The Absurdity of a Christian Conspiracy

Written: March 29th, 2015.

Abstract: Were the earliest Christians liars and deceivers? Did they dupe the whole world into believing something they knew was false? In any case, can this suggestion be disproven? Herein I address the so-called conspiracy hypothesis: roughly, the idea that early Christians made everything up (out of thin air, presumably) about Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection. I argue that not only is there no evidence for this claim, but there are many and varied reasons to reject it.

I. Introduction

Very frustrating indeed is the insistence of skeptics (high school/early college years skeptics, not scholars) that the early Christian community was just a bunch of liars and deceivers. They make this response when any claim is made as part of a historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus[1] or any other event in His life more generally. For example, when arguing for the historicity of the empty tomb of Jesus, typically one points out that the story of the empty tomb is found in the early sources used by the gospel writers (the gospel of Mark's source, John's source, and so on). However, the skeptic quickly responds, "Well, that's all well and good, but the early church was simply lying when it produced those sources." Or again, when evidence is given that the gospel of John stems from the eyewitness accounts of the Beloved Disciple, or the witness of Paul is used as evidence for certain facts of the early church, the skeptic remains unmoved, merely suggesting that John and Paul could have been gifted storytellers. Moreover, the entire early church, it is maintained, could have been one massive conspiracy machine. At the very least, there is no way to prove that it was not.

The difficulty in responding to such a suggestion is that it is not refuted by any scholar working in the field. Why? Because no scholar actually holds to this view anymore. It died in the late nineteenth century and has not been revived since, so scholars feel no need to give a response. By the very nature of the case, then, the average Christian is bereft of a solid response to this sophomoric conspiracy hypothesis. Nevertheless, the fact that no scholar worth his salt supports the conspiracy hypothesis should give us great pause. Given the total lack of scholarly support, those who hold to it are guilty of arrogance and naivety to think they should know more than trained Ph.D. scholars. 

But it would still be more impressive if one could actually muster the reasons that have persuaded most scholars against the conspiracy hypothesis. For that reason, I have tried to draw together a fairly comprehensive rebuttal on my own. But given that I fall far short of a trained scholar, errors are bound to creep in. I would like to post my thoughts here on the conspiracy hypothesis, and perhaps get feedback from those who know more than I.

It seems to me there are five objections to the conspiracy hypothesis. In Section II, I argue that because there is no evidence for an early Christian conspiracy, we should assume that such a conspiracy did not take place. In section III, I argue that the conspiracy hypothesis lacks explanatory power. In section IV, I contend that it is extraordinarily implausible to think the early church made everything up. In section V, key historical events surrounding the fate of Jesus are argued to be establishable without assuming the sincerity of early Christians. Finally, in section VI, I show that the hypothesis of conspiracy is completely ad hoc. For all of these reasons, the conspiracy hypothesis must be rejected.[2]

II. A Philosophical Objection

To begin, there is absolutely no evidence of a gigantic Christian conspiracy in first century Palestine. Therefore, it cannot be rationally affirmed but merely maintained as a possibility. But in that case, we ought to presume early Christians were being sincere in what they preached and taught. Why? Because that is how we operate in every other area of life. For example, when someone tells you that their name is John, you believe them. But in fact, could you prove they are not lying? It is hard to see how. Nevertheless, given that you have no reason to believe that his name he is lying, you are rational in accepting his testimony. In the words of philosopher Alvin Plantinga, beliefs based on testimony are basic in some sense (in that they do not rely on any further evidence), and properly basic to boot (given that there is no reason to regard said-testimony as false). Why cannot something similar hold with regard to the testimony of the earliest Christians? Sure, it is possible they were lying, but that is no reason to think they actually were. Therefore, belief that early Christians sincerely believed what they taught does seem to be justified. This need not imply that we must accept what they say as true, but merely that we accept that they believed what they said was true. But if that is the case, the conspiracy hypothesis goes out the window.

This, I think, is why the conspiracy hypothesis and all its variants bring about so much frustration. In no other area of life is the "dial of skepticism" set so high as it is with regard to the gospels and the New Testament. When someone confesses their passions, dreams, and hopes, or lays bare what they love and hate, nobody looks them in the eye and says, "Well, because I can't prove you're not lying, I simply can't believe you're telling the truth." The skeptic, if values consistency, much treat the New Testament in like manor. Anything else is special pleading.

