The Swoon Theory
The swoon theory, also called the apparent death theory, probably originated sometime in the eighteenth century but was popularized by critics, such as Heinrich Paulus and Friedrich Schleiermacher, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.4 This view claims that Jesus did not actually die on the cross and that he recovered from his injuries during his interim in the tomb. The cool conditions of the tomb and the healing qualities of the spices poured on Jesus are said to be responsible for his unlikely recovery. This position is as ridiculous as it sounds, and there are several reasons for rejecting it.
The most obvious reason for the failure of the apparent death theory is that it is simply implausible. As William Lane Craig notes, "What the theory suggests is virtually physically impossible. The extent of Jesus' tortures was such that he could never have survived the crucifixion and entombment."5 Even modern doctors agree with Craig's assessment.6 The proposed idea that the cool conditions of the tomb and the healing qualities of the spices poured on Christ's body could have possible revived a man who had been beaten, flogged, driven to exhaustion, nailed to a cross, and then pierced in the side with a spear, is entirely unbelievable.
Secondly, the death of Christ was confirmed by several individuals at the scene of the crucifixion. The Roman soldiers, experts in executions, were confident that Jesus was dead. When the soldiers came to Christ to break his legs, a common practice to speed the death of crucifixion victims by asphyxiation, they refrained, seeing that he had already expired. Just to make certain, the soldiers stabbed Jesus in the heart with a spear causing a mixture of blood and water to immediately pour from his wound, evidence that the spear hit its mark, and that Christ was already dead.7 The disciples of Christ also believed him to be dead. This was the reason they became greatly discouraged and lost hope. Two of them, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, actually took the body of Jesus from the cross and then prepared it for burial. Are we to believe that all of these individuals, both enemies and friends of Christ, were mistaken about his death? It simply strains credulity to propose that the professional executioners of Rome, not to mention Joseph and Nicodemus who had prolonged contact with the body, were wrong about Jesus being dead.
The final flaw with the apparent death explanation may be the most fatal. The theory just asks us to believe too much. If it is true, the real story of the resurrection would go something like this: Sometime after his lifeless body was placed in the tomb, Jesus revived. He then removed the wrappings which had been wound tightly around his body and drenched with seventy-five pounds of spices. Somehow, the badly injured and bleeding Jesus found the strength to roll away the two-ton rock that had been placed at the entrance of the tomb and then get past the guards who were stationed there. Finally free from his entombment, Jesus was then able to make his way to the location where his disciples were gathered. When he arrived, this bloody pulp of a man, barely able to stand, was able to convince his discouraged and scared disciples that he had, in fact, risen from the grave triumphantly just as he had promised to do. He would then meet with his disciples many times over the next few weeks as he recovered from his wounds. After some time, Jesus removed himself from public life and then either died from his wounds, or lived the rest of his life in hiding. The disciples, now encouraged and emboldened by the glorious return of their Lord from the dead, would go on to spark a movement, based on Christ's triumphant resurrection, that would become the greatest human enterprise the world has ever known. These same disciples would then be tortured and martyred for their conviction that Jesus Christ had victoriously risen from the grave. This is simply too much. Even if Jesus did somehow manage to survive the crucifixion and subsequent entombment, his appearing to the disciples in such a horrid physical condition would not have elicited their worship of him as their Lord who rose gloriously from the grave. As history reveals, the early disciples did not preach a Savior who had barely escaped death, but a Savior who died and triumphantly rose from the grave. For these reasons and others, the apparent death theory suffered fatal wounds, from which it did not swoon, and thus has been virtually abandoned by critics of the resurrection as a coherent explanation for the empty tomb.
The Wrong Tomb Theory
The wrong tomb theory, also known as the mistaken tomb theory, was first offered as an alternate explanation for the empty tomb by Kirsopp Lake in 1907.8 Lake proposed that the women who came to visit the tomb of Jesus were mistaken about its exact location, and in the dim light of early morning, happened upon an unoccupied tomb that they assumed to be the vacated tomb of Christ. This position posits that the resurrection story is the result of a mistake. The mistaken tomb theory is a simple explanation with equally simple refutations.
The wrong tomb theory assumes that the testimony of a handful of emotionally unstable women was accepted without verification. This, of course, is absurd. The gospel of John records that at least two disciples, Peter and probably John himself, ran to the tomb to see it for themselves. Surely these men, in the clear light of day, would have discovered and corrected the mistake made by the women. This position also fails to account for the widespread knowledge of the location of Christ's tomb. Even if we concede to the possibility that all of Christ's disciples were mistaken about the location of Jesus' tomb, we cannot possibly conclude that the enemies of Christ, the Jewish authorities, had also forgotten where Christ was buried. After all, it was the Sanhedrin who positioned the guards at the entrance of the tomb. When the followers of Christ began to proclaim his resurrection, the Jewish authorities had only to exhume the corpse of Jesus from the real tomb and parade it around the city. If even they suffered from the same amnesia over the whereabouts of Christ's tomb, Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin and owner of the tomb, certainly could have directed everyone to the proper location. The wrong tomb theory was a poor explanation for the empty tomb. As such, it died almost as soon as it was birthed and generated little following.
The Theft Theory
Without question, the oldest explanation for the empty tomb was the one given by the party responsible for Christ's crucifixion. Matthew records the very first attempt to explain away the empty tomb:
Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened. When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, "Tell them, ?His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.' And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will appease him and make you secure." So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day (Matt. 28:11-15).
Indeed, the theory that the disciples stole the body of Jesus remained popular among the Jews for several centuries, evidenced by the writings of early church fathers such as Tertullian and Justin Martyr.9 From the beginning, this position has accused the disciples of stealing the body of Christ from his tomb and then lying about his resurrection. Unfortunately for the Jews of the first few centuries and the deists who resurrected the explanation in the eighteenth century,10 the theft theory has a number of severe problems.
The most obvious flaws of this explanation are evident in the story that the Jewish authorities gave to the guards to pass on. The guards were told to report that the disciples stole the body while they slept. But sleeping guards do not make good witnesses; how could the guards know that it was the disciples who stole the body if they were asleep? The difficulty deepens if the guards were Roman soldiers and not just temple soldiers, a fact hard to determine from the gospels. The penalty for a Roman soldier who fell asleep while on guard was death. In the Roman army, if you fell asleep on the job, you would not be demoted but decapitated! It is highly unlikely that these well trained men would make a mistake that bore such heavy consequences.
Another flaw in theft theory has to do with the disciple's ability to pull off the conspiracy. Could these men, in the defeated and downtrodden state that they were in, really fight through the guard, move the stone, and then steal the body of Christ from the tomb? The disciples were clearly not the heroic type. Where was this valor and bravery when their master was still alive and being arrested in the Garden? The leader of the bunch, Peter, could not even stand firm in the face of a simple accusation from a slave girl. The idea that the death of their master could fill the disciples with courage and embolden them to execute such a perilous conspiracy cannot be seriously considered. The disciples were in no mood to try such a daring proposal.
Even more troublesome then the lack of ability on the part of the disciples to pull off such a conspiracy is the lack of motive for them to hatch it in the first place. Why would the disciples steal the dead body of Christ and then proclaim that he had resurrected? Were they expecting Christ to rise from the grave? Not according to the gospels. The gospel accounts do not portray the disciples excitingly anticipating the resurrection of their Lord after his crucifixion. Instead, they were scared, depressed, defeated, and in great mourning. In fact, when Christ did appear to them alive again, the disciples were shocked and in a state of utter astonishment. Though Jesus made mention of it on several occasions, it is evident that the disciples were ignorant of his resurrection both before and immediately after his crucifixion. The disciples simply had no reason to anticipate a resurrecting Messiah. Craig is correct again when he writes,
The Conspiracy Hypothesis views the disciple's situation through the rearview mirror of Christian history rather than through the eyes of a first-century Jew. There was no expectation 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 idea of eschatological resurrection was unconnected with the idea of Messiah and even incompatible with it.11
That the disciples espoused this traditional Jewish belief about the Messiah is clear from the gospel of Luke. When the risen and concealed Jesus came upon two of his disciples on the road to Emmaes, one of them, Cleopas, told him, "The chief priests and our rulers delivered Him [Jesus] to be condemned to death, and crucified Him. But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:20-21). Apparently, the fact that he had been crucified disqualified Jesus as the Messiah in the minds of first century Jews. Therefore, as far as the disciples were concerned, Jesus was dead, and it was over. Craig concludes, "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 the disciples."12
Not only did the disciples lack any motive to begin the conspiracy, but they also lacked one to continue it as well. The theft theory requires us to believe that the disciples of Christ flagrantly lied about the resurrection, and that these same men allowed themselves to be persecuted, tortured, and killed for this lie. This is unthinkable. Some men will die for something that they believe to be true, but no man will ever die for something he knows to be a lie. Because adherents of this theory cannot explain why the disciples would do this, modern scholars do not consider the theft theory to be a legitimate explanation for the empty tomb.
Conclusion
This final alternate explanation emphasizes the historicity of the empty tomb. The theft story was an overt admission by the enemies of Christ that the tomb containing the body of Jesus was, indeed, vacant. If it was not, there would not have been a need to concoct such a story in the first place; a simple exhumation of the body would have sufficed. As historians will point out, corroboration from an opposing party is historical evidence of the highest quality.
Ultimately, each of the proposed alternate explanations fail to explain the empty tomb and account for all the facts, as coherently and consistently as the resurrection story. The vacant tomb continues to haunt and confound the enemies of Christianity as it has for centuries, silently witnessing to the world: the body is gone; the body is gone; Jesus has risen!
Written by Anthony Alberino
