הגופה של ישו נעלמה! הרב טוביה סינגר מפרק את הטענה המשיחית-נוצרית

I was reading your piece on the resurrection of Jesus. I also stumble when it comes to this topic. It was such an important event, his crucifixion. Forget the New Testament narratives, all anyone had to do to crush Christianity was to produce the body. I admire your ability to articulate ideas, not my strength. General compassion is my strength. Anyway, I cannot wrap my head around the fact that the tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers to shut up early Christians. Just show the body. That's the end of the statement. >> The question is specifically were not guards posted at the tomb thereby making it impossible for someone to sneak the body out. Now, what the the basis of this question is uh is is an M source. M source means it's only found in Matthew and it's Matthew chapter 27 verse 62. It's part of Matthew's passion narrative and what we find in but it's really silly. Now, all right. So, the point is in Matthew 27, I'll just explain it is Jesus is we are told in Matthew is crucified on Friday as in all the gospels. Uh Jesus crucified on Friday. Now, what happens is the text says that the following day the Jews, the priests, Pharisees came and said that, you know, the day after means Saturday and said to the Romans, you know, what? They're going to go and say that someone stole the body from the tomb. We have to then put soldiers in front of the tomb. So, this way it can't be said that someone stole the body. This is the next day. This is not the day that it was not Friday. This is Saturday. This is according to Matthew. I'm not Please, read it for yourself. Matthew 27 verse 60 61 62 63. This is how the whole thing pans. And in fact, Pontius Pilate, the governor of of the empire of this region who ruled until 37. We are told acquiesce to such a request. The pilot says go ahead. Now, the reason why this is I don't believe any of this happened, but this is a very very bad argument because if in fact let's just play the game what if. If this is the case, when were the guards put at the tomb? Now, I do not subscribe to this. I don't believe none of this happened. But, I'm going to just play along with the story. If Pilate the placed Roman soldiers at the tomb on Saturday, what would prevent someone from stealing the body Friday night? It actually doesn't solve the problem. This is so Matthew, meaning we don't know who wrote the book of Matthew. We don't know where it was written and I don't care what your pastor tells you, we don't know. But, I will tell you this. Matthew was the shlemazel of the New Testament. Matthew in repeatedly makes these kinds of errors, really serious errors that make his story so it's really it's almost as if like God put in whoever wrote this book's head so many errors that it doesn't even it's hard to imagine that no one ever corrected this. Like how does it They could have just stole the body. Now, I again don't start writing me in letters going la la I don't believe any of this, but the story doesn't help anything, okay? Number two is the question what it asks or if Jesus didn't resurrect from the dead, why didn't they just produce the empty the body? Now, what would have settled it and Christianity would come to a close. So, do you there's a presupposition. It's a it's a fallacy. You are presupposing that they that they that they uh, that there was a body available to to produce. That means you're presupposing the passion narrative that we find in all the Gospels. You're presupposing that this is what happened, that Jesus crucified on Friday. Forget about all the disagreements. I want to talk about what they share in common. That Jesus crucified on Friday and then whatever he says on the cross, there are seven endings. He's then placed inside the tomb and then women, whoever they are, discover him on Sunday morning, okay? That's the key point. And then they go and tell others that Jesus rose in the synop- in Mat- in Mat- in in most of the Gospels, they meet Jesus in the Galilee. In Luke, they find him in Jerusalem. Great. You're presupposing that something remotely like that occurred. Well, I don't believe that for 1 second. That means that an incidentally would the Christian Bible really record Let's say they did produce a body. And by the way, I don't believe this either. Would Would the Christian Bible write this? Would they report this? Of course they wouldn't. The whole function of the Testament is to convince you to believe in Christianity. How do you s- No, cuz I said it says in John 20, "All this was written so that you may believe." So of course, if theoretically, again, I don't believe this happened. And I'll tell you I'm not saying what likely happened, but something that's much more plausible. But let's just play the game, what if? If someone had the body, would the writers of a book written 50 years after the crucifixion, like Matthew, written, let's say, 90, 85, whatever, 40, uh, 50 years later, would Matthew go, "And by the way, they produced a body, but no one No, of course they wouldn't write it because he's a Christian. They don't want to write anything that would So what kind of they would write Well, they wouldn't report that no more than the than the Soviet Union would They wouldn't even report when when there was a nuclear accident in Chernobyl and it took 3 days for the world to find out because they thought it would be embarrassing. Do you think the church would ever report such a