Jesus's body was absent from the tomb in which it was placed.
• …critics never showed off the body
• …Mary witnessed it being empty
• …the AD 30 Jerusalem church insisted “His tomb is empty!”
• …the AD 30 Jerusalem critics were saying, “it's empty—theft!”
• …the original “body missing!” claim wasn't a lie
• …tomb or not, the body was gone
Jerusalem critics of Christianity never displayed the unresurrected body of Jesus.
• …the belief that “he's alive” flourished in Jerusalem
• …they publicly granted that the body was gone
• …they weren't arguing “we showed the corpse”
But so what, plausibly…
• …they couldn't locate Jesus's grave”.
• …they didn't/wouldn't have tried to display it.1
• …they couldn't prove the corpse was Jesus's since it had decomposed.2
In AD 30, The Jerusalem Church's official position was that “Yes, Jesus's body is gone!”.
• They were saying “Jesus's tomb is empty”
• They were saying Jesus was “buried,” then “raised”
• They weren't venerating Jesus's grave
• Their stance on the issue stayed faithful
• They were affirming the truth of the matter
• They were saying that “Jesus resurrected!”
But no,
• Paul wasn't affirming it
But so what? Plausibly…
• They were accidentally perpetuating a lie that they had fallen for
• They were accidentally perpetuating Mary's wrong-tomb blunder
• They inferred it from a mistaken belief that Jesus visited them in the flesh.
• They were intentionally lying to argue ‘this proves Jesus rose’
It was an original honest report that “Jesus's body is gone/missing,” which culminated in the gospels etc. reporting that it went missing.
• …Missing body evidence wasn't appealing to Christians.
• …such a lie was too overtly falsifiable.
• …clearly better lies would be irresistible to liars.
But so what? Couldn't it simply be that…
• …Mary Magdalene and the other women originated the report by honestly mistaking an empty tomb for Jesus's, and infecting their church etc. with their blunder?
• …they inferred it from a mistaken belief that Jesus visited them in the flesh.
1 [Forthcoming.]
The Apostles, Paul, Mary, and other Christians in Jerusalem were loudly proclaiming that “Jesus has been raised from the dead!”
• …“he's resurrected,” says Paul. [Forthcoming]
• …“he's resurrected,” says Mary. [Forthcoming]
• …“he's resurrected,” says James. [Forthcoming]
But, so what? Couldn't it simply be that…
• …they were lying. [Forthcoming]
• …they inferred it from the mistaken belief that Jesus visited them in the flesh.
Although he was crucified, Jesus in fact had not died on the cross. [Full article.]
• ...the crucified rarely die within 3 hours
But no...
• ...Jesus was first nearly scourged to death.
• ...crucifixion in general is fatal.
• ...the executioner judged Jesus dead.
• ...Jesus was speared in the side.
• ...contemporaries never doubted it.
• ...the buriers judged Jesus dead.