DAY 208
CHALLENGE
“Why can’t we explain the Resurrection by saying someone tricked the disciples? Maybe Jesus was drugged on the cross when he was given
a drink (Matt. 27:48; Mark 15:36; John 19:28–30), later he revived, and co-conspirators got him out of the tomb and posed as angels (Matt. 28:2–7; Mark 16:5–7; Luke 24:4–7; John 20:12).”
DEFENSE
Anesthesiology was not a developed science in the first century, and it would be extremely risky to administer a drug to a person who had been severely traumatized and was being crucified. The odds of the drug killing him would be too high.
Further, the Romans checked to ensure Jesus was dead. A soldier plunged a spear into his side, causing a flow of blood and what looked like water (John 19:34). The “water” was likely a clear liquid that had built up in the pleural cavity of the lung, the pericardial sac around the heart, or both. That wound itself would have been fatal.
Who would these conspirators have been? If Jesus was entrusting his survival to them, they must have been very close associates, but then why weren’t they among the apostles—Jesus’ closest associates? (Remember that the point of this hypothesis is that the apostles were innocently tricked, unlike the hypothesis that they lied; see Day 214.)
Even if they weren’t apostles, they would have been close enough associates that the women should have recognized them. (And their clothes wouldn’t have been bright white, as the Gospels indicate, after rolling back the stone from the tomb, getting a bloodied Jesus out of his grave clothes, and helping or carrying him from the tomb.)
How did they get past the guard on the tomb (Matt. 27:62–66)? Why would they undertake such a risk? Jesus was a poor man, so what did they get out of it? And why bother to fake a resurrection, when this wasn’t something Jews expected to happen until the last day (see Day 213)?
Finally, how did they manage to fake Jesus’ Ascension into heaven in front of the apostles (Luke 24:50–51; Acts 1:9–11)? Even if we grant- ed all the previous implausibilities, nobody in the first century had the ability to fly.
The trick hypothesis thus does not explain how the apostles could have innocently thought they saw Jesus ascend after the Crucifixion.