Tales from the crypt: The historicity of Pilate’s ransacked tomb

The Matthean evangelist makes a number of dramatic additions to the Markan passion narrative. Included among these are the dream of Pilate’s wife, the earthquake at the death of Jesus, the resurrection of the saints in Jerusalem, the suicide of Judas, and the risen Christ’s rendezvous with his disciples on a mountain in Galilee.

Within this uncanny collection we also find a guarded-tomb miracle story. Despite the best efforts of both Jews and Romans to secure the location where the body of Jesus was laid, an angel of light mortifies the imperial night watch, breaks open the sepulcher, and frees the prisoner inside. God thus outwits the conspiracy of men, and Jesus, so it seems, has taken leave of his resting place. The tomb has been ransacked.

In what follows I want to interrogate this pericope, first as Matthew’s rhetorical construction, then as a primitive tradition of potential historical value. I will conclude that the guarded-tomb folktale represents perhaps the earliest narrative regarding the resurrection of Jesus, originating, on the one hand, after the declaration of Christ’s appearance to the disciples (1 Corinthians 15:3-7), but, on the other hand, before those appearances were crafted into the stories we find in the post-Markan gospels.

Matthew’s apologia

As a Matthean literary construct, the guarded-tomb cycle primarily serves polemical or apologetic ends rather than cathartic ones. By including the material in the form that he does—with scenes prior to and after the ecstatic angelic disruption at the grave—Matthew seeks to refute the Jewish claim that the disciples stole the body of their lord, only to then declare him raised by God when the tomb was found empty—apparently an undisputable fact. According to Matthew, such a feat was impossible because there were Roman soldiers stationed at the crypt; no one would have dared tamper with it. The flimsy testimony of the guard—that the disciples snuck past the soldiers while they were sleeping—is, in fact, the product of bribery (Matthew 28:11-15). The Evangelist and his Christian readers can take delight in the implication of all this: the tomb really was opened, just not by the disciples. Matthew’s main concern is thus the plausibility of Christ’s resurrection in light of Jewish subversion, not the miracle of the tomb’s gaping maw.

The story therefore spans three scenes, not just one, and Matthew weaves these into his Markan documentary inheritance. Originally a consecutive narrative, but now broken up by the activity of the women (Matthew 28:1, 5-10 = Mark 16:1-8), the first scene follows immediately after the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea:

1. Jewish leaders petition Pilate to issue the guard (Matthew 27:62-66).
2. An angel incapacitates the guard and breaches the tomb (Matthew 28:2-4).
3. Jewish leaders bribe the guard to disseminate the “stolen body” falsehood (Matthew 28:12-15).

In the first scene, the chief priests and Pharisees persuade the Roman governor to install a “guard of soldiers” (κουστωδία)¹ at Jesus’ tomb. They win this favor by informing Pilate that the disciples intend to steal the body of their master so that they can then claim an act of God has taken place: “They will tell the people ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64). While he was alive, so say the priests, Jesus had primed the people (and his disciples) for this deceit by claiming that he was going to rise up after three days: “Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’” (Matthew 27:63).

By setting a guard of Roman soldiers for three days time, such an outcome could be prevented. For the Jewish leaders who had called for the execution of Jesus, this precaution would safeguard their legitimacy vis-à-vis their kinsmen. Jews who had been sympathetic to the renegade prophet would say “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21) but nothing more—his bones safely in their place. The priests, then, had been right; Jesus was an impostor.

As scene one closes, Pilate complies with the request, somewhat surprisingly. The guards take their post and, with the help of the chief priests and Pharisees, seal the tomb with a stone (Matthew 27:66).

In the second scene, the cycle’s dramatic epicenter, an angel of the Lord descends upon the guard like lightning, shakes the earth, rolls away the stone, and renders the watchers ὡς νεκροί (“as dead men”). Christ’s jail has been broken. Those outside the necropolis have become as those who dwell within. The soldiers prove unable to prevent the mischief that the Jerusalemites had feared.

The third and final scene finds the Romans departing the tomb, on their way back to the city. Members of the cohort announce to the chief priests the horrifying thing they have seen. The Jewish leaders cannot allow such a wondrous report to reach the people. And so, in exchange for a sum of silver, the guards agree to lie, to pronounce the body stolen in the night by the disciples. The very rumor that the priests and Pharisees had hoped to circumvent, they now pay the soldiers to pronounce publicly (Matthew 28:11-15).

