Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
106Alt hough it is impossible wit hin a single c hapt er t o do just ic e t o t hese different
hypotheses, quit e c lear is t hat t he disc iples and gospel writ ers ant ic ipat ed t hat t he
first four t heories would be proposed t o explain t he myst ery. All t he synopt ic
writers emphasize, for instanc e, how the women had c arefully taken note of where
Jesus was laid (Matthew 27: 61; Mark 15: 47; Luke 23: 55). The John gospel puts
into the mind of Mary Magdalen the idea that the man she mistook for a gardener
(in reality Jesus, as yet unrec ognized) had for some reason taken the body away
(John 20: 15). The writer of Matthew ac knowledged that in his time there was a
story in c irc ulation that the disc iples had stolen the body. He ac c used ‘the Jews’ of
having bribed the guards posted at Jesus’ tomb to say this. With regard to the
possibilit y of halluc inat ion, bot h t he Luke and the John gospels emphasize the
disc iples’ own inc redulity at the solidity of what they were seeing, the Luke author,
for instanc e, wonderingly reporting ‘... they offered him a piec e of fish whic h he
took and ate before their eyes’ (Luke 24: 43). The John author noted the disc iple
Thomas’ insistence that he was not prepared to believe unless he was able to put
his fingers into the wound in Jesus’ side, and rec orded that Thomas was spec ific ally
allowed t o do t his.
In fac t , quit e aside from t he gospel writ ers’ evident anticipation of them, the first
four hypotheses bear little serious scrutiny. Had there simply been a mistake over
the location of the tomb, it would have been an easy matter for any sceptic to go to
t he right loc at ion, show t he body st ill t here and set the whole matter at rest. Had
Jesus’ body been taken away either by a person unknown or by the disc iples, we
might surely have expected someone, sometime, to produce it. Such a hypothesis
also fails to account for the repeated attestations of Jesus being seen alive and
well. Wit h regard t o t he possibilit y of halluc inat ions, it might of c ourse be possible
to envisage some bizarre mass post-hypnotic suggestion that made Jesus seem to
appear to those so hypnotized, to seem to eat with them, and even t o feel solid t o
t heir t ouc h. But t his st ill t ot ally fails t o ac c ount for t he report edly very real
emptiness of Jesus’ tomb.
Perhaps bec ause the gospel writers do not take ac c ount of it, the fifth hypothesis,
that Jesus did not die on the c ross, has been part ic ularly favoured by sc ept ic s and
sensationalists in rec ent years. In his T he Passover Plot the late Hugh J. Sc honfield
advanc ed the ingenious theory that the sponge offered to Jesus on the cross
(John 19: 29, 30) was soaked not in vinegar but in a drug to induc e the appearanc e
of death. This was so that he c ould be taken to the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea
and there resusc itated, the lanc e thrust into Jesus’ side being the unexpec ted
event ualit y t hat c aused t he plot t o misfire. Ac c ording t o Sc honfield, the man seen
by Mary Magdalen was simply someone who had been deputed to help revive
Jesus, and the ‘resurrec tion’ was therefore nothing more than a c ase of mistaken
identity, Jesus’ body having been quietly buried elsewhere.
Both before and after Sc honfield all sorts of variants to this theory have been
offered. In D.H. Lawrenc e’s short story ‘The Man who Died’, Jesus was taken down
too early from the cross, revived in the tomb, petrified his followers, who assumed
he was dead, ‘resurrected’, and then slipped away to Egypt to enjoy c onjugal
relations with a priestess of Isis. The supposedly factual The Holy Blood and the
Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh and Linc oln represents Jesus’ paramour as Mary
Magdalen and their plac e of refuge as the south of Franc e, but it follows essent ially
the same plot, with Jesus even going on to father a family. Within the last few
years Dr Barbara Thiering of the University of Sydney has resurrected the same