Thoughts on the resurrection

I have heard some preachers - mainly radio evangelists or pastors - proclaim that, if the Pharisees could have, they would have paraded the body of Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem to disprove any claims of his resurrection.

I once thought that was a fair assumpton - and certainly a satisfying supposition - but, once thought through, it seems problematic.

The "if they could have" condition depends, we take it, upon the availability of Jesus' body. No body, no parade - nor any other such public spectacle.

Whoever promotes such an idea does so with the best intentions. The point is to ground belief in the Resurrection via a pragmatic, seemingly true-to-life application. The principle is simple and plausible: If the Pharisees found Jesus to be such a threat that they were willing to go to such lengths to have him killed, then they would not have stopped at his burial, especially given the apparently well known fact that Jesus had predicted he would rise from his grave.

But, the Pharisees did do something after his burial: They placed a guard at the tomb. (There is some disagreement or confusion as to whether the detachment was of Roman or Israeli temple guards; I think the latter makes more sense. Pontius Pilate responded to the request for a guard: "You have a watch; go your way." It is not made clear whether the Pharisees were requesting a Roman guard or permission to place their temple guards - or, perhaps, even an unofficial, informal guard, the better to avoid attracting attention - at the tomb. It would have made sense for them to have to clear all nonstandard, militia-related activities with Roman authority. It also would have made sense for them to use their own guard, because to request a Roman guard - much less demand one - might be taken as an affront by Pilate, whose patience already may have been hyperextended. Note he gave the Pharisees full authority - and responsibility - for the guard at the tomb.)

This guard was intended to settle an issue the Pharisees would not leave to chance. With a guard, there should not be any need to exhume the body if unfounded claims of resurrection ever were made. The Pharisees, after all, had a convenient timetable given by Jesus himself: three days and nights. After that, and maybe a bit more time just to make certain, the guard could be withdrawn and tardy claims of resurrection could be pointed back to the time limit Jesus had set.

As for exhuming Jesus' body, the idea likely might have given the Pharisees pause. In the Jewish religious atmosphere of that place and time, this could have been a matter of extreme gravity and risk. The Pharisees would not have thought to take such a ritually defiling task upon themselves, of course. Calling upon fellow Judaeans to do it for them might hardly have been a better idea. There are a few possible reasons for that.

One might be the risk of bad public relations. The idea of publicly exhibiting a dead Jewish body might not be favorably looked upon within the Jewish community - that was more like what Gentiles did. The Pharisees' political clout was gathered in part by populism, and that already was facing the fallout of calculated risks, as we'll discuss in a moment. Asking the Romans to do such a thing was likely out of the question: The Pharisees might hesitate to test Pilate's patience again.

The Pharisees had put their standing in peril by involving themselves in the frankly illegal and mostly covert process by which Jesus had been tried and condemned. This is a key to understanding their strikingly furtive behavior concerning the whole issue. There is no record of public proclamations nor is the Sanhedrin recorded as entertaining any public discussion concerning the man crucified just before Passover. The "railroading" of Jesus to the cross was carefully handled to make it seem as though all final determinations were made by anyone but the Sanhedrin. Even at the cross, the few Pharisees present to witness Jesus' execution were careful not to mention any involvement. Instead, and interestingly, they employed well-practiced spin-doctoring which had the effect of deflecting the attention to Jesus' claims and record: "He saved others, but himself he cannot save." Not one dares to claim credit for having rid Jerusalem of this man.

This, then, was a cover-up of their actions, hastily dressed up to look like an exposure of Jesus. (This may provide a clue even to the origin of the gospels themselves. Perhaps they were expose's, researched, especially by Luke, and written to answer the activity of Pharisees and others who toiled to discredit the claims of the early church. See the introductions to Luke's gospel and the Acts of the Apostles and consider the possibility.)

Back to the point: As for disproving an unfounded claim of resurrection, the Pharisees certainly would have had more preferable options, beginning with various sources for corroboration. These could have begun with the owner of the tomb, himself: Joseph of Arimathea. The lack of a resurrected Christ could have put this man squarely back in the Sanhedrin's camp - at least, politically. With his influence and status owed to the Sanhedrin, he could hardly refuse them such information - especially if there was a body to account for and no resurrected Christ.

With a risen Jesus, Joseph becomes a silent partner to the incipient church. As it happened, the Sanhedrin, for its part, may have thought it best not to deal directly with Joseph for fear that doing so might excite public suspicion and, perhaps, investigation.

Perhaps for this reason, the Sanhedrin did not seem to consider an obvious ploy: "salting" the tomb with a replacement body. It may have been that the discovery of the empty tomb and the encounters with the risen Christ occurred and were publicized too quickly for such a trick to be effective. And then, such a strategy is much easier to talk about than to do.

At any rate, the last thing the Pharisees would have wanted was for anyone to look into the matter to any depth. To them, their own exposure might have been at least as disastrous as the discovery of a risen Jesus. Indeed, their fear of exposure could have been - and, in some instances, seems to be - a primary motive for much of what they did.

To modern Western Christians, this perspective may seem to pose problems of its own. If the Pharisees could not be counted upon to do anything drastic to prove the case against the Resurrection, given evidence that would allow them to do so, then it seems to weaken the case for Jesus rising from the dead. The logic would be that if the Jews would not or could not have pulled Jesus' body from Joseph's tomb to counter the disciples' claims he had risen, then a persuasive argument in favor of the Resurrection suffers - even if it only is supposition.

But we already have discussed how the Pharisees would have had other means to establish that Jesus had remained dead, if only he had. As it was, they resorted to spreading rumors and using derogatory information taken from interviews with disaffected former followers of Jesus - time-tested tactics used to this day among interests that find themselves without solid basis on which to build a case. (It is interesting to note that, post-Resurrection, the Pharisees would be all but restricted to these resources. Jesus appeared only to believers after he had risen and the Pharisees demonstrated no interest in gathering testimony from such people. They were not after truth, but ammunition, and they were trapped in their own machinations.)

All this serves to underscore the covert, almost Nixonian approach the Pharisees seemed to use. The closest they ever came to a public pitting of themselves against Jesus was by proxy, when the church began to build itself in the streets of Jerusalem.
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