okay. If Ehrman has said something similar in a published article somewhere, it'd be an easy swap over, but I didn't find it.


 * I would *normally* agree that Carrier is not a great source. Notably he became a Jesus-was-a-myth loon at some point.  However...  he has published an article on this very topic explicitly, "The Plausibility of Theft", that even made it into a published book on academic takes on the resurrection.  It is among the very best sources the article has, and covers a lot of the same ground.  So even if Carrier is normally a bit of a suspect source, on this particular topic, he is something of a (biased?) expert.


 * You didn't bring up J.N.D. Anderson and "his work", whatever that is. Those sections pre-date me so I have no idea if he's a good source, or which exact work was being cited - early Wikipedia played it a bit faster and looser on citations.  If someone can dig up which book / article of his that was being referenced and check that the article does justice to it, that'd be cool.


 * Basically, if you want to find some better sources than Carrier's "Plausibility of Theft", please do, and add them to the article! As better sources are added, perhaps we can slowly weed out the weaker ones.  That said, I looked into this ~5 years ago, and there was less good stuff than I was hoping that didn't delve into WP:OR territory.  Maybe you'll have more luck than I.  SnowFire (talk) 21:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Potentially, this argument is too niche to have its own article. It may work better as a few lines in another article. That is something to keep in mind. Ideally, Wikipedia should be above the apologist vs. counter-apologist back and forth, and focus on high quality scholarship. Now, we can discuss apologetics, and social movements, and so forth, but we do it through the lens of such high quality sources. What do historians say that people believed at such a time, what do scholars say people believe now, what conclusions have historians made about ancient sources, etc. Now, presumably historians have discussed the concept of the Empty tomb and the implications of it? Has Bart Erhman discussed it any of his works, such as Did Jesus Exist? (Ehrman)? Harizotoh9 (talk) 00:40, 8 March 2017 (UTC)


 * This article is way too big to merge into another article. It credibly stands alone IMO.
 * If I could cite nothing but Ehrman, I would, he's one of the best sources available. Sadly he doesn't talk much about this particular theory in his popular books, just in his occasional debates.  (It is *possible* he maybe discusses it in, say, those "The Great Courses" lectures you can buy, but I dunno.)  I've read and own a copy of "Did Jesus Exist?" and it doesn't really cover this angle - it's aimed at much more a "did Jesus exist at all" debate, and the Resurrection isn't super-important to that.
 * As for what you're asking for, uh, that's "The Plausibility of Theft." Like I said above, Carrier, occasional loony personal opinions aside, is still a historian, and he discusses social movements, what historians think actually happened in the days of Early Christianity, etc.  He throws on plenty of dollops of his own opinion, as his right, but it's still a scholarly overview of the topic.  I'll go take another look into this, sure, maybe new sources have cropped up in the past 5 years, but this article is not just sourced to bloggers arguing on the Internet.  SnowFire (talk) 14:27, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Who Actually Makes this Claim?
Reading the article is was not very clear exactly who makes this claim, that Jesus' body was stolen from the tomb. The article mentions that the Gospel of Matthew claims that Jewish priests were saying this, but other than that I've only ever heard the claim mentioned by modern Christian apologists (mainly Josh McDowell). I'm curious as to whether this is actually something that counter-apologists (anti-Christian polemicists) are saying today, or whether this is merely something that Christian apologists are pretending that people today are saying in order to make it sound like their opponents are clearly all wrong.

Also, I haven't logged into Wikipedia for several years, so I'm not 100% sure that I've added my question properly. If I've made some terrible error (such as adding this to the end of the last question, or placing my question outside of the code for the page) please feel free to correct my mistake - don't simply delete my question entirely. User: Draxacoffilus


 * Well, the error you made is that technically, this talk page is supposed to be for improving the article, not random questions (that's the reference desk). That said, I think you bring up a good missing item that would be a way to improve the article, so it's fine.


 * Short version: I don't *think* many people hold to this today. That said, I think it was part of a milleiu of influential ideas not THAT long ago...  like 1880-1980 or so.  The thing is that the kind of people this belief flourished in - rationalistic Christians with a desire to both endorse most of the Bible but also do it with less miracles - is a dying breed.  Back when leaving the Church was shocking, many people would stay Christian but have a variety of divergent beliefs about what exactly that means.  Since 1980, many of those people have either stopped caring about such matters entirely and become agnostics, or else become radical atheists who aren't interested in giving *any* credit to the Gospels, some even going as far as Jesus myth type theories.


