This book is a response to Josh McDowell’s Proofs of the Resurrection which I haven’t read. Apparently, McDowell starts by assuming the gospels are historically reliable, then argues that every non-supernatural explanation for the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t work, therefor the resurrection must have occurred by process of elimination.

The gospels are obviously not historically reliable, but for the sake of argument, Yeskov assumes they are. He points out McDowell doesn’t account for a good-faith misbelief of an honest and sane person. As a result, there’s a whole category of non-supernatural explanations McDowell leaves out including optical illusions, hallucinations, and biases.

McDowell also failed to take the historical background into account. McDowell speaks of the motive of “the authorities” without realizing there were multiple authorities vying for control during this time, each with different motives.

Yeskov has a lot of fun coming up with non-supernatural explanations that fit with the gospels. In the real world, the Sanhedrin stoned blasphemers to death without notifying the Roman authorities, so why do they bring Jesus to Pilate in the gospels? Perhaps they brought Jesus to Pilate to delegitimize him. If Pilate pardoned Jesus, Jesus would be seen as a Roman pawn and lose all his political clout. However, Pilate surprised the Sanhedrin by executing Jesus and placing the blame on them, thus reducing their power!

The fact the Gospel of John’s account of the crucifixion contradicts the synoptic account makes it impossible to assume they’re both historically reliable. Did Simon of Cyrene carry Jesus’s cross or not? While he was being crucified (which causes death by asphyxiation), did Jesus have a lengthy conversation with his mother Mary and the beloved disciple or were they absent?

The resurrection of Lazarus is only mentioned in John. Why wouldn’t the synoptics have mentioned it? Assuming the gospel writers are honest and historically reliable, the best explanation is that Lazarus and his family faked his death to increase the prestige of Jesus. The other gospel authors didn’t fall for this fake, but John did because he wanted to believe more than they did. After all, John believed in the resurrection of Jesus with only the empty tomb for evidence while the others didn’t believe until God Himself declared it.

The betrayal of Judas makes no sense. Jesus was a very public figure who didn’t need to be identified. Also, Judas was the treasurer, so why would he betray Jesus for just 30 silver coins when he had access to so much more? Why is it pointed out that Judas was the only one of the Twelve from Judea while the others were Galileans?

Why does Pilate act like he doesn’t know who Jesus was, when he had to have known if he’d sent Roman soldiers to arrest him? Why didn’t Peter get arrested for cutting off someone’s ear during Jesus’s arrest? Later, simply being part of Jesus’s group puts him in danger of being arrested, but cutting off an ear is okay? Why wasn’t being part of Jesus’s group enough to arrest him earlier? Why does the group arresting Jesus have torches when this took place on Passover which occurs on the full moon? They didn’t need torches for light, the torches would have only given away their positions.

How did Jesus know Judas would betray him? Yeskov points out that Jesus sometimes goes off to pray by himself. One time Peter, John, and James see him talking to mysterious figures who disappear in the fog, thinking them Moses and Elijah, but really, they could have been earthly informants! When a mysterious voice speaks from the fog declaring Jesus to be his son, this could just be Joseph rather than God.

How did the soldiers guarding the tomb of Jesus know it was empty when it had been sealed? Did they break the seal just to check when the punishment for breaking a Roman seal was upside-down crucifixion? Why did they tell people the tomb was empty instead of just pretending it was still occupied? Why did they report to the Jewish authorities instead of to their superior officers? When the Jews told them to lie about being asleep on the job (the punishment for which was death), why did they enthusiastically spread this suicidal lie? When Peter miraculously disappears from a jail in Acts 12:19, the guards get executed in that case. Why didn’t they get executed in this case?

Not only this, but according to the gospels, the tomb wasn’t sealed up and guarded until the morning after Jesus died, so the body probably wasn’t even there when the tomb was sealed in the first place! The gospels don’t say the guards checked to make sure there was actually a body in the tomb before they started guarding it, but if they did, it would have been wrapped up in funeral dressing so they couldn’t have verified Jesus’s body was in fact there.

Why did Mary Magdalene, James’s Mary, and Salome come to the tomb on Sunday, after they’d already been present at the burial on Friday and knew all proper Jewish burial customs had been performed? Why did they bring myrrh when they knew myrrh had already been used to prepare the body?

Regarding the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, people who knew him in life often don’t recognize him at first, Thomas asks to examine the wounds of Jesus, but doesn’t actually do so, 500 see him from afar, but not up close, he often appears in low light situations (at dawn, evening, inside a locked room), but most tellingly, he never appears to his mother! Why wouldn’t Jesus want to speak to Mary after his resurrection?

To answer all these questions in a non-supernatural way, Yeskov presents a recently-discovered manuscript in which Afranius, the head of Pilate’s secret police, reports on an operation he took part in.

Special agent Demiurge (acting under the name Judas bar Simon) was sent to infiltrate a terrorist Zealot group during Operation Centaur. However, he joined a peaceful religious group instead led by one Jesus. This gave Afranius the idea for Operation Ichthys which would solve the problem of violent Judean uprisings by supporting a preacher of nonviolence. Judas became the treasurer of Jesus’s group to secretly funnel Roman money to Jesus’s cause. Judas also spread rumors and staged “miracles” to gain converts.

A problem arose in the form of John the Baptist’s rival sect. Afranius had John captured and sent to Herod to be executed. A disinformation campaign blamed John’s beheading on Herodias and also claimed that John declared himself subservient to Jesus.

Another problem arose when Afranius realized Judas was skimming money meant for the operation into his own pockets. After Judas faked the resurrection of Lazarus and was about to be found out, he went to High Priest Caiaphas to turn Jesus over in order to save himself.

Through an intermediary, Afranius warns Nicodemus to warn Jesus. He also sends a centurion to protect Jesus from being killed in Gethsemane by Caiaphas. Judas points Jesus out, not because the Jews and Romans don’t know who he is, but because an assassin standing outside the torchlight can’t make out faces very well. Afranius realizes this and shouts a warning, causing Peter to attack the assassin. Afranius keeps Peter from being arrested, hoping what really happened won’t come to light.

When the Romans hand Jesus over to the Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin don’t kill Jesus right then because that would look bad after their failed assassination attempt earlier. Pilate wants to keep Jesus alive, but fails. Afranius comes up with a plan to replace Jesus with a stand-in. Judas was killed to keep him from exposing the fraud and it was (imperfectly) made to look like a suicide.

Jesus’s body was moved before the guards arrived and replaced with empty funeral wraps made to look like a body. The empty tomb is discovered and a Jesus look-a-like appears to those who most want to believe. Even then, they don’t realize the person is supposed to be Jesus right away.

In the end, there’s no reason to assume the gospels are historically reliable, but it’s amusing to see that even when you treat them as such, a non-supernatural explanation is still possible.