This is my opening response to Jonathan Sheffield’s argument that the Romans could have disproved the resurrection unless it really happened and therefore it must really have happened. Thus begins a new short debate. See Sheffield’s opening statement for a description of the debate and his opening case. As also explained there, this debate has an open comments policy: all polite and relevant remarks will be accepted after review. Patreon and Paypal supporters can have their comments published immediately.

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That the Romans Neither Could Nor Cared to Investigate the Resurrection of Jesus

by Richard Carrier

Jonathan Sheffield wants us to think the Romans would have cared to investigate the resurrection of Jesus, and did; and that we’d know what they found—unless they couldn’t refute it. Therefore it happened. Every one of these conjectures is unsupported by any evidence; some are even contradicted by the evidence.

1

Sheffield falsely infers that because a century later folks forged competing versions of the Acts of Pilate, therefore Pilate investigated the resurrection. Non sequitur. There’s no evidence Pilate even heard these claims, much less investigated them, or even cared. Even the Acts of the Apostles never mentions Pilate doing anything in response to Christian claims of the resurrection of Jesus, despite claiming awareness of official Roman correspondence and recording many trials and hearings.

There’s no evidence any Romans ever investigated these claims. No investigation is mentioned anywhere, not even in the fake Acts of Pilate, nor even in the Acts of the Apostles, despite that describing court hearings before several Roman officials. In every such instance, the Romans are totally uninterested in investigating anything the Christians were claiming. Junius Gallio, uninterested; Claudius Lysias, uninterested; Antonius Felix, never once even asks about it; Porcius Festus, just laughs it off, outright saying he has no idea how to investigate such a claim, and consequently, never does; instead, he simply dismisses Paul as a lunatic. Sheffield’s own Bible reports on no other hearings before Roman authorities. We see the same response from Pliny, governor of Bithynia, eighty years later: after merely asking a couple of local believers a few questions, he dismisses the whole thing as superstitious nonsense. He conducts no investigation.

So Sheffield’s claim, that “it surely wasn’t for a lack of effort” that the Romans “failed” to debunk the resurrection, is contrary to all extant facts. No known effort was made. By even the Christians’ own accounts the Romans weren’t even interested in the claim. It wasn’t until the fourth century that Roman authorities tried “debunking” anything about Christianity, because only then was it popular enough to be a political problem—but by then they had no access to any relevant information.

2

There’s no evidence any prefectural records from first century Judea survived into the fourth century, or that they would contain anything about the resurrection of Jesus. Sheffield can’t even provide an actual citation from Cicero that Romans included everyday police reports in official acta. But after numerous fires (Rome’s archives having burned to the ground several times) and wars (Judea was twice razed by prolonged war action), and the inevitable decay of papyrus and declining need to fund the preserving of antiquated records, we see no one able to find or quote any—not even the Constantines, despite being Christians and ruling the whole empire for half a century. So we cannot infer any remained to be consulted.

Sheffield then falsely implies Justin Martyr and Tertullian knew a genuine “Acts of Pilate” in Roman archives. There’s no evidence they did. Instead all they cite is a late Christian forgery of the Acts of Pilate that was just a fawning summary of the Gospels, not a Roman record (see Tertullian, Apology 5 and 21; and Justin, Apology 1.35 and 1.48). As renowned biblical scholar F.F. Bruce put it in his classic treatise The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (1943):

It would no doubt be pleasant if we could believe this…but a story so inherently improbable and inconsistent with what we know of Tiberius, related nearly 170 years after the event, does not commend itself to a historian’s judgment.

This remains the opinion of all leading scholars. Christians routinely forged documents like this (see On the Historicity of Jesus, Chapter 5, Element 44). The only extant version even ridiculously gets the date wrong (it has Pilate report to Claudius, not Tiberius, an error of twenty years!) and absurdly depicts Pilate simply summarizing the Gospel of Matthew. Not credible.