Confronted then with this malicious error in his own time, toward the end of the 1st century, Matthew supplements Mark’s gospel so as to set the record straight regarding the identity of the one who opened Jesus’ tomb; it was an angel of God.

Challenges to historicity

Historians have not looked favorably on this Matthean addition to the Markan passion narrative for various reasons.¹

For one, the presence of the guard at the tomb is not corroborated by any other 1st century writing. Outside of the Gospel of Matthew, neither the canonical gospels, nor Paul, nor any other New Testament text, mentions God’s victory over the soldiers at the grave. Many have suggested, therefore, that Matthew invented the tale in service of his rhetorical battle with the Jews—to prove that the tomb could not have been plundered by the disciples.

Secondly, many of the elements of the story are historically implausible. Would the chief priests and Pharisees have understood Jesus’ predictions of his resurrection when his own disciples had not? Would the Roman governor have entertained their concerns, enough to deploy his own men? Would the guards have admitted to failing in their duties, even for money?

While there’s little chance of overturning this scholarly hesitation regarding the pericope, perhaps certain elements of the story can be defended on historical grounds. Let’s first appeal to an independent account of the tale, and then re-examine Pilate’s potential motives for fortifying such a tomb as Christ’s.

The guarded-tomb miracle in the Gospel of Peter

In the estimation of New Testament scholars Raymond Brown and Bart Ehrman, there does in fact exist an independent rendering of the tale in question. The early 2nd century Gospel of Peter offers a formulation of the episode that is distinct from the one found in the Gospel of Matthew. While the author of the Gospel of Peter may have known the Gospel of Matthew, there is little verbal overlap. We can conclude, therefore, that this is an independent telling of the same basic story, not a reworking of Matthew’s text. This double attestation implies that around the turn of the century, if not earlier, legends concerning Pilate’s defense of the tomb were being disseminated and developed.

In Peter’s version of the story, Pilate dispatches a centurion named Petronius along with a regiment of Roman soldiers to the graveyard. He does so, as in Matthew, at the behest of the Jewish leaders, here “the scribes and the Pharisees and the elders.” These figures, the principal architects and actors in the death of Jesus according to Peter, worry of what might happen if whispers of resurrection are allowed to spread among the people: “Give over soldiers to us in order that we may safeguard his burial place for three days, lest, having come, his disciples steal him, and the people accept that he is risen from the death, and they do us evil.” If the people believe God has vindicated Jesus, the Jewish leaders may suffer reprisals.

These same Jewish leaders therefore join the soldiers at the tomb, even setting up their own tents to await the third day, the day of reckoning. Together with the Roman guard, they roll a “large stone” over the tomb and seal it with seven wax seals. A crowd from Jerusalem arrives to witness the festivities as well.

All of Jesus’ enemies are thus gathered together around his crypt. The disciples would need an army to gain access to his body.

Even still, all this human striving, both Jewish and Roman, proves fruitless. In the night, two men—but not disciples—descend upon the tomb with the brightness of heaven, dislodge the stone, and remove the resuscitated body of the Lord. As they exit, supporting Jesus in between, the heads of the trio extend up into the sky. A cross follows behind and announces that Hell has been harrowed by the one who died and is now alive. A little later on, another man falls from heaven and enters the ransacked tomb so as to greet the women when they arrive.

The soldiers who witness this spectacle confess in agony “Truly this was a son of a god” (Αληθως υιος ην θεου) as they go off to notify the governor. Pilate then washes his hands of “the blood of the Son of God” (του αιματος του υιου του θεου) and blames the Jews for his murder. The Romans agree to say nothing of the matter, lest the Jewish people find out and stone the scribes, Pharisees, and elders who put God’s Son to death and thus doomed the city.

An early skeletal reconstruction

Out of the material common to the two accounts, Matthew’s and Peter’s, emerges a skeletal version of the story that may have been told in the final decades of the 1st century.² The story goes something like this:

1. Jewish leaders petition Pilate to protect the grave from the disciples lest the people believe a resurrection has taken place when the tomb is found empty.
2. Pilate grants the guard; both Roman soldiers and Jewish leaders seal the tomb with a stone.
3. A terrifying angelic event disarms and disbands the garrison.
4. Some of the soldiers report that the tomb was violated.

In this earliest form, the guarded-tomb cycle functioned—in accordance with its central scene—to demonstrate the awesome might of God to overcome human resistance. It was, in the first place, a heist drama. Power from heaven penetrates the impenetrable tomb. Roman security, Pax Romana, is hereby contested.

