Did Jesus's body go missing?

1. By contrast:
   • Craig Blomberg (NT professor at Denver Seminary): “…the Jewish authorities, who had every reason to want to refute Christianity, could never produce the body of Jesus inside or outside a tomb.” [The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, 2nd ed. (IVP, 2007), 144.]
   • C. E. B. Cranfield (NT professor at Durham): “The fact that with the will and the powers and resources they surely had, they never produced the body must count as a significant consideration in favour of the truth of [the empty grave]”. ["The Resurrection of Jesus Christ” in The Historical Jesus vol 3., ed. Evans (Routledge, 2004), 401.]
2. Examples of scholars propounding this explanation:
   • Alfred Loisy (Theologian; 1857-1940): “The soldiers removed the body from the cross before dark and threw it in some common grave, where they cast the bodies of the criminals… The conditions of the burial were such that at the end of a few days it would have been impossible to recognize the mortal remains of the saviour, had anyone been looking for them… Nobody would contest that Jesus had died on the cross. Nobody could prove that he had not been resurrected.” [Les ēνangiles synoptiques (Loisy, 1907), 1:223-24. (As cited by Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 307.)]
   • Gerd Lüdemann (Professor at Göttingen) “Well, we don't know when the Christians became an important movement. According to the Acts of the Apostles, they started to preach fifty days after the death of Jesus. And after fifty days, you wouldn't see much left of the body.” [Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? (IVP, 2000), 61.]
   • Peter Carnley (NT scholar): “[This argument assumes] that the proclamation of the Easter message in Jerusalem… [was] soon enough to allow for the positive identification of a body as certainly that of the dead Jesus.” [The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Oxford, 1987), 55.]
   • Robert Price (NT scholar): “But this is absurd: the only estimate the New Testament gives as to how long after Jesus' death the disciples went public with their preaching is a full fifty days later on Pentecost! After seven weeks, I submit, it would have been moot to produce the remains of Jesus.” [“By This Time He Stinketh,” in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, eds. Price & Lowder (Prometheus, 2005), 423.]

¹ [Forthcoming.]

1. • Wolfhart Pannenberg: “How could Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem have proclaimed his resurrection if they could be constantly refuted merely by viewing the grave in which the body was interred?” [Jesus - God and Man (Westminster, 1983), 100.]