Did Jesusrise from the dead? Well, you canthat he did, but simple reasoning suggests that the dead, well...dead. "But," one could ask, "what about the empty tomb?" GREAT question. Whatthe empty tomb? "Surely that means Jesus actually rose from the dead!" If we're taking the claim that there was even a tomb to begin with as historical, then yes, explaining the empty tomb is a must. (Personally, I'm not convinced that there was ever a tomb in the first place, but that I'll leave that thought for another time). One of the more weighty 'conspiracy' theories is that the body was stolen. William Lane Craig has written several pieces discounting this theory, as have many others. Alternatively, there are many others who have defended the hypothesis. I'm not going to break into that particular argument; for this post, I'm simply accepting the stolen body hypothesis as true for sake of the argument and will give a potential reason forsome disciples would attempt to steal a body.Matt. 28:12-15 occurred after the supposed resurrection event, chronologically. This was the chief priests attempts to cover-up the missing body by constructing a stolen body narrative. Craig seems to agree that this was probably an apologetic polemic that may not actually BE historical ( https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/historical-jesus/the-guard-at-the-tomb/ ), although whether a guard was actually present or not seems to be unimportant to him, as he says "."With that said, his argument has some caveats and concludes with "” However, Craig did not spend much time, if any, elucidating that particular point, so I'm a bit skeptical of his conclusion here without seeing more support. What's of particular interest in this article is that Craig is uncertain that there was even a guard at all! But, for the purposes of this discussion, let us concede that there were guards. From what I can recall, I've heard anywhere between two and four guards, with some outliers of as few as one or as many as an entire legion. For the argument here, let's say there were four guards.Now, if Jesus' body was stolen, there would need to be enough people to overtake up to four guards. We don't know the setting here - how easy could it be to sneak up on the guards? Were they all awake? Were they working in shifts (i.e. one watches while the others sleep)? We don't know. But we know that it's entirely possible for guards to be overtaken and that it's entirely likely that guards have been overtaken before, sometimes an entire group with only a few men. For this argument, lets say that four men could sneak up on the guards and attack them, roll away the stone and steal the body. Who knows, maybe that DID actually happen, and the priests giving them money was the part that was fabricated. Or, since the guards were so easily persuaded by money, maybe it was the disciples come to steal the body that bribed the guards instead. We will never know.However, I have an alternative scenario for a missing body, one inferred from Biblical passages and one that - as far as probabilities go - is much more plausible than a resurrection. Jesus constantly spoke in parables. Jesus even states that these parables wereto be confusing (Matthew 13:11-17). As such, it's incredibly likely that there were many who heard his words who misunderstood the meaning of them. Consider the following:Jesus repeatedly made statements such as "53545556" (John 6:53-56; https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+6&version=NRSV Understandably, many of those who heard this teaching were disgusted and left Jesus' presence, "60616266" (John 6:60-62; 66).5,000 people (supposedly) were present for these statements. The text says "many" left, which means we can infer that at least a few had stayed (perhaps, enchanted by the thought that eating their savior would grant them eternal life?). However, these few that stayed were not present during the last supper where this difficult teaching was explained by Jesus to the 12 apostles. The time between the last supper and the crucifixion was short and eventful. The Bible makes no mention that the apostles who had learned the true meaning spent any time spreading the actual meaning to the disciples, in fact, quite the opposite. The apostles ran away, hid themselves, and denied any connection to Jesus in fear of persecution. This means that some of the crowd of 5,000 (and possibly those who heard it secondhand) were of the understanding that theyneeded to ingest the Christ in order to gain eternal life.Upon learning that Jesus is dead (and believing that eating his actual flesh and drinking his actual blood was necessary for eternal liferealizing that decomposition would quickly ruin there chances to live forever), this belief provided substantial motivation to get into the tomb and steal the body. Belief in eternal life is sufficient motivation to risk their lives, including bribing, tricking, or even killing any guards that may have been present.Under Roman law, the punishment for cannibalism was death. Under Jewish Law, the punishment for cannibalism was death. Stealing and eating the body of the Messiah would certainly not make them popular with the other Christians, especially after discovering what Jesus actually meant by "flesh and blood" (i.e. bread and wine). Therefore, the people responsible would have good motivation to keep it quiet. Furthermore, there would be no identifiable body left to bring forward after the flesh was eaten.