The guard at the tomb
| Teachings |
Matthew's Gospel states that there was a guard placed outside Jesus' tomb to prevent His body being removed by the disciples.
"62The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63"Sir," they said, "we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I will rise again.' 64So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first." 65"Take a guard," Pilate answered. "Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how." 66So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard." Matthew 27v62-66
"11While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' 14If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." 15So 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."Matthew 28v11-15
But if Matthew's Gospel is the only one to report this, isn't it possible that he got it wrong, made it up or perhaps its just an old legend he decided to include?
Firstly, it must be agreed that Matthew is the only gospel to mention the tomb guard. However, on numerous occasions various gospels alone mention a particular incident or story relating to Jesus that the other gospels do not. The evangelists often inexplicably omit what seem to be major incidents that must have been known to them (for example, Luke's great omission of Mk. 6. 45 - 8. 26) so it is dangerous to use omission as a test for historicity.
Secondly, the gospel of Peter (a non canonical gospel) also relates the story of the guard at the tomb. It is widely believed that this account is completely independent of that provided by Matthew as it is told in totally different words and the similarities are practically nil. However, this reinforces the historicity of the story. How else can the two independent stories be explained.
Thirdly, why would Matthew (or anyone else) have made up the story of the guard at the tomb? It might be suggested that he created it to prevent any suggestion that the disciples removed the body from the tomb. It was a devious effort to bolster the evidence for the resurrection. Apart from the fact that he went on to suffer martyrdom for this willful deception - as far as apologetics go it is weak. If this story is a fiction to prevent people from drawing the conclusion that the disciples too the body then it is a failure because there is an obvious time period during which the disciples could have stolen the body undetected, namely between six o'clock Friday night and sometime Saturday morning. Matthew fails to say that the sepulcher was opened and checked before it was sealed, so that it is possible that the disciples had removed the body and replaced the stone Friday night after Joseph's departure. Of course we would regard such a ruse as historically absurd, but the point is that if the guard is a Christian invention aimed at refuting the Jewish allegation that the scheming disciples had stolen the body, then the writer has not done a very good job.
Fourthly, the strongest consideration in favour of the historicity of the guard is the history of polemic (argument) between Christians and Jews presupposed in the story. The Jewish assertion that the disciples had stolen the body was probably the first reaction to the Christian proclamation of the resurrection. The allegation is mentioned in Justin Dialogue with Trypho. To counter this charge the Christians would need only point out that the guard at the tomb would have prevented such a theft and that they were immobilized with fear when the angel appeared. At this stage of the controversy there is no need to mention the bribing of the guard. This arises only when the Jewish polemic answers that the guard had fallen asleep, thus allowing the disciples to steal the body. The sleeping of the guard could only have been a Jewish development, as it would serve no purpose to the Christian argument. The Christian answer was that the Jews bribed the guard to say this, and this is where the controversy stood at Matthew's time of writing. But if this is a probable reconstruction of the history of the polemic, then it is very difficult to believe the guard is unhistorical. This is argued forcefully by Prof William Craig. He states , "In the first place it is unlikely that the Christians would invent a fiction like the guard, which everyone, especially their Jewish opponents, would realize never existed. Lies are the most feeble sort of apologetic there could be. Since the Jewish/ Christian controversy no doubt originated in Jerusalem, then it is hard to understand how Christians could have tried to refute their opponents' charge with a falsification which would have been plainly untrue, since there were no guards about who claimed to have been stationed at the tomb. But secondly, it is even more improbable that confronted with this palpable lie, the Jews would, instead of exposing and denouncing it as such, proceed to create another lie, even stupider, that the guard had fallen asleep while the disciples broke into the tomb and absconded with the body. If the existence of the guard were false, then the Jewish polemic would never have taken the course that it did. Rather the controversy would have stopped right there with the renunciation that any such guard had ever been set by the Jews. It would never have come to the point that the Christians had to invent a third lie, that the Jews had bribed the fictional guard. .............The conspiracy theory (i.e. the disciples stole Jesus' body) has been universally rejected on moral and psychological grounds, so that the guard story as such is really quite superfluous. Guard or no guard, no critic today believes that the disciples could have robbed the tomb and faked the resurrection. Rather the real value of Matthew's story is the incidental -- and for that reason all the more reliable -- information that Jewish polemic never denied that the tomb was empty, but instead tried to explain it away. Thus the early opponents of the Christians themselves bear witness to the fact of the empty tomb."
Okay, there was a guard at the tomb. Was this a Roman Guard or a Jewish Guard?
Prof TJ Thornbrun states, "It is generally assumed that Matthew means it to be understood that the guard referred to consisted of Roman soldiers....However...the priests had a Jewish Temple guard, which would probably not be allowed by the Romans to discharge any duties outside those precincts."
The context of Matthew 27 and 28 seems to support the view that it was a Roman guard which was used to secure Jesus tomb. If the `temple police` had been used to secure the tomb then they would have been responsible to the chief priests and not to Pilate. The key lies in verses 11 and 14. "11While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. 12When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' 14If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." "
If it was a Roman Guard...
For a Roman solider the punishment for quitting their post, or falling asleep at the post, was nothing short of death (See Justin in his Digest #49). Polybius wrote on the strictness of camp discipline and the faultless attention to duty that this imposed, especially during night watches.
It was normal for a Roman `guard` to consist of four soliders. Prof Harold Smith states, "A watch usually consisted on four men (Polyb 6.33), each of whom watched in turn, while the others rested beside him so as t be roused by the least alarm"
If it was a Temple Guard...
The Priests in the temple kept watch in three places. The Levites at twenty one places.
These guards were not permitted to sit down, much less to sleep. The captain of the guard would make his rounds and chastened anyone found asleep, sometimes by burning their clothes whilst they still wore them. This encouraged a strict attention to their duty.
So what?
Everything humanly possible was done to prevent the resurrection from occurring. Never had a criminal had such security precautions taken after their death. These additional security precautions, however, only tend to further confirm the evidence for the resurrection.