3

Sheffield then implies Emperor Antoninus had Justin killed to cover up the records Sheffield mistakenly thinks Justin cited in his address to Antoninus (an address there is no evidence was ever even delivered to Antoninus, much less read by him). False. Justin was not killed under Antoninus, but years later under Aurelius; and not by Aurelius, but Rusticus; and not to cover up a fake document, but for the same reason as those killed by Pliny: the capital crimes of illegal assembly and treasonously not paying homage to the Emperor. Even in the fawning Christian account of the trial and examination of Justin by Rusticus not once does any Roman record pertaining to Jesus even come up (much less the Acts of Pilate); nor is any investigation of the resurrection of Jesus mentioned. Not even Justin cites such things; Rusticus shows no interest at all.

This alone puts an end to Sheffield’s argument.

4

Next Sheffield gets wrong what the Acts of the Apostles says about Paul’s legal hearing before Festus and Agrippa. The resurrection of Jesus never comes up in that hearing (see my extensive demonstration of this point in Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 187-92). Sheffield quotes what Luke has Paul say to Agrippa:

For the king knows about these things … I don’t believe any are hidden from him, since this hasn’t been done in a corner.

Sheffield falsely implies that Paul is referring to the resurrection. But he isn’t. Of course there’s no evidence Paul really said this to any official, much less Agrippa—Acts is just late Christian propaganda, unreliable and unverifiable (see Chapter 9 of my book On the Historicity of Jesus and Chapter 7 of Not the Impossible Faith). Still, none of these “things” Paul says Agrippa “knows” relate to the resurrection.

This is all Luke claims Paul declared to Agrippa:

Paul is a devoted Pharisee (26:4-5); he’s accused of merely “hoping” for the fulfillment of scripture (26:6), even though all Jews share the same hope (26:7), which is the hope that God will resurrect all the faithful who’ve died (26:8); Paul persecuted Christians (26:9-11), but while traveling experienced a blinding celestial voice from God (26:12-18); Paul obeyed this voice and widely preached its message “to repent and turn to God and do works worthy of repentance” (26:19-20); the Jews seized Paul for preaching this message (26:21); and now he’s on trial, Paul insists, for “saying nothing but what both the prophets and Moses said was destined to happen” (26:22). Not a single reference to the resurrection of Jesus.

So all Paul appeals to is a private revelation from a spirit affirming Jesus lived (26:15), plus statements from “Moses and the Prophets” concerning “whether the messiah was destined to suffer and proclaim” salvation. Paul’s only evidence was revelation and scripture. “All that was needed to falsify the Resurrection,” Sheffield insists, “was just one credible witness.” But who could “witness” that the Apostles “didn’t” have private revelations? Sheffield’s argument is nonsensical.

As even Paul’s fellow Pharisees conceded in court, “We find nothing wrong with this man,” for “what if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” Even they knew the only evidence to examine was whether Paul “actually” had a vision, which meant there was nothing to investigate. Because you can’t “debunk” a vision—without modern scientific knowledge of how commonly people hallucinate gods and spirits (or claim to). The most one could say is exactly what Festus said: “You’re insane, Paul.”

5

Sheffield then resorts to a fallacy of circular argument: he presumes the Gospel accounts of what happened are entirely true and not mythical, in order to argue the Gospel accounts of what happened are entirely true and not mythical. In Acts Paul never once mentions any missing body, in any trial or hearing he’s subjected to; he only ever enters two things into evidence: scripture and revelation. Just like the real Paul (Romans 16:25-26; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8; Galatians 1:11-17).

So for all we know the “empty tomb” was a later innovation by the author of Mark (see my article Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?). There’s no evidence it was ever heard of before then; there’s even evidence against that (Ibid.). Again, without a missing or identifiable body, there’s nothing to investigate. “Maybe Paul just saw a ghost.” “Paul’s just crazy.” As for Paul, so for all Apostles. Before the Gospels, no other evidence is mentioned; in the Gospels, everything is myth (see my article Resurrection: Faith or Fact?). There’s no way to bridge that gap without a circular argument. Sheffield simply “insists” the Gospels are independent witnesses. But all mainstream scholars today agree they copied each other and none were written by a witness or even says they spoke to one. Nor do we have any record of any witness reading them or confirming anything in them.

6

Sheffield then pivots through a bunch of non sequiturs: no, we don’t have to know who “actually” wrote the Gospels to know it wasn’t the Disciples; no, we don’t need a witness to “what really happened” to know it wasn’t celestial magic; and no, we don’t have to produce a body.

