Carrier’s article is so biased and so poorly argued that it is hard for me to even be motivated to respond to this utter nonsense.  He does not complete a single sentence without making an unfounded and obviously false statement.  Where should I start?

He says that no one recorded the empty tomb for an entire lifetime after the events.  Mark wrote in the late 50s, less than thirty years after the events, not 70 years later. Not a “lifetime” later. And, besides, the oral tradition of the gospel had unquestionable included this story from the beginning.  If it had not, then the resurrection, literally, could not have been preached, but it was.

Carrier says that Acts proves that there was no attempt to prosecute any of the believers for taking the body.  This is so weak an argument, Carrier must be chuckling to himself as he writes this blatant nonsense.  The fact that Luke does not mention something happening does not prove it did not happen.  Yet, he says it “proves” this.  Please…

He does this sort of “begging the question” many times.  For example, he says that Paul knew nothing about the empty tomb. Why?  Because Paul did not mention the empty tomb.  How blatantly poor can an argument be?  Paul said that he saw Jesus.  Therefore, the tomb was empty.  Paul said that there were 500 eyewitnesses.  Therefore the tomb was empty.  If I said that I saw my friend Andrew yesterday, but did not tell you he was alive a week ago, would that be evidence that I did not think he was alive a week ago?  Really!!!

Carrier says that Matthew did not mention the empty tomb.  I suppose, but he mentioned Jesus being alive afterward, which is a clear evidence he knew the tomb was empty.  He said that Jesus told his disciple to “Go, make disciples of all nations!”  Did Matthew have to specifically mention the empty tomb if he reported Jesus talking to his disciples?  If I said I saw my friend at a store, but did not say that he was not at home, would that mean that he could be at home? What kind of argument is this? Can we take Carrier seriously at all?  The answer: No!

Another example of begging the question. In Mark 16:9, Mark reports that the female first witnesses of the resurrection said nothing to anyone.   He then uses this statement to prove that, literally, Mark was the first person ever to report the empty tomb. Can anyone believe this utter nonsense?  Does he propose that Peter, James, John, Mary, James the brother of Jesus thought that Jesus was still dead in his tomb?  How, then, can we explain what happened in Acts 2, when the resurrection of Jesus was preached?

Carrier implies that it is very suspicious that Mark wrote in Greek (as opposed to Aramaic?).  This proves that he was trying to hide something. This ignores the fact that Peter, Paul, John and many of the original eye-witnesses who were still alive when Mark wrote spoke fluent Greek by that time, and also ignores the fact that the vast majority of Christian believers by the 60s AD spoke Greek, not Aramaic.  This empty argument needs to be exposed for what it is. Nonsense.

I could go on almost infinitely.  This article is intended for people seriously predisposed to disbelieve the Christian message, not for anyone with a serious intention to consider the facts.

The fact—and it is a perfectly well-established fact–that the church preached the resurrection from the very beginning, is proof 100% positive that the church as a whole believed that the tomb was empty.  If Jesus’ body was there, then obviously the Jews would have produced the body, and the preaching of the resurrection in Jerusalem would have been stopped then and there.  The Jews did not produce the body.  This is an unavoidable conclusion.

Why did the Romans not go after the disciples for stealing the body?  Because they knew the disciples did not steal the body.  Again, please Mr. Carrier, stop  making completely nonsense claims.

My suggestion: Learn to be a bit more skeptical of such authors. It would probably be best to not read such utter nonsense, as it is a waste of your time to read material by people like Carrier who care literally nothing about the truth.

John Oakes