ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses various considerations against each of the naturalistic hypotheses concerning the outcome of Jesus’ physical body. Among other things, I argue that the presence of guards at the tomb would (together with other considerations) render all the naturalistic hypotheses unlikely. I reply to various objections against the historicity of the guards and offer an argument for it. It is demonstrated that in Matthew 28:11–15 the author gives a piece of information which his intended readers—the Jews—could easily have falsified if it were not true. The author would not have committed a ‘credibility suicide’ by inventing an easily falsifiable story for his apologetic purpose. Thus, the story of the guards originated early around AD 30, at a period of time when people could have easily known whether there were really guards at the tomb and whether the guards really did say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ I conclude that no naturalistic hypothesis reasonably accounts for what happened to the body of Jesus on the first Easter morning.