 * You can see some of the types of people who buy into this type of thing at Swoon hypothesis, which nicely has a 19th century / 20th century proponents section. It's the same set of people who also take the Stolen Body Hypothesis seriously.  SnowFire (talk) 17:27, 25 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response, SnowFire. I find it kind of amusing to hear that these sorts of things were being said by actual Christians; they sounded atheistic (or at-least anti-Christian) to me. User: Draxacoffilus


 * User: Draxacoffilus - you might like to look at the article Resurrection of Jesus.PiCo (talk) 03:09, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Wikiprojects
We've disputed before, but... please make an affirmative case for why all these extra Wikiprojects are being added. A Wikiproject should not be added to every vaguely related thing. In particular, I've said before that you are using Wikiproject Death differently than Wikiproject Death uses it. It is not for every topic vaguely involving mortality - it would be on half the articles on Wikipedia if so, this article is about something alleged to have happened after a death. And as discussed, "Ancient Near East" is generally for pre-Roman era, not the 1st century AD. I don't see the point of the other broader Wikiprojects either - this is a Christianity-specific topic. The closest I can see maybe being relevant is Classical Greek and Rome, but that's marginal at best too. I've left it in as a matter of compromise, but can you explain why the other Wikiprojects are within scope here? Also, I don't get the "image requested in Israel." What are you looking for, Israelis to take a photograph of people dressed as the disciples robbing an empty tomb? What's the request here? I highly doubt there is medieval public-domain art of something that early Church would have considered sacreligious and heresy. Checking your recent contributions, I see something similar for Category talk:Paintings of the Ascension of Christ - everything added there is definitely wrong. The paintings are not about death, it's not a Bible-specific topic, it's clearly Christianity rather than generic Folklore or Mythology, and Ancient Near East definitely has nothing to do with it. Please, please stop adding in such loosely related Wikiprojects everywhere. If you need to hear it from someone other than me, that's fine, I'm happy to get a third opinion, but this is just wrong. (It's also "mostly harmless" which is why I seem to be the main person to give pushback, it's certainly not that important either way, but these are such loose connections that it's really not defensible in my opinion. But maybe I'm missing something here.)  SnowFire (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * You are missing the WikiProjects' scope. WikiProject Death is not about mortality. It specifically covers religious aspects of death ("Afterlife, reincarnation, resurrection"), paranormal aspects of death (" Near-death experience, deathbed phenomena, after-death communication, reincarnation"), and Folklore about death ("Vampires, zombies, ghosts, revenant (folklore)). WikiProject Ancient Near East never had an artificial time limit, and most of the religious cults it covers lasted well into the Early Middle Ages. And why would anyone want a photograph of people in costume? This is an article of grave robbery in Jesus' tomb. We have an entire category of Category:Alleged tombs of Jesus, accompanied by photographs and maps of their locations. Dimadick (talk) 18:16, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Dimadick: The whole point of Wikiprojects is to gather up a limited, relevant slice. You could add every single article to every single WikiProject and the result would be that the list of articles for each Wikiproject would be worthless.  There's some inherent picking-and-choosing.  For example, the Bible is a topic in Christianity, yet we have a separate Wikiproject Bible.  Why?  It's for interested users on specifically core Biblical topics, like books or chapters of the Bible.  If "everything mentioned in the Bible" was added, you'd just have something very similar to Wikiproject Christianity or Judaism again.  There is a mention of a Biblical passage here, that's not strange, same as the Ascension of Jesus being mentioned in the Bible.  But if "everything mentioned in the Bible" is added to Wikiproject Bible, it's not Wikiproject Bible anymore!  It's just a clone of Wikiproject Christianity.  I'll give another example, you added the Paintings category to various demonination-specific task forces.  But the whole point of these denomination-specific taskforces is stuff that is specifically of interest to one branch: Anglican dioceses, Eastern Orthodox festivals, etc.  If all the "common Christianity" stuff was stuffed in these task forces, it'd make it harder to find the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant/etc.-specific articles that are the raison d'etre of such groups.  I get that there will be borderline cases that could go either way, but you are consistently adding projects and task forces that are way outside even borderline cases.  Since you clearly aren't convinced by me, if you're really set on this, is there a place where you'd be willing to accept community feedback?  I'd be happy to accept it myself if it turns out I'm the one out of line here.  Village pump (miscellaneous), perhaps?  Or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council?  SnowFire (talk) 19:19, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * "It's for interested users on specifically core Biblical topics, like books or chapters of the Bible. " Nothing is about core topics.That defeats the purpose of WikiProjects, to locate and rate new articles. Dimadick (talk) 03:58, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 * "Since you clearly aren't convinced by me" To put it mildly, you seem like you have never worked on any WikiProject page. Dimadick (talk) 04:00, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

lexical/vocab.: corpse vs. "body"
'corpse' would seem more-accurate than "body," however, I suppose, the element of the super-natural, in this gospel-story, confounds the acceptance of that term, as the more-accurate choice Eel Notluad (talk) 17:19, 10 April 2023 (UTC)