After 2,000 years the events of the first Easter still remain an enigma. How might Sherlock Holmes have tackled the issue?
As I entered the room, Sherlock Holmes sat in his usual chair, his long legs extended, puffing his pipe in a most thoughtful fashion.
'Well, Watson,' he mused, 'becoming religious, are you? I see you've been to church this fine Easter morning and, more than that, you were not pleased with it. You can't accept the resurrection of Jesus, can you?'
'Holmes, you amaze me!' I started. 'How on earth did you know that? I hardly ever attend worship! Have you taken up thought-reading to add to your detective skills? How did you guess my opinions?'
'Well, Watson, since your cousin died in February you have not been yourself at all, and I've noted that you have been reading a few religious books. You tried to conceal this, of course, but you gave yourself away by replacing them in the bookcase in slightly different positions. So you are obviously, let us say, in a religious frame of mind. Then there is the time at which you entered just now. You are earlier than you would have been had you spent the morning at your club, and you're slightly better dressed than normal, as you would be for church. Your shoes confirmed my hypothesis - there is a piece of red gravel sticking out from the side of your sole, the sort of gravel that is on the path leading up to St. Mary's! More than that, there is a mark on the top of both shoes that would be caused if you had been in a kneeling position. As to your opinions - well, that is easy! Your return is a little early even for someone who has attended church, so you must have left before the end of the service. There are few things that would cause you to do that, one of them being that you walked out in disgust. That is confirmed by the object in your right fist.'
'What?' I gasped, opening my hand.
'You are holding an order of service, I think, and you have screwed it up, as you might do if you were angry. Now, what made you so angry? As it is Easter morning, the vicar would have been preaching on the resurrection, and as it takes ten minutes to walk from St. Mary's to here, I suggest you walked out halfway through the sermon! What he said angered you. The resurrection angered you.'
'Holmes, you amaze me! You are right, down to the last detail! It is true this whole resurrection business seems utterly incredible to me. I would love to believe it, but I can't! I tried to think about it the way I thought you would if it were a crime you were investigating. I put away wishful thinking and sought to examine the hard evidence, and then I constructed theories which would explain away the resurrection, and I found several.'
'Well then,' responded Holmes, as he reached for his tobacco pouch to refill his pipe, 'let's have a look at these theories of yours.'
I lowered myself into a chair and stared at the empty hearth for a moment or two. 'The most obvious explanation is that the women, distraught and overcome with grief, missed their way in the dimness of the morning and went to the wrong tomb. In their distress, they imagined Christ had risen because the tomb was empty.'
'But Watson,' Holmes interjected, 'that cannot be the case. When the disciples, to the consternation of the authorities, later started preaching that Christ had risen, the latter would only have needed to have produced the body to successfully smother Christianity in its cradle. On top of this, Watson, do you really think that all Jesus' followers would succumb to the same mistake? After all, he did appear to over 500 people. No, Watson, you will have to do better than that!'
'Perhaps so, Holmes. Then maybe the whole affair can be explained by hallucination.' 'Oh, come, come, Watson! And you a medical man! You know as well as I do that hallucinations are extremely subjective and individual, no two people have the same experience. Remember those 500 witnesses, do you seriously suggest they were all hallucinating? And anyway, hallucinations usually only occur at particular places and times associated with the events fancied. None of this was the case.'
'Well then, Holmes,' I responded, 'the truth of the matter must be that Jesus probably didn't really die at all. He could have quite easily passed out or gone into some kind of coma. After all, he must have suffered from exhaustion, pain and loss of blood. When he was laid in the cool tomb, he revived, and when he left the tomb and appeared to his disciples, they mistakenly thought he had risen from the dead.'
Holmes was silent for a moment or two, watching the smoke from his pipe curl up and caress the ceiling and then, very slowly, he replied: 'But that won't do either, Watson. For a start, his executioners were experienced at their job, and it was more than their lives were worth to fail; they even stuck a spear in his side to make sure that Jesus was dead. Next, Jesus would have had to survive for three days in the tomb without food, water or any medical attention, and then he would have had to extricate himself from the grave-clothes, push away the heavy stone sealing the tomb and overcome the Roman guards! Surely such a belief is as fantastic as the resurrection itself?'
I stood up and began pacing the room in an uneasy fashion. 'Holmes, behind many of the cases you have solved, there has been a plot of some kind - a conspiracy, if you like. The criminal has made things look different from how they actually are. Suppose the resurrection is really a conspiracy - an interested party made it appear that Jesus had risen.'
Holmes put down his pipe, leant over the side of his chair and took up his violin. For a while he sat there running his fingers over the smooth varnish, and then in a quiet voice, he said: 'Now that's interesting, Watson, very interesting! A crime was committed, you say, possibly the greatest crime in human history. But let us understand the criminal's mind, for criminal psychology is most fascinating and useful, Watson. In my experience,' Holmes proceeded, 'generally two conditions need to be satisfied if someone is going to commit a crime. The first is motive and the second, opportunity. Now, in the case in hand, who has both the motive and the opportunity?'
'The disciples of Jesus at least had the motive, I suppose,' I suggested.
'Did they now, Watson?' Holmes countered. 'What would they gain? Why pretend Jesus was alive and then suffer persecution and even execution for the pretence? No, they had nothing to gain, and even if they did, the opportunity is lacking: a band of peasants was hardly a match for a Roman guard!'
'Well, Holmes, that leaves the authorities, they had the opportunity. Perhaps they are the prime suspect in the business.'
'But why, Watson? There must be motive, the last thing the authorities wanted was a resurrected martyr to focus the forces of unrest and rebellion!'
'But there must be some explanation, Holmes!'
'Yes, I'm sure there is, Watson. I'm sure there is, but I must admit that it has eluded even my powers of deduction at present.'
With that, Holmes took up his bow, leant back in his chair and began a sombre melody. I returned to my chair and resumed staring at the empty grate.
