Matthew is the only gospel that mentions the story of the Roman guards and the cover up by the chief priests. It seems pretty clear that this story was fabricated by its author. He was evidently aware of stories being told by Jews in his area that Jesus had not risen, rather, that his disciples had stolen the body. Matthew even explains that “this story is still told among the Jews to this day” (Matt. 28:15), which is implicit evidence to its later composition. For the gospel of Mark, the empty tomb alone had been evidence that Jesus had risen, but by Matthew’s day this idea was very clearly being scoffed at by unbelievers. Matthew’s solution is simple, if not clever: he invents the presence of Roman guards at the tomb and then blames the creation of the story that Jesus’s body was stolen away by his disciples at night to the chief priests of Jerusalem! Just prior to his empty tomb story, Matthew creates an entire new segment that is not found in any of the other gospels:

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.” 64Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, “He has been raised from the dead”, and the last deception would be worse than the first.’ 65Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’ 66So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.

Later, after the angel unveils the empty tomb to the two women, Matthew inserts this follow up:

11 While they were going, some of the guards went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. 12After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13telling them, ‘You must say, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” 14If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ 15So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.

In a few clever strokes of Matthew’s pen, he had countered the most serious objection of which, at least, he was aware against Jesus’s resurrection. Not only that, he attributed the source of the stories circulating around during his time to a lie concocted by the Jewish Elders, who apparently were not the least bit swayed by such a definitive proof of the Son of God’s divine vindication. Are we really to believe, faced with such a momentous miracle having occurred directly under their noses, that the Jewish Elders would be so obstinate that they would feel the need to cover it up by concocting such a ridiculous lie? Or maybe it is just that Matthew was so intolerant of Jews who did not accept Christianity that he could put in their mouths, a chapter earlier, “His blood be on us and on our children!” – another Matthew exclusive.

Keep in mind that Mark was written earlier, and that Matthew used Mark as one of his sources. Could Mark have simply decided not to mention the guards? Not at all, because Matthew had to make some further modifications to Mark’s storyline to make this work. In Mark, the three women are on their way to the tomb so that they can anoint Jesus’s body with oil and spices. Along the way they asked each other, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” Clearly they expected to have free access to Jesus’s body. Matthew, however, drops this detail and simply says that the two women went to see the tomb for no other express purpose. The addition of the guards to Jesus’s tomb quite clearly explains why Matthew deleted the passages from Mark that described the women going to Jesus’s tomb to anoint his body with oil and wondering “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” Obviously, in Matthew’s fiction the guards were placed at the tomb precisely to prevent anyone from rolling away the stone and having access to the body.

Luke, also written sometime after Mark but independently of Matthew, keeps the detail from Mark about the women visiting the tomb for the purpose of anointing Jesus’s body with oil and spices. In Luke, just as in Mark, there are no guards, so the women would not have perceived any issues with trying to approach the body.

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