Which brings us to our other argument, the argument from early Jewish Polemic. This argument relies on Matt 28:11-15:
11 While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
This passage is supposed to recall a controversy in which the ancient Jews claimed that Jesus body was stolen. In response to this claim, the early Christian movement decided to add this rather absurd story to their Gospel. However, the point is that the Jews aknowledged that his tomb was empty when formulating their naturalistic alternative, rather than stating that his body was still in the tomb. Now obviously this argument can be countered by stating the obvious fact that we have no idea when this controversy took place. It could have been a very recent one, originating just after Mark's Gospel and before Matthew's. This would make sense, considering that it doesn't appear in Mark and only appears in Matthew. Also, because the story doesn't appear anywhere else, it seems probable that the controversy was small and perhaps not representative of what most Jews thought. Perhaps there were skeptics of the empty tomb who never had a chance to get their opinion written down.
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