Richard Carrier

[A_Nony_Mouse]

It still leaves you to explain your original implication that no one would report meeting the walking dead while the gospel writer did.

Suppose you fabricated the resurrection of Vladimir Lenin. You got all your friends to vouch with you that Lenin walked the streets of Moscow for forty days after his death. Would you, not telling your friends, throw two lines into your account mentioning how a graveyard was emptied and dead people inhabited Moscow? Would that strengthen your case?

And you are telling me it weakens the case FOR YOU and it was one of the things you had to overcome as it caused you to question your faith.

In fact it does strengthen your faith. So it works. The author knew how to work the uneducated and gullible. Claims of the miraculous always sucker in the believers.

Specific to the issue the story says they were seen by many people. So it is remarkable that only one person mentions it IF it really happened which obviously it did not.

If in fact the Christian claim is correct, that no one would expect a resurrection and therefore it must be true, why would anyone guard against what no one would expect?

The guard was against Jesus' disciples stealing his body. Matthew 27:

62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead."
[/quote]

Why would anyone care if the body was stolen much less the Romans. They knew the Galileans were so stupid they would believe anything. It would hardly matter. After all they were so gullible they believed the gospel resurrection stories which obviously never occurred. Obviously it would not matter either way.