III. Lack of Explanatory Power

The conspiracy hypothesis lacks all explanatory power. First, it cannot explain why the early Christian community grew in size and gained any adherents. If we assume, ex hypothesi, that the early church began with, say, one hundred people who got together and agreed to lie to the world, that is all well and good for those one hundred people. But how in the world did they gain any followers? If it was all one humongous lie, why did anyone join the movement? On what basis did they give their lives to the message of the gospel? Jews were uncompromising in the face of the pagan religions that surrounded them. Why should they change their attitude and jump on the Christian bandwagon when it rolled around? If nothing else, this would mean rejection from their families and social circles. Greeks, on the other hand, could not maintain that a dead man had been physically raised from the dead to glory, because they held firmly to the belief that while the soul was eternal, the body was not.

More to the point, surely the ancients were not just a bunch of gullible “no-nothing's.” The impression that they were results, I think, from an unfair bias of the modern man against the ancient man. The ancients would not have believed in the gospel just because someone came around and told them about it. Nevertheless, Christianity spread until it consumed the entire Roman Empire. This suggests that its earliest adherents were not manufacturing events out of thin air. On the contrary, they sincerely and passionately believed what they preached, so much so that it had a profound effect on all who heard.

Second, the hypothesis cannot even explain why the early church got together and propounded a message they knew to be false. It seems that people only lie for money, sex, or power. The earliest disciples gained none of these things by being Christian. On the contrary, their Jewish families rejected them, and the Roman government persecuted them. Indeed, non-Christian sources testify that the original apostles were martyred for their Christian faith (e.g., Josephus reports that the apostle James was sentenced to death, etc.). No one dies for something they know to be false. In general, early Christians had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Only if we stipulate that each and every disciple were idiots writ large, they would not have propounded the lie of Christianity.

IV. Implausibility

Plausibility is defined as the degree to which a hypothesis is suggested by one’s background knowledge.[3]  The less it is so suggested, the less plausible it is. The conspiracy hypothesis is extraordinarily implausible.[4]  First, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the sooner it unravels. That is why the perfect conspiracy involves one person alone. But of course, the early Christian church had at least one hundred members (it had many more, but the point can be made with smaller numbers).[5] The suffering of the Christian life would eventually prove too much, and someone would have caved, admitting that all of it was made up. This is significant, because the Jewish religious leaders of the time fiercely resisted Christians, and if any of them came clean and admitted that Christianity was all a ruse, said-leaders would have touted their recant as evidence against Christianity. The new religion would have quickly died away. Of course, it is open to the proponent of the conspiracy hypothesis to respond that opponents of Christianity either did not hear about the confessions of former Christians, or did not think such confessions would help their cause. This response, however, is extremely ad hoc (contrived), as I argue below.

Second, if we grant that Jesus existed and died by crucifixion, it becomes extraordinarily implausible to suggest that his followers would come together and agree to lie about his honorable burial, empty tomb, and postmortem appearances. In all probability, they would have been completely defeated in the face of their dead leader. Unless we suppose that Christ's followers were insane, they would have gone home and moved on with their lives. They would not, however, have given their lives to a message they knew was false, and devoted their lives to a man they knew was dead.

Third, concentrating specifically on the life of Jesus, the conspiracy hypothesis is pushed to its limits. Jesus, as reported in the gospels, went around teaching, preaching, and performing miracles in Jerusalem and Galilee. He aggravated the Jewish leaders and called his listeners to a new and better life committed to God. If everything about Jesus was simply fabricated by the early Church, people in Galilee and Jerusalem would know! They would know there was not a man in their midst who did the things the church claimed he did. As the apostle Paul says in Acts, these things were not done in a corner. Of course, perhaps the Gospels and other New Testament documents were written late in the first century, past the time of living eye witnesses who could contradict their claims. But three reasons mitigate against this. 

1. We have every reason to believe that Mark, Acts, and Luke were written prior to A.D. 62. 
2. The letters of Paul (which are agreed on all sides to have been written prior to 70 A.D.) reveal that the church was actively teaching about Christ in the early first century A.D. These teachings likely consisted in the broad outline of what the gospels portray about Jesus, for why would they have suddenly changed their teachings about His life later in the century?
3. The sermons of the apostle Peter in Acts confirm that the earliest disciples were teaching and preaching about Jesus early in their history. Luke, the author of Acts, did not make up these sermons out of whole cloth because they have traces of Aramaic tendencies in them, demonstrating their primitive and early nature.

