The Conspiracy.

David Shearer.

Claim: - The disciples of Jesus stole his body away.

The claim is made that the disciples of Jesus, stole his body from the tomb, while Roman soldiers on guard duty slept.
[Matthew 28:13].

How likely is this claim?

For a Roman soldier, to be asleep on duty the penalty was death. For a squad of Roman soldiers to be all asleep, would be very improbable. The fact that no soldiers were charged for failling thier duty, shows that there was a cover up of the facts. Both the soldiers and the governor were bribed by the religious leaders.

The seal on the tomb.

The Roman seal on the tomb consisted of metal rods that were inserted into holes in the rock of the tomb wall next to the stone. These then had molten lead poured into the hole, which when cooled, set the rods fast. Another rod connected to these, formed a strap across the front of the stone covering the doorway. An engineer has estimated that the metal rod would stand a shear force of 60-80 tons.

The disciples would then need to break this seal that had been placed on the tomb.
[Lead and iron evidence of this seal has been found at the garden tomb today.]

The stone.

The stone in front of the tomb was over 4 metres in diameter and 60 cm thick. It has been estimated to be 13.8 tons in weight and although it rested in a channel and could be rolled, it was stationary. Moving it from a dead stop, to shear the metal rod is considered humanly impossible.
[The disciples would need to roll away this stone.]

The folded grave clothes.

They would then unwrap the body of Jesus, neatly fold the grave clothes, and leave these in the tomb before stealing the naked body of Jesus away.
[It would have been a lot easier to carry his body away wrapped.]

The disciples would have to do all this without waking a Roman soldier.

[We can see quite quickly that this claim is nonsense.]

Evidence of the Resurrection.

The Witnesses.

The initial witnesses to the tomb on the Sunday morning were women. If you were the disciples and planning the operation to steal the body of Jesus away, you would not have the initial witnesses to be women. Women were considered to be unreliable witnesses, so you would pick someone like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathaea.

Disciples doubted the resurrection.

When the women came from the tomb to tell the disciples Jesus was raised, the disciples did not believe them.

Luke 24:11,
And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

If you had planned this operation [stealing Jesus body] you would “get the story straight” from the beginning - there would have been no expressions of doubt.

Multiple accounts of the resurrection.

Because we have multiple accounts of the resurrection, from different authors, as a fact of History, this becomes more reliable than any other fact from this time period.

Multiple appearances of Jesus.

There are multiple appearances of Jesus after his resurrection. These are:

1. to men and women,

2. in the city and the country, Judea and Galilee.

3. to different numbers of people. (1 - 500)

4. indoors and outdoors. (walking, sitting and standing.)

5. morning and evening.

This discounts the possibility of “mass hallucination”.

The person of Jesus.

If the resurrection from the dead happened to some random person, that would be an amazing happening.

But it happened to this ONE person, whose life fulfilled many prophecies written in the Old Testament, and He had told of His resurrection before His arrest.

Because we have both multiple accounts of the resurrection, and multiple appearances of Jesus after it, the conclusion that is reached, is that He is exactly as He had said He was, the Messiah, and that death could not hold Him.

Some Prophecies fulfilled.

These are some of the prophecies fulfilled at the crucifixion/resurrection:

Psalm 22:16	they pierced my hands and my feet.
Psalm 22:17	my bones: they look and stare upon me.
Psalm 22:18	They part my garments among them,
Psalm 22:18	and cast lots upon my vesture.
Psalm 16:10	For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell;
Isaiah 53:9	he made his grave with the wicked,
Isaiah 53:9	and with the rich in his death;

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.

Matthew 28:1-2