Why does Schonfield think the empty tomb is not good evidence for Jesus Resurrection?
In his infamous book, The Passover Plot, Hugh J. Schonfield claims the Resurrection accounts evolved and were later doctored by editors. According to Schonfield, Jesus never rose. Mary Magdalene and others falsely concluded Christ had resurrected on purely circumstantial grounds, not evidential ones. Schonfield states that Mary Magdalene was an “unbalanced” person. When she visited the tomb, she was really in a “half-crazed condition.”7 She did not really see angels there, but only an unknown person whom she thought was an angel. Later, the church came to accept her totally false story. Schonfield speculates that the story of the angels may have evolved as a way of giving divine credence to the story of the empty tomb: The Gospel accounts… had acquired in telling and retelling many legendary features…. According to Marks Gospel the man who was seen had been a young man in a white robe who had told the women [including Mary] that Jesus had risen…. All that registered at the time w
