Sanhedrin Stones

There are two members of the ancient Jewish Sanhedrin mentioned in the biblical gospels.  Joseph of Arimethea is one.  Nicodemus is the other.  These two stand as a testimony to the truthfulness of the gospel accounts.  The unbelievers are always claiming that the gospels were made up stories, or contained made up stories.  They have to, because there are many miracles recorded in the gospels.  In their worldview, which denies anything supernatural, miracles cannot happen.  But I'll show you how Joseph and Nicodemus testify to the truthfulness of these gospel accounts.

There are three pillars (premises) that this argument is built on.  One is the early dating of the gospel accounts.  Even liberal scholars date the gospels within the first century.  At the very latest, the early part of the second century.  More reasonable scholars date them to about the middle of the first century.  I won't discuss the methods of dating ancient literature, but if you question whether the gospels were really written within a hundred years of the events they record, do your own research.  The second pillar is the fact that many people believed in Christianity, and the gospel accounts, in Judea and surrounding areas.  There were believers in Rome even by AD 63.  There were believers throughout the whole Roman Empire by the end of the first century, and they were willing to be persecuted and give their lives for what they believed.  The third pillar is what is actually written in the gospel accounts themselves.  The same argument I'm making here, using Joseph and Nicodemus as examples, can be made of a number of people and events in the gospels.  For simplicity sake, I'm going to focus exclusively on these two members of the Sanhedrin.

Joseph of Arimethea appears in all four of the gospels.  He is a rich Jew, and a member of the Sanhedrin.  He was also a secret follower of Christ.  The gospels record that Joseph asked Pilate for the body of Jesus so he could bury it.  And indeed Joseph did bury Jesus.  Nicodemus, also a member of the Sanhedrin - the ruling Jewish council - accompanied Joseph in burying Jesus.  Nicodemus was also a secret follower of Christ.  We read John 3 the kind of curiosity that Nicodemus had about Christ Jesus.  The reason both of these men were secret disciples of Christ, up until the crucifixion, was a fear of Jews and the Jewish leadership.  Had they come out and acknowledged Jesus as Christ, they would have been ostracized, and would have lost their positions on the Council.  They did come out and acknowledge Jesus as Christ, but only after the crucifixion.  You may wonder, why then?  Matthew records that the Sun was darkened for a period at the time of the crucifixion.  The Roman soldiers crucifying Jesus totally change their opinion of him.  They were mocking him earlier, offering Him wine mixed with gall.  But after the darkness they offer Him pure wine, and believe that He is calling Elijah to save Him.  He wasn't of course, but this shows how the soldiers totally change their demeanor towards Jesus.  The darkness over the land was a supernatural sign, and they knew it.  And as soon as Jesus died there was a great earthquake, and the soldiers said, "Surely He was the Son of God!"  So you can imagine, if the darkness and the earthquake had that affect on the Roman soldiers crucifying Jesus, it would have strengthened the faith of Jesus' closet disciples as well.  Emboldened by the supernatural signs surrounding the crucifixion, Joseph and Nicodemus come out of the closet as disciples of Christ Jesus.

These two present a major problem for those who wish to believe that the gospel accounts were fabricated fiction.  Its not like Joseph and Nicodemus were a couple of no-names.  These were important men.  They were members of the Sanhedrin.  It would be like members of the US Congress.  Jews knew who they were.  Records would have them listed.  They were prominent men; about as prominent as a Jew could get in that day.  And the gospel writers tell us they were members of the Sanhedrin.  So what?  So if the story of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea were a fabrication, how did the fabricators pull it over on the people?  To illustrate the argument, lets go over a number of hypothetical scenarios:Lets suppose Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus never actually existed.  Lets suppose that they were made up figures, and everything about them in the gospel accounts was just made up fiction.  But then, whoever is reading the book of John in the first century, or even in the second century, and comes across these made up characters, that John says were members of the Sanhedrin, could look at the records.  "Were there ever members of the Sanhedrin by those names?"  that person might ask.  And the answer would be no.  At that point the gospels are discredited, the information is passed along, the opponents of Christianity have all the ammo they need, and Christianity has no leg to stand on.  In other words, no one would believe it, and that would be the end of Christianity.  Certainly no one would risk their life to believe it.

Now lets suppose that Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus did exist as members of the Sanhedrin, but the gospel writers fictitiously claimed they were disciples of Jesus, and made up the story of burying Jesus after the crucifixion.  So a person reading the gospel accounts could do the research, find out that there were members of the Sanhedrin by those names.  But at the same time, if anyone is making that claim in the mid part of the first century, Joseph and Nicodemus would come forward themselves and say, "No, none of that is true".  Then the story of them burying Jesus would be discredited, Christianity would be discredited, and that would be the end of it.  If not Joseph and Nicodemus themselves, it could be someone that was close to them, a relative, or other members of the Sanhedrin.  Considering how prominent they would have been, their lives being on a stage, whether they actually did follow Christ or not, it would be pretty evident.  Even a number of years later, it would not be hard to find out whether two members of the Sanhedrin truly were Jesus' disciples or not.  Furthermore, it can be assumed, based on what John records, that Nicodemus and Joseph lost their positions on the Sanhedrin shortly after their coming out as followers of Jesus.  Jesus was just condemned and crucified.  The new sect of His followers was condemned by the ruling parties in Jerusalem.  Jesus had made enemies of both Pharisees and Sadducees, and they were the ones who made up the Sanhedrin.  Its inconceivable that Joseph and Nicodemus could have held their positions long after acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah.  So a review of the records, and a person would expect to find that their positions on the Sanhedrin ended soon after the date of the crucifixion.  If you found a Joseph and a Nicodemus on the Sanhedrin, but they remained on the Sanhedrin several years after the crucifixion was said to have happened, then you would know that something was fishy.  That's just another way to check the story.

Now lets suppose that Joseph and Nicodemus did exist as members of the Sanhedrin, and they did bury the body of Jesus, but that everything else was a fabrication.  The miracles, the darkening of the Sun, the earthquake, those were a fabrication.  Then you have to wonder why Joseph and Nicodemus were disciples.  Why would they risk their position on the Sanhedrin, as well as their riches and their own lives, to claim Jesus as Christ?  Without the miracles that Jesus performed, there is no fuel for their conversion.  There is no reason they would be followers of Jesus.  It is inconceivable how these two contemporaries of Jesus would be followers of Jesus without any miracles to convince them, giving up their positions to do so.

So John, and the other gospel writers, do not shy away from mentioning the most prominent members of Jewish society, involving them in the Passion of Jesus.  That if it were a fabrication, they would easily be discovered and discredited.  They were not discovered, and they were not discredited.  And if there were not some kind of supernatural signs accompanying the life and death of Jesus, there's zero chance two members of the Sanhedrin would risk everything they have to be followers of Jesus.