Note then what is lacking from our hypothetical reconstruction:

1. The priests’ request is not prompted by a specific saying of Jesus concerning his resurrection after three days (Matthew 27:63).
2. The soldiers do not witness the exhumation of the body, discover the tomb has been emptied, or inform Pilate of what has taken place.
3. The guards do not accept a bribe to say that the disciples stole the body in the night (Matthew 28:12-15). Nor are they commanded by Pilate to say nothing.

When Matthew’s apologetic expansion is pared down—the elements symbolizing willful Jewish hostility throughout the first century set aside—and the excesses of Peter’s romance are removed, what remains is an account of the strange events that took place at Christ’s sepulcher shortly after his burial therein. Much like Mark’s truncated and therefore troubling conclusion, the guarded-tomb tale did not include any depiction of the resurrected Jesus, nor even a notice of Christ’s absence from his grave (Mark 16:6)—though it is implied. Rather, this story concerned the unlocking of the tomb from the outside by a godlike man in the dark of night, presumably to steal away Jesus’ corpse. Such an ambiguous conceptualization of the resurrection, and one that admitted to the tomb’s nocturnal violation, I would propose, was born very early on, in the first few decades after Christ’s withdrawal to heaven. Before the early Christians narrativized the appearances of the risen Christ, and before they told of the women finding the tomb emptied of their lord, there was this tale of the stone rolled away—a man made of light descending inside. The rumor that the grave had been robbed was true and the act had indeed been witnessed. The robber, whoever he was, had scattered the watchers in fear. While enemies claimed it was the work of the disciples, Christians said it was a divine messenger.

Now, if this is the original form of the story, that the soldiers and the stone were jettisoned by an angel, and we excise Matthew’s first and third scenes as intriguing but not verifiable, can any historically plausible reason be given for the presence of Roman soldiers at the grave of Jesus? Can we demonstrate that Pontius Pilate possessed motive to secure the tomb in this way? I think we can.

Pilate opposes God’s kingdom

Neither the Gospel of Matthew nor the Gospel of Peter divulge Pilate’s reasons for granting the guard at the tomb, but the reader assumes that he finds the threat of theft to be a credible one.  

The Romans, of course, like the Jewish leaders, also stood to gain from eliminating the risk posed by graverobbers in this case. The proliferation of the rumor that Jesus was alive again, now ready and able to usher in the imperial reign of God on earth, would no doubt have destabilized Roman rule in Judea and the Galilee, if not in the synagogues across the empire. After all, many Jews were eagerly awaiting the liberation of Israel in the kingdom of God; they wanted to believe that their God had sent to them a prophet like Moses. While he was alive, he had commanded massive crowds of hopeful Jews who desired to make him king; what would happen when he was thought to be raised from the dead?

In this sense, the Roman governor may well have issued the κουστωδία at the tomb in order to prevent further disturbances caused by this provocateur, whom he had executed as “king of the Jews” the day before, and by his conniving disciples who had seemingly engaged in seditious conspiracy while in Jerusalem for the festival. Under these conditions, Pilate may have intervened to keep the body out of their hands, thus preventing gullible Jews from believing their redemption from Roman rule was near.

That said, there is no indication that either the disciples or the Jewish people writ large were anticipating such a contingency. There was no public (or sufficiently clear private) prediction of resurrection; Jesus was dead, and that was the end of the matter. The disciples returned to Galilee to resume fishing. There was no expectation of resurrection to exploit—that is, among the Jewish people. Could Pilate himself have prepared for the possibility of resurrection?

A pious Pilate

On the one hand, it is relatively clear that Pilate was not a secular man. While he could have conceivably been an Epicurean or Skeptic, that is, a learned Greek who viewed the manifold gods and spirits of Roman antiquity as few, inactive, and symbolical, this is not likely. Such a man would have been rare, and from what we can tell Pilate believed the legends of his ancestors, tales of half-divine heroes and their awesome feats: Hercules, Perseus, Theseus, Bacchus, Aeneas, and the emperors of the Latins. The resurrection or apotheosis of Jesus shortly after his death would not have been entirely out of the question.