thing? Now, I don't believe that part, okay? But I'm just saying do you realize the amount of Do you imagine how much Baileys you have to drink to believe that? Okay. If if No, I will do this with you because I I I want to cause as little friction as possible. So, I'm just going to do it's not that I believe this, okay? I don't. So, stop. But I'm not saying I do don't. I'm just saying I'm going to play what if. The most logical story, I'm not saying the most I discussed this in volume one, but simple explanation. The truth is that nobody thought he rose from the dead. No one thought such a thing. That means that let's say he was crucified. I know scholars say that this is axiomatic. I I'm not going to argue that point, okay? That Jesus was there was a man named Jesus who was crucified. I just don't want to argue. We don't have any contemporary historians, so what? But it is a consensus among New Testament scholars, Christian or otherwise, that Jesus was crucified. So, I'm going to go with it, okay? Well, the obvious answer is that there was no Jesus didn't appear to anybody and there was no body, there was nothing to talk about. This is incidentally why 1 Corinthians 15 the early That's very early. That's much earlier than the gospels. 1 Corinthians 15 doesn't even know how to describe what Jesus what was this resurrected Jesus. He was not the Jesus that was crucified that we would see in John showing the wounds in the hands and Peter eating fish. So, that means you see that this is much later development. The I'm not saying the most logical um s- event that occurred. That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying I can easily, the easiest construction without getting into an argument, to avoid problems, is saying, "Let's just say this. Jesus is one of 200,000 Jews who were executed." Okay? All right. What happens is that people are disappointed. Eventually, 3 years later, 5 years later, Mary Magdalene, who's mentioned 12 times in the Passion narrative, starts saying that Jesus appeared to me. You're going, "How is that possible?" We had a guy here in Indonesia, his name is Peter the Great. It's not his real name, who people are saying appeared to him all over the place. Sai Baba in in India, people see him appear He has 30 million followers. He's appearing to everybody all over the place. Over pancakes in New Delhi. The point is that at some later stage, somebody said, probably a woman, like today, who says, "Mary met me." Generally, it's not men, it's women. Maybe that's why they're all women. I'm just saying, just saying. So, what happened? I mean, it The easiest The simplest answer This is Occam's razor. The simplest thing is eventually, the idea that Jesus rose from the dead became Somebody began to say it. Other people doubted it, weren't sure. And that's where you have the doubting stuff in the Gospels, pushing back at that, incidentally, which would make a lot of sense. But, so therefore, the whole idea that Jesus physically bodily rose from the dead, which Paul says that he did not. Paul says, "Of course there was a resurrection." If you read 1 Corinthians 15, he doesn't say it was a human body that rose. He says it was a spiritual body. What does that mean? 8,000 New Testament scholars argue what that means. But, Paul is one thing for sure, he's saying it was not the physical body Jesus had when he was when he was around. It's like a seed that dies in the ground, and something completely different comes out. We're not putting the bodies. We see therefore that the resurrection that Christians were struggling with this, and I am sure that this development that Jesus rose from the dead physically does in the way Christians now believe it doesn't happen until 60, 70. Yeah, once we get to Mark, Mark doesn't even have a real resurrection appearance because the last 12 verses are interpolated. And then by the early 70, 80, 90, then this begins to gel. Why does it gel? It gels because early Christians are going, "What exactly resurrected?" She asked me, "Why didn't they preserve a body?" They didn't preserve a body. They didn't even know anybody died or anybody rose. They didn't know anything. This is all a much later development, but the problem is that people who are either Christians or grew up in the Christian world think, and I mean this, even if they even if they're knowledgeable, they kind of think like if the Jesus died, he's you know, walking around, and the whole New Testament sort of floated up down from heaven. The whole Christian Bible is much, much, much, later, and this is a development over time. And therefore, all these your question is pregnant with false presuppositions. There was no body cuz no one's asking for a body. This is all developed later. And if someone today, by the way, there's this guy Simcha Jacobovici. I'm saying he's right or wrong, but there are guys who are saying we found a tomb of Jesus. I don't see any Evangelical Christians running around going, "Really, I want to see it." None of them are interested. Why? If in fact this is the case that Christians would have been interested in seeing a body, how come no Christian is even interested in seeing what has been [music] found in Talpiot? I'm not saying it's true, but why are they even curious? And they're just attacking [music] him. Again, I'm not saying he's right, but it's very clear Christians are not interested in looking at a body, [music] even if someone says they found it. Case closed. >> [music] [music] >> Amen.