Indeed, that wouldn’t have been possible. Exhuming corpses was a capital crime and would outrage the populace; and corpses weren’t legally identifiable after three days anyway; yet Sheffield’s own Bible tells us the Christians didn’t start publicly claiming Jesus rose from the dead until fifty days later (see Acts 2 and Acts 1:2-4). There’s no evidence anyone was even claiming the body was missing. Acts, again, never mentions such a claim, nor any investigation of it. In his own letters Paul appears to say Jesus rose in a new body, not the old one he died in; a view of resurrection held by many Jews of his time. Nor is a resurrection even remotely any of the most likely causes of a body going missing; and had another cause been found, or even a body produced, no sources survive that would tell us. (On all the foregoing points I present the evidence and demonstrations in the bibliography below: with a summary in item 5, and in more detail in items 6 through 8.)

7

Sheffield then falsely claims Pilate would have investigated “the resurrection” as thoroughly as the Roman Senate had once investigated the incursion of the Bacchus cult in Rome centuries before. We actually have contemporary inscriptions on that event, evidence wholly lacking for any of Sheffield’s claims about Jesus; and there’s just no parallel between that and Christianity in respect to Sheffield’s argument.

First, the Bacchants were not being investigated for any supernatural claims; only whether anyone was a member, because membership in a secret foreign cult was then regarded as a threat to the state. It had long since ceased to be by the time of Pilate, when this same Bacchus cult was widespread, entirely legal, and not even remotely regarded as threatening.

Second, there’s no evidence Pilate cared one whit about sectarian disputes among Jews. And that’s exactly what Acts repeatedly reports: Roman authorities didn’t care one whit about sectarian disputes among the Jews. The Jews were under a treaty with Rome that protected their religious freedom (see my discussion of this point in the bibliography, item 6, “Burial of Jesus”). Rome had also reversed its policy since the Bacchanal incident, instead cultivating wide tolerance of foreign cults as a strategy of imperial governance (as long as they procured a state license and proved their loyalty).

By contrast, none of what the Christians were doing was in Rome, none were secretly infiltrating the Senate, none engaged in any political or military threats or actions (in contrast to another false analogy Sheffield mentions, that of “The Egyptian”), and they hadn’t yet run afoul of illegal assembly laws—as the Jews had the right from the state to assemble, and Christians were at that point just Jews. So there’s no reason to expect any Romans cared. And as Acts says, they didn’t.

Sheffield’s argument thus has nothing to stand on.

8

Sheffield then trots out another false analogy, entirely based on a Christian myth about Domitian, nowhere else reported. But even in that implausible tale, the matter pertained solely to claimants to the throne of Judea (and no Christian was claiming that), not “the resurrection of Jesus” (which posed no political issue whatever); and even then, in the Christians’ own account, Domitian ended up being wholly disinterested, and did nothing about it. That’s exactly what Pilate would have done. We have no evidence otherwise.

9

Consequently all the evidence shows the Romans didn’t care, there was no evidence for them to investigate, and no records existed to consult. And even if they ever did, there’s no evidence they didn’t cast doubt on the resurrection—because we haven’t been allowed to read them.

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See Jonathan Sheffield’s response.

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Bibliography
  1. Richard Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith (Philosophy Press 2009).
  2. Richard Carrier, “Christianity’s Success Was Not Incredible” in The End of Christianity, ed. John Loftus (Prometheus 2011): 53-74, 372-75.
  3. Richard Carrier, “Why the Resurrection is Unbelievable” in The Christian Delusion, ed. John Loftus (Prometheus 2010), pp. 291-315.
  4. Richard Carrier, “Resurrection: Faith or Fact?” (27 March 2019).
  5. Richard Carrier, “Stephen Davis Gets It Wrong” (2006).
  6. Richard Carrier, “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb” (pp. 105-232), “The Plausibility of Theft” (pp. 349-68), and “The Burial of Jesus in Light of Jewish Law” (pp. 369-92) in The Empty Tomb, ed. Jeff Lowder and Robert Price (Prometheus 2005).
  7. The Empty Tomb online FAQs.
  8. Debate between Richard Carrier and Jake O’Connell On Paul’s Theory of Resurrection (2008).
  9. Richard Carrier, “Why Did Mark Invent an Empty Tomb?” (23 February 2020).

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