The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  “The ancient meaning of resurrection was the bringing back of a corpse to life and transforming it into an immortal body. Imagine saying to Paul, ‘If you believed in an empty tomb, why didn’t you mention it?’ Paul would have said, ‘Well, what do you think I meant when I said resurrection? You want me to spell it out for you? Of course, I mean an empty tomb!’

  “The New Testament uses two different words for resurrection. One of them means to stand up again. The other means to raise up, and it’s used many times of waking up out of a sleep. Well, when you wake up out of a sleep, it’s not like you wake up into a new body or into no body at all. When you wake up out of a sleep and stand up again, you’re in your body and you stand up using the same body. This is the way it’s used when the synagogue ruler’s daughter was raised from the dead. She left behind an empty bed, not an empty body.”20

  “Still,” I pressed, “why didn’t Paul specifically use the words ‘empty tomb’?”

  For Licona, the answer was all too obvious. “It was unnecessary,” he said. “It would be redundant after he said, ‘resurrection.’”

  “But can you blame people today for wishing Paul had been even more explicit?”

  Licona shrugged. “Maybe the skeptics want to have it spelled out for them in the twenty-first century, but Paul was writing this in the first century. They all knew what resurrection meant. To them, Paul was plenty explicit. He’s clear in his own letters. Moreover, when Luke reports Paul stating in Acts 13:37 that Jesus’ body ‘did not see decay,’ readers surely understood that his physical body had been raised—and if the body was raised, the tomb was empty. This is early apostolic tradition.”

  In the end, I had to admit: this made sense to me too.

  THE “RELOCATION HYPOTHESIS”

  I moved on to another current objection to the empty tomb: the “relocation hypothesis” championed by both Tabor and Jeffery Jay Lowder, whose attacks on the resurrection have proven popular on the Internet.

  According to Lowder, “Jesus’ body was stored (but not buried) in Joseph’s tomb Friday before sunset and moved on Saturday night to a second tomb in the graveyard of the condemned, where Jesus was buried dishonorably.”21 Tabor asserts that someone—probably members of Jesus’ own family—removed the body from this “temporary grave” and reburied him elsewhere. He says the post-resurrection appearances were invented to compensate for the original ending of Mark’s gospel.22

  I was curious how Licona would respond. “What’s your reaction?” I asked.

  “Notice first that this is in contradiction to what Carrier says,” he replied. “Carrier says you need to account for the appearances, so Mark invented the empty tomb. Other critics are saying you’ve got an empty tomb due to reburial, so you’ve got to account for it by making up the appearances. Apparently, not even the skeptics can agree with each other!”

  That was interesting—but it didn’t answer the question. “Yes or no?” I said, trying not to sound too impatient. “Does their theory pass muster as a historical hypothesis?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he answered.

  “Why not?”

  “Here’s the question we have to ask: Does it account for all the facts and do so without straining? At best, even if the reburial hypothesis were true, all it accounts for is the empty tomb. And interestingly, the empty tomb didn’t convince any of the disciples—possibly with the exception of John—that Jesus had returned from the dead. It was the appearances of Jesus that convinced them, and the reburial theory can’t account for these.

  “It’s like with David Koresh in the 1990s. He predicted that when he died he would rise from the dead three years later. Well, he didn’t. But let’s suppose three years after the date of his death at Waco, some Branch Davidians said, ‘Hey, Koresh is back to life again.’ You go and check for his remains at the coroner’s office and they’re missing. Would you, as a Christian, abandon your faith and become a Branch Davidian because of that? Of course not. You’d say, “C’mon, the remains were moved, stolen, or misplaced.’

  “Think about it: Why did Paul move from skepticism to faith? He said it was the appearances that led to his faith, not his faith that led to the appearances. The same with James. The appearances were the key—and, again, this theory fails to account for them.

