DOUBTS CONCERNING THE RESURRECTION: MATTHEW

In this series of four blogs, I hope to show that the strange passages in the four Gospel accounts of Christ's resurrection which actually appear to cast doubt on the whole story can paradoxically be used as clear signs of the reality of the happening rather than being a legend concocted by His followers. Two passage in Matthew's Gospel need discussing in this context.

Matthew 27:62-28:15

One unique feature of Matthew's Gospel is the story of Pilate telling the Jewish leaders to post a guard over the tomb for three days (Matthew 27:62-66), their being struck down by fear of the angel (28:2-4), and the subsequent cover-up story concocted by the chief priests (28:11-15). Some skeptical scholars treat this part of the narrative as a made-up story designed to put to rest Jewish rumors that the disciples stole the body from the tomb. And we do know that such rumors were circulating at least as early as the time of Justin Martyr (ca. AD. 114-165) and still manage to crop up today.

    For an example from a liberal commentator, Overman states: “Only Matthew includes this detail of the guards being bribed, another detail created to stifle hostile rumors concerning Jesus' death and resurrection.”

    And the skeptic Stendahl was quoted as saying, “This whole tradition is clearly apologetic and is meant to refute the criticism which is mentioned as current among the Jews in 28:15.” It should be pointed out that just because an account is apologetic does not mean that it has to have been fabricated.

But from more conservative scholars we get a different perspective on the story of the guards:

    France says, “It is hardly likely that Christians would have invented such a convenient weapon for their critics if the story were not already in circulation.”

    K.L. Anderson writes: “Strange and improbable apologetic it would have been for an early Christian to construct stories suggesting the earliest alternative explanation for Jesus' resurrection: the disciples stole the body.”

    Blomberg says, “The allegation that Christ's disciples stole his body...thus holds the dubious honor of being the oldest alternative to faith in the risen Christ as a response to the fact of the empty tomb, even though it is one of the least plausible alternatives, in view of the subsequent events Matthew narrates. Ironically, had the disciples wanted to steal the body, they could have done so earlier...Strong incidental testimony to the truth of the Christian version of the story thus appears here.” He also points to the fact that the disciples at this point in time were not “in any kind of mood for such bravado, cf. John 20:19.”

Adding to the improbability of the cover-up story are the following questions:

    Why would all the soldiers be fast asleep when they knew the consequences of sleeping while on duty?

    If they were asleep, how could they have seen the followers carry off the body?

    If they did see him carried away, why didn't they stop them?

    How could they have slept through the noise of the stone being removed?

    Why would the apostles have subsequently placed their very lives on the line for what they knew was a lie?

One additional detail of the guard story in Matthew 28 has been questioned as unlikely – the fact that the guards reported back to the priests instead of to Pilate. The later apocryphal Gospel of Peter even tried to fix that “error” by stating that they did report to Pilate first. But Hendricksen, and others, point out: “That they reported to the chief priests, in charge of the temple, and not directly to Pilate, is not strange, for by saying 'Take a guard,' Pilate has temporarily placed these men under the authority and supervision of the chief priests.” In addition, it is highly doubtful that the Roman guards would have been very eager to tell Pilate that the very thing they were supposed to prevent had taken place anyway due to their negligence.

Matthew 28:16-17

These verses contain a second incident which is impossible to ascribe to a well-meaning fiction writer who is attempting to convince his audience of the reality of Jesus' resurrection. When the apostles meet Jesus on the mountain in Galilee, some worshiped him while “others doubted.” Thus, Bright and Mann state that “it is not possible to find any good reason for this assertion.” No good reason, that is, except that it actually happened that way, whether or not it served any apologetic purpose.

But it turns out that there are other possibilities for interpretation of this final phrase. For example, the “others” may refer to disciples in addition to the eleven Apostles. However, France eliminates that possibility on grammatical grounds and then proceeds to explain that the “verb distazo [doubtful, hesitant] occurs only once elsewhere in the NT, where it describes Peter's loss of confidence in the face of the elements in 14:31...It denotes not intellectual doubt so much as practical uncertainty, being in two minds. In this context it could indicate that some were not sure whether it was Jesus they were seeing...More likely it indicates that they did not know how to respond to Jesus in this new situation, where he was familiar and yet now different...But a further factor may be relevant here: the last time these eleven disciples had seen Jesus was as they ran away from him in Gethsemane; so what sort of reception could they now expect from the master they had deserted?”

In a similar vein, Blomberg states, “Distazo refers more to hesitation than to unbelief. Perhaps, as elsewhere, something about Jesus' appearance makes him hard to recognize at first...Perhaps their Jewish scruples are still questioning the propriety of full-fledged worship of anyone but Yahweh. Or (most likely?) they may simply continue to exhibit an understandable confusion about how to behave in the presence of a supernaturally manifested, exalted, and holy being.” Witness Peter's awkward behavior at Christ's Transfiguration as a similar example.

My personal opinion is that the distazo refers to the dubious propriety of worshiping a being who might turn out to be just a reincarnation of an OT prophet, a personal angel of Jesus, or a spirit being. In any case, there seems to be no conceivable reason for the author to purposefully introduce such an ambiguity into a major resurrection narrative unless it was his dedication to telling the strict truth, even if it might have the unintended effect of casting doubt on Jesus' bodily resurrection.