An empty tomb. Evidence for the Resurrection, Part 3

The first mention of an empty tomb is in Mark. The earlier epistles of Paul give no indication of an empty tomb, and indeed 1 Corinthians 15 is quite clear that Paul believed Jesus had a new body, so no reason to suppose the old body had gone.

No Venerated Tomb

The tomb would have been the single most important site in the new religion; why was it not venerated? Why is there no mention in Acts or the Pauline letters of anyone visiting the tomb after the resurrection to see if the body had really gone, or indeed, visiting just because this was the place Jesus overcame death?

This was supposedly the single most important event in Christian history - God resurrecting Jesus. Why was the place not venerated for that reason? Look at how Lourdes is venerated today. There is no body there, just a place where a girl claimed to have a vision. That is insignificant compared to the one place on Earth where God resurrected Jesus.

The most like explanation is that the empty tomb idea only appeared with Mark wrote his gospel, 30 to 40 years later, and no one really knew where this supposed tomb was.

Biblical Witnesses

Craig says this:

Mark’s source didn’t end with the burial, but with the story of the empty tomb, which is tied to the burial story verbally and grammatically. Moreover, Matthew and John have independent sources about the empty tomb; it’s also mentioned in the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles (2.29; 13.36); and it’s implied by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church (I Cor. 15.4). Thus, we have again multiple, early, independent attestation of the fact of the empty tomb.

Craig is playing hard and fast with the truth here. Matthew is clearly derived from Mark, so is immediately discounted as a witness. This may also be true of John, though it is not as clear.

He cites a verse in Acts; what is the source for that? Acts could have been written some 70 years later (from its possible dependance on Josephus), and there is near universal agreement that it was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke; we would expect the author to be towing the party line and writing about a bodily resurrection by that time.

Okay, how about the Pauline epistle. That was much earlier, so should be much more reliable.

1 Corinthians 15:4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

But this does not prove what Craig would like us to think it does. Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus was raised in a new body.

1 Corinthians 15:35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
...
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:
44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

Indeed, this is most notable in that it does NOT mention an empty tomb. Looks to me like Paul had heard of no such thing!

Discovery by Women

Craig also presents the argument that the finding of the tomb by women proves it was not made up.

In patriarchal Jewish society the testimony of women was not highly regarded. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus says that women weren’t even permitted to serve as witnesses in a Jewish court of law. Now in light of this fact, how remarkable it is that it is women who are the discoverers of Jesus’ empty tomb. Any later legendary account would certainly have made male disciples like Peter and John discover the empty tomb.

But in fact a perfect good explanation is that Mark invented the women as discoverers of the empty tomb to get around the embarrassing fact that no one knew the tomb was empty until he made it up 30 to 40 years later.

Summary of Craig

This page summaries Craig's argument for an empty tomb in ten points. Let us see what we have...

The historical credibility of the burial story supports the empty tomb.  If the burial story is accurate, the site of Jesus’ tomb would have been known to Jew and Christian alike.  Anyone could have, and would have, just marched to the tomb and produced the body.  In fact, the burial story is widely recognized as a historically credible narrative.

Here is the conflation of a credible burial with the claim Jesus was buried in a special tomb. All the evidence points to a tomb containing not just Jesus, but several corpses of criminals. Far from empty.

Paul’s testimony implies the fact of the empty tomb.  The sequence in 1 Cor 15 is death- burial – resurrection.  Surely this sequence implies a tomb, or else where would Jesus be buried?

Paul says there was a burial, but that could be a communal grave for criminals - a far more likely prospect for the body of a man executed for treason by the Romans and also condemned for blasphemy by the Jews! To claim this implies an empty tomb is ridiculous, and shows how low these people stoop to find evidence.

The presence of the empty tomb narrative in the pre-Markan Passion story supports its historical credibility.  Scholars believe that Mark’s sources from which he wrote his Gospel contained the Passion story of Jesus.  Therefore, this source material would have been very old and date back to right after Jesus’ death (about A.D. 37).

But we do not have that pre-Markan Passion story, so we have no idea if it included an empty tomb or not. More "evidence" they have made up!

The use of the “first day of the week” (Mark 16:2) instead of  “on the third day” points to the primitiveness of the tradition of the empty tomb.  Scholars believe that the “third day” motif found in the New Testament developed later in Christian preaching.  The fact that Mark leaves those words out speaks to a very early date for the material in Mark.

All this establishes is that the empty tomb tradition existed before the third day tradition. Unless we know the date of the latter, how can this possibly date the former? By using the word "primitiveness", however, the author leads us to think it must have been very early, despite the evidence not supporting that claim.

Alternatively, we may note that the  “on the third day” motif is associated with the resurrection, not the empty tomb. It likely comes from Hosea (Hosea 6:2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence.), which is why Paul says "according to scripture" - there was no witness, but according to Hosea, Jesus rose on the third day.

Mark may have been making the point that the women were visiting the tomb the day after the Sabbath, hence, on the first day of the week is used to establish that.

The nature of the narrative itself is theologically unadorned and nonapologetic.  Mark’s account of the empty tomb is simple and straightforward.

How can these people claim the empty tomb is unapologetic, even as they use the empty tomb themselves for apologetic purposes? Of course it is apologetic, and to claim otherwise looks frankly dishonest to me.

The empty tomb was discovered by women.  Given the low status of women in 1st century Jewish society and their inability to serve as legal witnesses, it would be nonsensical for the New Testament writers to fabricate the story of the women finding the empty tomb.  The most reasonable explanation is that they really did.