Fourth, it seems the truly damning objection to the conspiracy hypothesis is the fact that early Christians preached Jesus Christ's bodily resurrection from the dead.[6] No Jew of the first century A.D. would have invented such a story. In the first place, Jews had no conception of a Messiah that was to rise from the dead. This went completely contrary to their belief in a conquering Messiah who would overthrow the oppressive Roman empire. He was not supposed to die a criminal’s death. In the words of New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, if your favorite candidate for the Messiah was crucified, you either went home, or got yourself a new Messiah. You did not, however, proclaim them risen from the dead.[7] But that is exactly what earliest Christians did proclaim. 

In the second place, the resurrection of Jesus differs in two fundamental respects from a Jewish understanding of bodily resurrection. (1) The idea of an individual resurrection apart from the general resurrection of all faithful Jews was foreign to early first century Judaism. (2) According to Judaism, the resurrection was supposed to occur at the end of the world, not at some point in history. The point is, if early Jewish Christians were making up the beliefs of their movement, it would never have occurred to them to suggest the resurrection of a dead man, individually and prior to the end of the world. And yet, that is the belief they preached and died for. Something must account for the preaching of Jesus' resurrection, but deliberate lies does not do the trick.

V. Evidence for Key Events Independent of Testimony

Various events as narrated in the New Testament are historically likely, quite independently of assuming the general sincerity of early Christians.[8] This undercuts the conspiracy hypothesis, for if the events of the New Testament can be demonstrated to have actually occurred, then it makes no sense to say that early Christians lied about those events.

V.I The Crucifixion

For example, the crucifixion of Jesus is historically certain. (1) If Christians were just spinning tall tales about their hero, they would not have made up the embarrassing story that he died on a Cross. This is especially potent if early Christians wanted to convert anyone else to their cause. Jews, for example, regarded anyone crucified as under the curse of God. The Cross of Christ would have been a needless stumbling block to them. Even if we admit that the embarrassment of the Cross is counterbalanced by the glory of the resurrection, why not skip the cross completely and have God vindicate and glorify Jesus in the face of His enemies, before they had the chance to crucify Him?

(2) Extra-biblical Roman, Jewish, and Greek sources testify to the crucifixion as a historical fact (e.g., Josephus, Tacitus, and so forth). Indeed, the historian John Meier writes that it is because of the reporting of Jesus's death across the board in almost all strata, secular and anti-Christian, that historians accept it as fact. Might the conspiracy hypothesis amend its original claim and include all of these sources as liars as well, in addition to Christians? Certainly this move shows their position for the utter bankruptcy that it is.

V.II The Honorable Burial of Jesus

The honorable burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is on solid historical bedrock. (1) The story lacks apologetic or theological embellishment. It has a ring of simplicity and “matter-of-factness” which one would not expect from a fabrication.

(2) Joseph of Arimathea, as a member of the council who condemned Jesus, would not likely be preached as the one who buried Jesus unless he actually did. Two reasons undergird this. First, he was well known and would immediately expose the Christian lie for what it was, if he did not in fact bury Jesus. Second, there was extreme tension between early Christians and Jews, so why would they invent a story where a powerful Jewish leader does what is right by Jesus? Or would proponents of the conspiracy hypothesis have us suppose that Christians were faking their animosity to the Jews?

(3) The story fits well with what we know of first century Palestine. For example, the description of the tomb Jesus was laid in fits well with what archaeology tells us of tombs in first century Jerusalem. Moreover, the fact that the gospels indicate Joseph buried Jesus in his own tomb, and that this tomb was new, comports well with Jewish beliefs regarding defilement brought by a corpse. Unless Joseph buried Jesus in a new tomb, his body would bring defilement to any bodies that were interned in said-tomb. The fact that Joseph acts in just the way an early first century Jew would have acted gives the narrative a ring of authenticity. Of course, it is always possible that early Christians got together around a table and carefully crafted the story of the burial, perhaps even writing multiple proposals and peer-reviewing each among themselves to ensure accuracy. Sure. But does anyone, anyone in the entire world, think this proposal anything but ridiculous? I will leave that to the reader to divine.

V.III The Empty Tomb

The discovery of the empty tomb is quite probable. (1) If early Christians made it up, they would not have included women as the chief discovers of the empty tomb. Women could not serve as legal witnesses and occupied a low run on the Jewish social ladder. It is much more likely that Christian story tellers would have made men the chief discovers of the empty tomb, if they wanted anyone to take them seriously. The fact that they did not suggests, not only that they really believed women discovered the empty tomb, but that women actually did.