  “Besides, on a more mundane note, if the family moved the body, don’t you think somebody would have said something to straighten out the disciples when they were going around proclaiming a resurrection? And remember: the explanation for the empty tomb that was circulating at the time was that the disciples had stolen the body. If the body had merely been relocated, why didn’t somebody in authority point that out so they could squelch the Christian movement in its infancy?”

  “What do you think of Tabor’s suggestion that he even knows where Jesus is buried—in the north, in Galilee outside the city of Tsfat?” I asked.

  A look of exasperation came over Licona’s face. “First, this is based on his metaphysical naturalism, which says we know people can’t return from the dead and therefore if Jesus’ tomb was empty, the body must have been reburied. That’s the only logical explanation, according to Tabor. Again, that’s a product of his metaphysical assumptions, not because of an open-minded assessment of the historical evidence.

  “Second, Tabor gets his information from a sixteenth-century Jewish mystic,” he said, his eyebrows raising. “Think about that! If Christians based their theory on what a sixteenth-century Christian reported, we would laugh at that person—and justifiably so. Now, believe me, I’m not laughing at Tabor—he’s certainly a credentialed scholar. But you can’t blame people for rejecting his theory. It’s just amazing to me that he would disregard the reports of the Gospels, which were all written in the first century, but be credulous of a single source written by a mystic some fifteen hundred years after Jesus.”

  Licona’s analysis reminded me of the words of New Testament scholar Craig A. Evans, whom I had interviewed earlier:

  I find it ironic that Tabor is willing to give credence to the vision of a sixteenth-century mystic and kabbalist, but is not willing to give credence to the vision of the first-century Saul of Tarsus. Saul did not believe Jesus was the Messiah and certainly did not believe that he had been raised from the dead—tomb or no tomb. Saul was hard at work trying to stamp out the new heresy. Then Saul met the risen Messiah. And we know the rest of the story. I’ll take Saul’s vision any day over [the sixteenth-century mystic’s]. I urge Tabor to do the same.23

  THE JESUS TOMB

  What about another possibility referenced by Tabor in his book—that the “bone boxes” discovered in the Talpiot Tomb south of the old city of Jerusalem in 1980 once contained the skeletal remains of Jesus and his family?

  Hollywood director James Cameron and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici garnered widespread publicity with their 2007 Discovery Channel documentary in which they said archaeologists had found ossuaries etched with the names “Jesus, son of Joseph,” Joseh (or Joseph), Maria (or Mary), Matia (or Matthew), Mariamne Mara (which they claimed was Mary Magdalene), and “Judah, son of Jesus.” DNA tests indicated that the individual buried in the Jesus and Mary Magdalene ossuaries were not related through the same mother; the documentary suggested they had been married and had at least one child—Judah.

  In his book, however, even Tabor conceded that Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who oversaw the tomb’s excavation, said that “the possibility of it being Jesus’ family [is] very close to zero,” and that Motti Neiger of the Israeli Antiquities Authority agreed “that chances of these being the actual burials of the holy family are almost nil.”24

  I asked Licona whether any of the original archaeologists concluded that these ossuaries belonged to the biblical Jesus and his family.

  “No,” came his answer. “They understood that nearly all of the names inscribed on the ossuaries were very common.”

  “How common?”

  “It appears that Mary was the most popular name
during the time of Jesus. It’s estimated that one out of every four or five women in Jerusalem was named Mary. Joseph was the second most common male name in Jesus’ day, with about one out of every seven Jerusalem males being called that. One out of every eleven males was named Jesus, one out of ten was named Judah, and one in every twenty was named Matthew.”

  “Still,” I said, “isn’t it significant that ossuaries with the names of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary happened to be found in the same tomb?”

  “Well, certainly the potential for significance increases when you place together a specific combination of names, even common ones,” he replied. “As Cameron’s documentary said, finding the names of John, Paul, and George is no big deal, but when you add Ringo to the pool, you may have something. The problem, of course, is that when you really examine things, there’s no equivalent of ‘Ringo’ in the Talpiot tomb.

  “According to calculations by physicist Randy Ingermanson,” he continued, “one out of every seventy-nine males in Jerusalem was ‘Jesus, son of Joseph.’25 Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III estimate that during the ninety-year period in which ossuaries were used—from 20 BC to AD 70—there were about 80,000 males in Jerusalem. That means there were approximately 1,000 men named Jesus who had a father named Joseph.26 Ingermanson then considers the other names in the Talpiot tomb and calculates there were probably eleven men in Jerusalem during that period who fit the profile of the Jesus in the Talpiot tomb.

  “So without taking anything else into consideration, there’s roughly a one in eleven, or nine percent, chance that the Talpiot tomb contained the biblical Jesus. But there’s a whole lot more to consider. In order for Jesus to qualify as one of the eleven, we must see what evidence there is that Jesus was married and had children or was single. And things get significantly worse for the Talpiot theorists when that is considered.”

  “Is there any evidence that Jesus was, indeed, married to Mary Magdalene?”

  “The evidence in the documentary starts with the Acts of Philip, which is where Mary is supposedly first referred to as Mariamne. But the text doesn’t actually say ‘Mariamne’ like the ossuary does; it refers to ‘Mariamme.’ Mariamme in the Acts of Philip is only identified as the sister of Philip, and there’s no hint in the text whatsoever that she’s married to Jesus or has a child. In fact, the text seems to demand celibacy. The main character, Philip, tells converts to Christianity to leave their spouses and live a life of sexual abstinence.”27

  “In any event,” I said, “nobody thinks the Acts of Philip is historically reliable, do they?”

  “The text dates from the fourth century,” Licona said. “Even if some of its traditions go back to the second century, that’s still long after the canonical Gospels. In their book The Jesus Family Tomb, Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino cite both the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary as suggesting that Jesus may have been romantically involved with Mary Magdalene, but these writings post-date the New Testament. No widely respected scholar holds that they contain any historically reliable information about Jesus or his followers. On top of that, these texts don’t even claim that Jesus and Mary were married or had a child.”

  “Is there any evidence that Jesus was single?”

  “Absolutely!” he declared. “Even though there’s no obvious reason why the Messiah needed to be single, our four earliest biographies of Jesus, written within seventy years of his life, present him that way. And Paul didn’t mention Jesus as having been married when it certainly would have been to his advantage to do so.”

  “For instance…,” I prompted him.

  “When writing to the church in Corinth, he affirms he has the right to have a Christian wife accompany him, like the rest of the apostles, the Lord’s brothers, and Peter.28 If Jesus had been married, surely Paul would have added his name as his primary example. Paul’s silence is a deafening shout pertaining to Jesus’ marital status.”

  “Do you believe the ossuary labeled ‘Mariamne Mara’ belongs to Mary Magdalene?”

  “It’s extremely unlikely, since Mary Magdalene doesn’t appear to have been referred to anywhere as ‘Mariamne.’ In addition, while ‘Mara’ could possibly mean ‘the great’ or ‘Lord,’ it could easily be short for ‘Martha.’ Without a Mary Magdalene in the Talpiot tomb, Cameron’s proposal collapses—in short, there’s no ‘Ringo.’”

  I asked, “How about the DNA evidence that Cameron presented?”

  “Something the team neglected to mention is that even though there were ten ossuaries discovered in the tomb back in 1980, as many as thirty-five were buried there. So this tomb probably included extended family members. Mariamne could just as likely have been Jesus’ cousin, aunt, grandmother on his father’s side, half-sister from a previous marriage of his father, niece, or daughter-in-law.”

  “So what’s your conclusion about the Jesus tomb?” I asked.

  “Cameron’s opening words in The Jesus Family Tomb provide a hint about what we can expect throughout the book: ‘What if Jesus didn’t exist at all? Today many experts are saying exactly that.’29 Well, that’s ridiculous. It merely shows how out of touch Cameron is with scholarship.

  “Sure, there are some self-proclaimed experts on the Internet who claim Jesus never existed, but these aren’t scholars with academic credentials. Only a very small handful of legitimate scholars, such as the skeptic Robert Price, suggest they wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus never existed, but even Price falls short of asserting Jesus never lived.

  “The arguments that the Talpiot tomb contained the remains of the biblical Jesus are extremely weak. And besides, don’t forget all the persuasive affirmative evidence that I’ve already cited for Jesus rising from the dead.”

  Indeed, Cameron’s documentary sparked an onslaught of criticism from knowledgeable scholars. “Almost no one agrees that the name Mariamne refers to Mary Magdalene, or that Mara means ‘Lady’ or ‘Master,’ as though it were a title of honor,” Evans told me in an email. “It is, rather, an abbreviation of Martha, which is attested in other inscriptions.” Given its Greek form, he said the etching on the ossuary could very well be read as: “Mariamne’s (daughter) Mara (or Martha).” Others translate it as: “[Ossuary] of Mariamne (who is also called) Mara.”

  As far as the DNA is concerned, Evans said, “Ossuaries often contained more than one skeleton in them, so there is some question whether the tested bone fragments actually match the names inscribed on the ossuaries.”

  Historian Paul Maier was blunt in describing the Jesus Tomb: “This is merely naked hype, baseless sensationalism, and nothing less than a media fraud.”30 In the end, the public seemed to agree. A Zogby poll showed that among those with or without knowledge of the documentary, there was absolutely no difference in the percentage who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.31

  PRODUCING JESUS’ BODY

  One way Christians often defend the empty tomb is to say that if the grave still contained Jesus’ body, then the authorities could have paraded it down Main Street in Jerusalem and thus killed the incipient Christian movement. In fact, Licona had used a similar argument.

  But is that really true? After all, the disciples’ public proclamation about the resurrection came some seven weeks after the crucifixion, when Peter declared to a crowd of several thousand people in Jerusalem: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.”32

  Price suggests the disciples were “shrewd enough” to wait this long so that “disconfirmation had become impossible.” He said that after fifty days “it would have been moot to produce the remains of Jesus.”33 Agreed Lowder: “The body would have been far too decomposed to be identified without modern forensics.”34

  Licona was incredulous. “Price thinks the disciples were being shrewd to wait until the corpse was unrecognizable?” he asked. “They were laying their lives on the line! Why would they plot and scheme this way so their reward would be continual suffering, even to the point of death? That doesn’t add u
p.”

  “What about recognizing the body?” I asked.

  “I talked to three coroners from Louisiana, Virginia, and California about whether a body would be recognizable after fifty days. All agreed that even in a humid climate, you would still be able to recognize a body somewhat—at least in stature, the hair, and possibly the wounds.

  “Now, had you been able to go back to Jesus’ tomb after fifty days and seen a severely decomposed body of the same stature as Jesus and with the same hair, and possibly note wounds consistent with scourging and crucifixion, enough doubt would have been put into enough minds that subsequent Christian apologists would have had to address why there was a great exodus of believers at that point. But we have no record of any such thing.

  “In other words, if the authorities had claimed this was Jesus, then the burden of proof would have shifted. The onus would have been on the disciples to disprove it. Nobody needed to see all his facial features; merely producing a severely decomposed body from the right tomb and with the right stature and hair type would have put the disciples on the defensive. Their movement would have been greatly undermined. But of course, there’s absolutely no historical evidence to suggest this happened.”

  “A DIVINE MIRACLE”

  Try as they might, the skeptics still couldn’t put Jesus’ body back in his tomb. Time after time, what sounded like a knockout objection had been successfully overcome by Licona’s explanations.

  Challenge the post-Easter appearances of Jesus and you’ve still got the empty tomb. Theorize that Jesus’ body was moved to an undisclosed location and you’re still faced with the appearances that revolutionized the disciples, Paul, and James. The hallucination theory might work with Peter, but not Paul, James, or groups of people. Alternate scenarios that seemed credible from a distance unraveled at an alarming rate when examined up close.