For instance, based on the portraits of him in the Gospels, Pilate seems to have thought it possible that this Jesus was in fact “a son of a god” (υἱὸς θεοῦ) and thus endowed with dangerous divine power. Pilate becomes “more afraid” when this title is introduced by the crowd (John 19:7-8), and this epithet is again hurled against Jesus at Golgotha: “If you are a son of God (υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ), come down from the cross.” (Matthew 27:40, 43). Like the Roman commander who stood watch at the crucifixion, Pontius Pilate was a man who was capable of indulging in superstitious (or rather, pious) reasoning.

Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place (i.e. the noontime darkness, the tearing of the Temple curtain, and the opening of the tombs) they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was a son of god!“

Matthew 27:54

Pilate’s wife, moreover, assumes that her husband can be persuaded by an ominous dream, perhaps from an angel of a god—from Morpheus, Somnus, or Mercury (Matthew 27:19). Jesus’ stoic demeanor in the face of death struck Pilate and the Romans with fear and amazement as well (Mark 15:5, John 18:6). Suetonius reminds us that even the Roman emperors were interested in talismans, divination, and omens; this mindset was not limited to the lower classes. Portrayals of Pilate as irreligious therefore simply cannot be justified. He was a man who feared gods and their sons.

A syncretistic Pilate

That said, belief in bodily resurrection, even for half-divine heroes, was not a common feature of Mediterranean religion. Apotheosis of mortals typically involved the immediate ascension of the dead man’s soul to heaven. His remains stayed on earth, and were often cremated. Could Pilate have conceivably attempted to prevent the ascent of a man’s spirit up to the gods? Probably not.

Could Pilate, the prefect of Judea, on the other hand, have accommodated some of the religious beliefs of his subjects? The New Testament attests to the presence of Greek God-fearers throughout the empire, Gentiles who had adopted the worship of the God of Israel and some aspects of Jewish beliefs and customs. The Roman world, after all, was characterized by a high degree of syncretism. The Emperor Vespasian, as one example, invited Jewish exorcists to perform Solomonic magic in his court while on campaign in Judea. He had a healthy interest in the religiosity of the East (cf. Acts 13:4-12). Likewise, Pilate’s co-ruler of the region and apparent friend, Herod Antipas, had believed Jesus to be the beheaded John the Baptist “raised” from the dead.³ Had some of the Idumean Tetrarch’s Judaic views rubbed off on the Roman governor?

Pilate, of course, had extensive interaction with the Jewish people and thus with Jewish ways of thinking. He was no doubt aware of this peculiar ethnic belief, the resurrection of bodies—of all the dead at some indeterminate future date, and in the here and now by the hands of holy men like Elijah and Elisha. The prefect may have even heard that Jesus himself was this kind of prophet, a wonderworker who could resuscitate dead people. People were saying he was Elijah redivivus for just this reason (Mark 8:28). A Roman who maintained a sufficient fear of the gods—all the gods—would not dispute this apparently ancient ancestral belief. At least in Israel, the dead were sometimes raised.

Of course, Jews were not prepared for the spontaneous resurrection of the Messiah, or of anyone else for that matter, prior to the end of the age. A prophet might raise a dead person here or there, but no one got up on his own. A Roman such as Pilate was not necessarily constrained by this larger framework inscribed by Jewish apocalypticism. Perhaps God himself could raise a dead man within normal human history. Why not?

And so, Pilate set about to kill Jesus again if need be, guarding his tomb not from those outside it, but from the one within it. If Herod Antipas had attempted to kill John the Baptist a second time (Luke 13:31), and some Jews had sought to murder Lazarus after he had been raised (John 12:9-11), why couldn’t Pilate have acted upon the same impulse? If given the opportunity, allowed to leave his tomb, wouldn’t the Son of God be all the more intent on conjuring an army against Rome? Pilate took the actions necessary to prevent such an outcome.

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1—The fact that this guard is signified by a Latin loanword, and requires Pilate’s permission to deploy, suggests that the soldiers are Roman. That the guards are concerned about the governor finding out about their failure is another indicator.

2—For the sake of completion we can also note that the Gospel of the Nazareans, a 2nd century derivation of the Gospel of Matthew produced by Jewish Christians, contains the following verse: “And he (i.e. Pilate) delivered to them (i.e. the chief priests and Pharisees) armed men, that they might sit over against the tomb and guard it day and night.” This text has no direct parallel in either the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Peter, perhaps reflecting that it comes from yet another oral tradition about the guarding of the tomb. More likely, however, this is simply an editorial clarification.

3—”Raised from the dead” in Matthew 14:2. In Luke 9:7-9, Herod hears that “some” were saying John had “risen from the dead.”