FAR FROM REGARDING THE TOMB WOMEN AS WITNESSES THE GOSPELS TREAT THEM AS HEARSAY
Christian "feminists" tell the outrageous lie that Jesus in sending messengers to the women who found his tomb empty to tell them he rose was making them witnesses and apostles in an age where female testimony meant nothing. Jesus is supposed to have appeared first to women.
Christians never used the women to provide evidence of the gospel. It was only the male witnesses that were considered necessary. The story of the women at the tomb and finding it empty may have been invented to explain how some of the apostle went to see it vacant. To say the apostles visited the tomb an found it empty is playing into the hands of the critics who were supposedly saying that Jesus’ disciples robbed the tomb.
What if women were no good as witnesses? Only Luke and John refer to males who seen the empty tomb. The women would only be in the story for the narrative, the plot. The aim is to get us to the male account which was considered the decisive one.
Interestingly the women are said to have thought the tomb was empty and left it to tell the disciples. That is hardly a good way to verify something so major as a body being absent for it rose. Poor supervision of the site means nobody really knows the truth. You would expect the evidence to be as good as that you would need to jail somebody for murder. It is far from as good as that! Indeed if we are to stake our eternal salvation on such flimsiness then executing murderers on flimsy evidence is sensible in comparison. We would have no right to condemn such executions.
What if women were fine as witnesses? We don't know what the gospels thought for men are mixed into the story as well. A sexist who never listens to women will report women's testimony as long as men's is there too.
It is said that nobody would have made up women as witnesses so the story is true. That is not an argument for it can go the other way. It can be said that the use of women shows the story is untrue. If the latter, then the women are a strong indication that no man saw the tomb empty and the guards didn’t see it and were perhaps never there at all. And that the story of the disciples seeing the tomb was made up.
Let us suppose the women were considered witnesses. Some indications are that women would be validated as witnesses if there was no male testimony. The male witness was the sought after one.
The women were the only ones present at the empty tomb and might have been the only witnesses the Matthew gospeller could have had any confidence in for he did not trust the guards.
Christians reject stories of visions as enough for establishing the resurrection of Christ. Most Christians reject the visions of Medjugorje so it follows that the real evidence for the resurrection must come from the women being able to prove that a physical miracle of a body coming back to life happened. There was none of that at all. All they seen was an empty tomb. They did not say why it was empty. Jesus being stolen would not mean that he failed to rise from the dead.
The apostles came by later. Like the women they knew nothing either. They were even worse for they knew less. Yet the religion insanely claims that they are THE AUTHORITIVE witnesses of the physical resurrection of Jesus and their circumstantial evidence is why they are special.
Christianity just exploits the women who are never even said to have been reliable.
Christianity is just superstition for how do we know that the women did not see Jesus being stolen from the tomb but tried to cover it up with a resurrection story? What if Jesus vanished in the tomb after being vaporised miraculously by God? What if the destruction of his body by God was the prelude to his spiritual resurrection?
If the gospellers believed that women were unreliable witnesses and nevertheless made witnesses of them then were they trying to get it across to the Church that the whole story was a pile of nonsense? Christians argue that the absurdity of men who rejected female testimony using these women proves the story true. In other words, the more improbable or incredible a story is the more likely it is to be true! We will believe anything if we follow that principle.