In fact, the finding of the empty tomb by women is readily explained by scenario outlined above. Mark invented women as the discoverers specifically because their testimony of women was not highly regarded - that was how he rationalised away no one knowing about an empty tomb before.

The investigation of the tomb by Peter and John is historically probable.  The visit of the disciples to the tomb is attested both in tradition (Luke 24:12, 24; John 20:3) and by John himself.

It is only probable if the early church had believed in a bodily resurrection. If they believed Jesus had been given a brand new glorified body - as Paul described - then the old body would still be there in the tomb for criminals up to a year later. An investigation of the tomb would be pointless, and possibly dangerous too.

The visit of the disciples to the tomb was an embellishment added decades later.

The Gospel of Mark even say as much! In the original version the man in white tells the woman Jesus will see the disciples in Galilee, not Jerusalem.

It would have been virtually impossible for the disciples to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem had the tomb not been empty.  When the disciples began to preach the resurrection in Jerusalem and people responded, and when the religious authorities stood helplessly by, the tomb must have been empty.

The disciples preached a resurrection in a new body, as 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear. The status of the tomb was a non-issue until Mark invented the empty tomb some thirty years later.

It is notable that Acts, when describing the disciples preaching, has no mention of an empty tomb.

The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the empty tomb.  Matthew tells us in Matt. 28:15 that the Jewish opponents of Christianity did not deny that the tomb was empty.  They claimed the disciples stole the body.

We know this is the earliest Jewish polemic how exactly? The reality is that this was a polemic against Mark's claim of an empty tomb decades later, too late for anyone to check for themselves.

The fact that Matthew invented the guards to count claims of the body being stolen - rather than Mark making it up - indicates the empty tomb story was only circulating widely when matthew was written, and not when Mark was written.

The fact that Jesus’ tomb was not venerated as a shrine indicates that the tomb was empty.  It was customary in Judaism for the tomb of a prophet or holy man to be preserved or venerated as a shrine because the bones of the prophet lay in the tomb.  The only reason Jesus’ followers would not have venerated his tomb is because it was empty.

Another reason is that the empty tomb was made up thirty years later, and no one knew what criminals' grave Jesus had been in.

Why Did The Romans Not Produce The Body To Refute Christianity?

This is a claim from this website. The argument goes that if there was a body, then the Romans would have made sure that they found it, and then used it to refute the early religion.

Even if Jesus' disciples hadn't checked the tomb, Rome would have been fully aware of what had transpired there. Elite Roman Guards units, operating under penalty of death, must have scoured the area before reporting Jesus' body as missing.
So whether the disciples checked the tomb or not is irrelevant. If Rome could have produced Jesus' body, it certainly would have done so.

The reality is, I suggest, that the early religion did not claim a bodily resurrection. Jesus was resurrected in a brand new glorified body. The existence of the body was irrelevant, and they made no claims that the tomb was empty. No one checked on the body because no one cared.

It was only thirty to forty years later, when the empty tomb was made up, that it became an issue, and by then, Jesus' body would have been unrecognisable.

Gospel of Peter (added 19/Jun/16)

Elsewhere I have seen argued that the Empty Tomb was in the pre-Markan passion narrative, and the evidence cited for this is the Gospel of Peter. The original Gospel of Peter is dated to before Mark, and the version we have does indeed mention the empty tomb. However, evidence points to this being a later addition.

From the conclusion of this book:

Sometime in the middle of the second century, a Christian author composed a new story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He did this by using as his primary sources the NT Gospels and other pieces of tradition with which he was acquainted. In the rewritten gospel there are many details that differ from the antecedent works, changes that were made in order to make the story more fitting for the new setting in weghich the author wrote. ...
...GP is best understood as a "rewritten gospel," and that criticism from and competition with those outside the Christian movement played a formative role in the reworking of earlier gospel accounts. ...
Chapter Four reviewed the account of the guard in GP. The writer retold the Matthean story and has altered in in seven was in an effort to assure readers that the tomb of Jesus was secure. ...
... While none of the NT gospels describes the resurrection - the actual emergence of Jesus from the tomb - the noncanonical author adds this scene in an attempt to prove a better case for the reality of the event. ...

So we have a first edition, dated to mid first century, which no long exists, and a second edition, written a century later. Sure the second edition has the empty tomb, but we have nothing to suggest the first edition did.

No Interest From the Roman Authorities (added 18/Aug/24)

A further issue is that there is no record in Acts or the church tradition of the Roman authorities accusing the Christians of grave robbing or of harbouring a fugitive.

Think about it. We are supposed to believe the Christians were telling everyone about the empty tomb a couple of days after Jesus was crucified. The Roman authorities would assume the body was stolen by those same Christians. But although Acts reports various clashes with the authorities, there is no mention of accusations of grave robbing.

Note that graving robbing was a capital offence. It would have been a big deal. Why no reports of the Romans accusing them of grave robbing? Because the empty tomb was made up decades later.

Indeed, if the Christians were claiming a man had escaped his execution and was active in Jerusalem - as the Romans would see it - why no accusations of harbouring a fugitive?

Further reading (added 18/Aug/24)

Article on how common empty tomb myths were here: https://www.behindthegospels.com/p/vanishing-bodies-ascending-gods

Article about other dying and resurrected gods: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13890

Article about why Mark invented the empty tomb: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16366

Conclusion

Peel away the veneer of dubious evidence and the claim for an empty tomb seems hollow indeed!