(2) The earliest Jewish-Christian dialogue presupposed the empty tomb. First century Jews responded to the proclamation of the empty tomb by arguing that the disciples stole the body (see Matthew 28: 11-15). Christians responded that guards were placed at the tomb. Jews responded that the guards were asleep when the body was stolen. Christians responded that the guards were bribed to say this. Notice, the Jewish response to the resurrection presupposes that Jesus' tomb was empty. All the Jews could do was try to explain it away. They could not, however, deny the fact that it was empty. If Christians made the empty tomb up completely, the early Jews would have simply responded that the tomb was still occupied, and they would have guided any "would-be" Christians to the relevant tomb. Instead, their response presupposes that it was empty.

One could respond that Matthew made up the Jewish accusation. But this is unlikely. First, Matthew writes to his readers that the story of the disciples stealing the body has been spread among the Jews "to this very day" (vs. 15). If Matthew were making up Jewish accusations, he could not have told his readers the Jews were still proclaiming those accusations unless they really were. Second, if Jews were not accusing the disciples of stealing the body, Matthew would have no reason to fabricate the story of the guards at the tomb, and the story of those guards being bribed, in response to a second Jewish response he himself created.

(3) Related to the point about plausibility above, it would have been impossible for the early disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem, if in fact Jesus’ tomb was not empty. The idea here is that if Jesus’ tomb were occupied, no one would have believed the disciples in their preaching that Jesus had physically risen from the grave. Not only would the Jewish authorities have pointed to the empty tomb, the common man would have walked to the tomb and seen it occupied himself! The fact that resurrection belief spread in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus died, demands that His tomb was empty.

Finally, similar things could be said, I think, about the postmortem appearance traditions, but space does not permit a discussion of the evidence.[9]

V.IV Summary

Given that the above three events can be shown to have actually occurred, it follows that the earliest disciples were not lying. After all, how could one lie about an event that actually happened? The more I write and summarize William Lane Craig’s case for the resurrection, the more I am convinced that it is not actually dependent on testimony alone. There are ways of establishing the relevant facts to an inference to the resurrection independently of assuming the trustworthiness of the testimony of early Christians. Moreover, the case for any particular historical event does not lie on one line of evidence alone; it is rather their cumulative force that establishes the historicity of the event. The presence of the empty tomb story in the pre-Markan passion story, for example, proves that the story cannot be the result of legend, even though it does not rule out fabrication. Other lines of evidence rule that alternative out. So it would seem that when we take the evidence for some event in Jesus’ life (or an event surround his death) as a collective, the hypothesis of deliberate deceit is falsified.

VI. Ad Hocness

Finally, the conspiracy hypothesis is completely ad hoc or contrived. That is to say, it requires us to accept a large number of unrelated, independent claims in order to be consistent with the evidence. Indeed, some scholars have argued against the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead on precisely these grounds. They claim that not only does the “Resurrection Hypothesis” claim that Jesus rose from the dead, it also requires the claim the God exists. Therefore, the resurrection hypothesis is contrived (i.e., it requires two independent claims, as opposed to one). Aside from the merit of this criticism, the point is that contrivance or ad hocness is taken to be a serious deficit in any historical hypothesis. As the above discussion has made clear, the conspiracy hypothesis must make, not one, but nine different claims:

1. Early Christians were uniformly liars.
2. Early Christians remained liars throughout their life.
3. The apostles died for something they knew was false.
4. The ancients were a bunch of gullible no-nothings.
5. Early Christians were insane.
6. Jewish opponents to Christianity either didn't care about the confessions of former Christians or didn't know about them.
7. Josephus, Tacitus, and every other ancient historian or other government official who reported the Crucifixion were liars as well.
8. Christians, despite all appearances, did not actually harbor any animosity towards the Jews.
9. Christians wrote peer-reviewed versions of their various stories to ensure accuracy.

While (1) is the core claim of the hypothesis, there is no evidence for (2) - (9). They are merely tacked onto the original hypothesis to save it from refutation. For this reason, the conspiracy hypothesis is caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, it can relinquish any of the above sub-hypotheses (except for 1). But if it does that, objections mount up against it, as I outlined above. On the other hand, it can affirm (1) - (9), but then it becomes extraordinarily contrived and ad hoc. The point is, you can always save a hypothesis by tacking on one more hypothesis. This holds in any historical or scientific study. Nevertheless, as you do take on more and more claims, the hypothesis is reduced to absurdity. The conspiracy hypothesis is a shinning illustration.

