What evidence is there for the empty tomb? In my book I lay out about ten
lines of evidence for the empty tomb, so I couldn't possibly hope to summarize it
all here. Let me just mention a couple of points. One of the most important facts I
think undergirding the empty tomb is oddly enough the burial story of Jesus.
If the burial story of Jesus is accurate, then that means that the site of Jesus's
tomb was known to both Jew and Christian alike in Jerusalem, but if that is the
case, then it seems to me that the inference that the tomb was found empty
is very near at hand. For if the burial site of Jesus were known, then it would
have been impossible for the disciples to believe in the resurrection of Jesus
and proclaim this in Jerusalem when Jesus's corpse still lay in the tomb. If
Christianity, or the resurrection, was preached in Jerusalem itself, as it was,
the very city where Jesus was publicly executed, where his grave remained and
was publicly known, the disciples could not possibly have believed that he was
risen from the dead in the face of a closed tomb, and even if they had,
scarcely anybody else would have believed in them if they proclaimed
anything so silly. For a first century Jew, the idea that you could have a
spiritual resurrection while the corpse still lay in the tomb was simply unknown.
That is an invention of 20th century theology, not first century Judaism. And
in any case, the Jewish authorities certainly could have made an end to the
whole affair by simply pointing to the closed tomb of Jesus and said look, that
grave is occupied, he is not risen from the dead, and that would have been the
end of it. And therefore the accuracy of the burial story I think provides
powerful grounds for affirming the historicity of the empty tomb account,
and unfortunately for those who wish to deny the empty tomb, the burial of Jesus
is widely recognized to be one of the most historically credible facts that we
have about the historical person Jesus of Nazareth.
So that those who deny the empty tomb are also forced to deny the burial story
which is desperate expedient, since it is so historically well attested. So that
would just be one aspect. Another aspect of the empty tomb narrative itself, as
it's found in the Gospel of Mark, is that this portion of the narrative was
probably part of Mark's early source material that he used for describing
the passion and the death of Jesus, the last week of Jesus's life and his
crucifixion. The burial story marked the close of the passion of Jesus as he is
laid in the tomb and the stone has rolled across its entrance, and the empty
tomb story was probably part of that passion story because that story would
not have been circulated without victory at its end. Without the empty tomb the
passion story is incomplete. Also the empty tomb story is connected to the
burial account by syntactical and linguistic ties. For example, the pronouns
used in the empty tomb story have their antecedents in the burial story so that
it's really one smooth account. Now when you remember that Mark is the earliest
of our Gospels, that means that his source material was even older, and this
passion narrative that included the empty tomb story could have gone back to
within the AD 30s even, remember Jesus was crucified about AD 30, so that we're
talking about a source that is extremely old and is therefore a valuable source
of historical information. Also the empty tomb story itself, thirdly, is extremely
simple and lacks any signs of legendary development. I think the best way to
appreciate this would be to compare it to accounts of the empty tomb that are
found in apocryphal Gospels, that is, forgeries dating from the second century
such as the so called Gospel of Peter. In the Gospel of Peter, the narrative
describes the resurrection of Jesus itself coming out of the tomb; the
narrative proceeds by saying that during the night
there is a loud voice that rings out from heaven, and then the stone across
the entrance to the tomb rolls back by itself. Then two men are seen coming out
of heaven and going into the tomb. Then three men come out of the tomb, two of
them holding up the third man. The heads of the two men stretch up to the clouds
but the head of the third man overpasses the clouds. Then a cross comes out of the
tomb and a voice from heaven asks hast thou preached to them that sleep? And the
cross answers yay. Now these are how real legends look; you see they're colored by
all sorts of theological and apologetical motifs, and these are noticeably
lacking from the Markan empty tomb account which seems to be basically a
straightforward report of what actually happened. If I might just mention a
couple of other points that I think are significant, the empty tomb was probably
discovered by women, and I think that this is evident when you contemplate two
aspects of the role of women in 1st century Jewish society. First of all
women occupied, quite frankly, a low rung on the Jewish social ladder. They were
second-class citizens in 1st century Palestine. This is evident from such
Jewish rabbinical sayings as the following: "Sooner let the words of the
law be burnt then delivered to women," or again, "Woe to him whose children are
female, but blessings on him whose children are male." Women were not as
highly regarded as males in that society. Secondly the witness of women was
regarded as so worthless that they were not even allowed to serve as witnesses
in a legal court of law. If a man were seen committing a crime by a group of
women, he could not be convicted on the basis of their testimony, because their
witness was thought to be so unreliable that it wouldn't even be admitted into
court. Now in light of those two facts, how remarkable must it be that the empty
tomb story describes the discovery of the empty tomb by women.
The fact that it is women rather than men who discovered Jesus's tomb empty
suggests that this is a historically credible account. Any later legend would
have certainly made the male disciples to discover the empty tomb, Peter and
John, for example. The fact that it is women that discovered the empty tomb,
women whose witness was worthless and counted for nothing, is best explained by
the fact that, like it or not, they were the ones who found the empty tomb, and
the Gospels faithfully record this fact. One final piece of evidence that might
be mentioned would be the fact that the earliest Jewish polemic, or anti-
Christian propaganda, itself presupposes the empty tomb. The earliest Jewish
polemic that was launched against the Christian proclamation he is risen from
the dead was to state that the disciples came by night and stole away his body,
and then the Christians responded to that that there was a guard at the tomb,
and they would have prevented the theft, and so on and so forth. Now the
interesting thing in this dispute is not the historicity of the presence of
the guard. Rather, the interesting thing is what the
Jewish polemic was saying in response to the Christian proclamation he is risen
from the dead. Were they saying these men are drunk with new wine, or his tomb is
still out there on the hillside? No, they were saying the disciples came and stole
away his body. Now think about that for a minute. What that implies is that the
body was missing. The earliest Jewish polemic was itself an attempt to explain
away the empty tomb, and thus we have evidence for the empty tomb which comes
not from the Christians but from the very enemies of the earliest Christians
themselves, which is historical evidence of first-rate quality because it comes
not from the sources which believed in the resurrection but from those which
disputed it. So on the basis of reasons like this and many others,
the majority of New Testament critics today affirm the historicity of the
empty tomb story.