And this account has been circulated among the Jews to this very day: Around AD 165, the early church father Justin Martyr wrote to the Jews of his time. He wrote, “You have sent . . . men throughout all the world to proclaim, ‘A godless and lawless heresy has sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb . . . and now [the disciples] deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven’” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 108).
This false information probably increased after the disciples began preaching about the resurrection of Jesus (see Acts 2:22–36).