Furthermore, I should think that most of the above claims are enormously improbable and implausible. Here the distinction between what is possible and what is reasonable is extremely crucial. It is logically possible that (1) through (9) are in fact true. That cannot be disputed. But they certainly are very far from reasonably true. They are, in fact, completely unreasonable. When we understand that historical studies are only meant to yield plausibility and not certainty, it should be clear that merely showing some claim to be possibly true amounts to nothing at all. As New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg has written, 

Christians may not be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the gospels are historically accurate, but they must attempt to show that there is a strong likelihood of their historicity. Thus the approach...is always to argue in terms of probability rather than certainty, since this is the nature of historical hypotheses, including those accepted without question. [10]

The last point to be made is that the hypothesis of sincerity, as I call it, is not ad hoc in any degree, and so is to be preferred to the insincerity/conspiracy hypothesis.

VII. Summary and Conclusion

In short, we have seen that (1) all things being equal, one should assume that someone’s testimony is sincere rather than a lie, (2) a massive conspiracy lacks all explanatory power, (3) the conspiracy hypothesis is implausible, (4) events surrounding Jesus’ fate can be established without assuming that early Christians were sincere, and (5) the conspiracy hypothesis is extraordinarily contrived. In light of this, I feel quite justified in deeming the conspiracy hypothesis as absurd. If nothing else, when we consider the hypothesis that the earliest Christian community was a big group of insane, idiotic liars compared with the hypothesis that they sincerely believed what they preached, it seems clear that the latter hypothesis is far and away the better explanation of the evidence. We may not be able to rule out conspiracy with certainty, but that is no point in its favor. After all, almost nothing can be ruled out with certainty.

What does this mean for the truth of the gospels and the New Testament? It means that either (1) they are generally historically reliable, or (2) they are legendary in character. But let there be no musing that perhaps the New Testament documents are deliberate lies.

So then, I hope to have shown why the rational man can hardly be blamed if he concludes the Christians of the early first century truly believed what they preached and taught;[11] namely, that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead and offers a transformed life of true fulfillment to anyone who will but ask.

Notes

[1] Throughout this paper, very few arguments presented are my own. The historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus derives from William Lane Craig. Section V in particular is derived from Craig’s published work. All I have to offer is a unique organization, summary, synthesis and  of his work.

[2] Notice, I am not arguing that (1) one is forced to accept the truth of what the earliest disciples preached. One could think that the disciples sincerely believed that Jesus appeared to them alive after his death, but maintain the disciples experienced hallucinations. Regarding events like the empty tomb, these could be regarded as legendary developments, even if the first Christians sincerely believed those legends. In short, truth does not follow from sincerity. Moreover, I am not arguing that (2) the early Christian church never lied or made up stories about Jesus. Rather, my beef is with the claim that they always and consistently lied.

[3] Background knowledge is simply one's beliefs about the world held before an examination of the specific evidence for some event. For example, part of the background belief of an atheist is (usually) that no supernatural beings exist. On the other hand, part of the Christian’s background beliefs is that supernatural beings do exist. When both the atheist and the Christian are presented with evidence of demonic possession, their different background beliefs will determine how they weigh the evidence presented (i.e., the atheist will need a lot more evidence than the Christians will in order to be convinced that some demonic possession has taken place, etc.).

[4] The difference between plausibility and explanatory power is difficult to articulate. Perhaps we should say that assessing some hypothesis’s explanatory power will involve determining how well the mechanisms proposed by the hypothesis explain the evidence, while plausibility is solely concerned with the hypothesis (regardless of mechanisms) as it relates to our general background knowledge about the world. In the case of explanatory power and the conspiracy hypothesis, the problem is that there just are no suggested mechanisms to explain the fact that many people converted to Christianity, and that the early disciples preached Christianity in the first place.

[5] I suppose it is possible that the Christian movement began with one person who fabricated the Christian message (but it cannot be Jesus, lest the proponents of the conspiracy hypothesis admit that his existence was not made up!), and convinced others to join him. But this hypothesis is even more implausible than the hypothesis as I have stated it. I will leave it to the reader to discern why.

[6] Craig, William Lane, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 372.

[7] This still holds true today, I should say.

[8] All of the below lines of evidence were originally presented in Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, by William Lane Craig.

[9] This is one of two other facts Craig argues underwrite an inference to the resurrection of Jesus.

[10] Blomberg, Craig, in The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (InterVarsity Press: 2007), 36.

[11] Here I’m deliberately paraphrasing the final paragraph of Craig’s Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus.