Stolen Body Theory

Who was Jack the Ripper? Who created Stonehenge? What happened to the Ark of the Covenant? These are some of history’s greatest mysteries, having confounded generations with their abstruseness and enigmatism. Among these confounding questions, is the age-old inquiry of what happened to Jesus of Nazareth’s body. Upon the back of this mystery stands the validity of all Christianity and additionally, the more important question of if Jesus rose from the dead. A vast quantity of substitute theories has grown to explain the phenomena of Christ's resurrection, how his body disappeared and how he was seen after his apparent death. Some of these anti-resurrection theories include the stolen body theory, the wrong tomb theory, and the Talpiot tomb theory.

The most widely accepted arguments against resurrection include the stolen body theory, the wrong tomb theory and the Talpiot tomb theory. The stolen body theory is one of the oldest naturalistic theories and began circulation immediately after the disappearance of Jesus’s body, continuing to evolve over the years. In Matthew’s gospel, he mentions that this theory was spread by chief priests to discredit the claims of Jesus and his followers. Matthew claimed the priests told the guards that were stationed at Jesus’s tomb, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep,’” (New International Version, Matthew, 28:13) and that this story was shared within the Jewish people at the time. The theory said to be created by the Jewish high priests, implies that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, yet continued to preach the news of his resurrection knowing this was fake. This theory has stayed relevant, and a man named Richard Carrier has presented several contemporary explanations surrounding the stolen body theory. Carrier surmises that the doctrine of bodily resurrection was most likely a legend that won favor with early Christians over a notion of spiritual resurrection (McDowell). This theory means that when the disciples wrote of

No scientific nor naturalistic theory describes how Christ died on the cross, yet still, his tomb was found empty, and he was reported to be seen alive a short while later. It also doesn’t explain why the Christian faith grew the way it has. However, if one turns to a more biblical, faith-driven explanation, Jesus’ death begin to make sense. Throughout both the Old and New Testament, multiple people, including Jesus, all prophesied that Jesus would rise from the dead. This testification from so many credible sources creates the image that the concept of the Son of God’s resurrection was not something simply created by a delusional early Christian church, but was expected for years and was the fulfillment of a covenant. When one looks analytically at all of the facts of the resurrection, the explanation found in Christian writings is simply the only one that best interprets what truly occurred. The concept of resurrection best solves all the issues the previous theories failed to solve. We know that the tomb was empty when the women found it and that Jesus died on the cross. If Christ were stolen by foes, they would have shown his body to discredit the disciples, and if he were stolen by the disciples, the story would have eroded over the years. If Jesus rose from the dead, it simply explains why the body was missing from