The Empty Tomb of Jesus
The Empty Tomb of Jesus
In all our ancient sources, friends and foes alike acknowledged that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was found empty shortly afterwards.
Our earliest source (1 Cor. 15:4) states that the discovery of the vacated tomb of Jesus occurred just three days after the crucifixion. All four Gospels report that the women who visited Jesus' tomb discovered that it was open and empty. And it was reported that even the Jewish authorities thought that the tomb was empty.2
Why should anyone believe that this is actually what happened? Perhaps surprisingly, scholars have provided more than twenty reasons for the historicity of the empty tomb. The most frequently mentioned is the unanimous agreement that women were the first witnesses. In the patriarchal culture of first-century AD Palestine, women were unlikely to be asked to give important testimony. Generally, there was an inverse relationship between the importance of a particular subject and whether or not a woman would be allowed to testify in court.
Given this scenario, why are the women listed by all our sources as the first witnesses to the empty tomb, unless it is true? Even further, why would we be told that the male disciples reacted by belittling the women and accusing them of spreading tales—basically gossip (see Luke 24:11)? These are examples of what scholars call the principle of embarrassment—that it is unlikely that authors will embarrass their heroes without very good reasons. But the texts clearly report these embarrassing accounts.
On the other hand, if you want to document something as important as the empty tomb, and you are as free with your sources as some scholars think, why not simply make up a story that says that the men found the empty tomb, so that their testimony would more readily be received? And even if you use the women, certainly do not make the future leaders of the church, the male disciples, criticize the women! That would mean that those who took Jesus' place were badly mistaken. But the church needs to trust the disciples for their wise counsel!
This is all backward and a horrible way to establish your case—that is, unless it is precisely what happened! These are some of the reasons why scholars take so seriously the “embarrassing” female testimony concerning finding the vacated tomb.
Another reason to accept the empty tomb is that the city of Jerusalem should have been the very last place chosen for such a report if it were not so. Why? Because the city was both the birthplace of the church and home to many enemies who opposed the message. An afternoon walk to the tomb by either friend or foe could either verify or debunk the claim. If the tomb were not empty, how easily could the claim have been disproven?
Some will object that the story of the women visiting the tomb does not surface until the Gospel of Mark, about 35 or 40 years after the events. But we must not miss something important here. The predominant view of afterlife among the Jews of this day is clearly that of bodily resurrection.3 So how could the disciples have gotten away with proclaiming that Jesus had risen and appeared to them after His death if the stone still remained in front of His tomb? That story would have found credence only if the stone was moved and the tomb was empty.
We will just mention one more argument for the empty tomb. Ancient historian Paul Maier reminds us of a common standard in the field: “Many facts from antiquity rest on just one ancient source, while two or three sources in agreement generally render the fact unimpeachable.”4 But the empty tomb is attested by between three and six independent sources, both in the Gospels and elsewhere.5 This is simply excellent evidence by ancient standards.
So for these and many other reasons, that Jesus' burial tomb was empty very shortly after His death on the cross is the best explanation for the data. How does the Talpiot Hypothesis explain this data?