An Empty Tomb

There are two general prongs to an argument for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The strongest one is the one on which Dr. Blehm focuses in this lesson: eyewitness testimony. Another one, which Dr. Blehm assumes in his lesson, is that the tomb was indeed empty. When we say Jesus rose from the dead, we are not saying that just his spirit went to heaven, like ours will when we die. We are saying that his body went to heaven. The tomb is empty!

There was no body in the tomb that Easter morning. This was the initial indication that something spectacular had happened. As John records, Mary Magdalene asking, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (John 20:15).

Despite variations in the way the four Gospels tell the resurrection story, they all agree that it was the women who found the empty tomb that Sunday morning. When oral and written traditions around a story have significant variations around common elements, it strengthens the case that the common elements are historical. All four Gospels relay that the women found the empty tomb on Easter morning.

This datum also has the ring of historicity because women were generally considered to be unreliable in the ancient world. If you were going to make up a story like that of the resurrection, you would not have women be the ones to discover the tomb. In fact, a skeptic might argue that Luke and John have added visits to the tomb by Peter (Luke 24:12) and the Beloved Disciple (John 20:3-8) so that men could confirm that the tomb was indeed empty. It supports the underlying historical claim.

Finally, Matthew records a rumor that persisted in his day that the “disciples stole the body” (Matt. 28:15). Of course, this claim is quite unlikely. Another common element of the Gospel stories is that the disciples were terrified, confused, and demoralized by the crucifixion. Again, this is not the kind of thing someone would make up because it would be embarrassing to these later leaders. It is also a predictable psychological outcome of decisive defeat and the dashing of all their hopes.

But more importantly, this story indicates that even those who did not believe in Jesus accepted the datum of an empty tomb. The rumor was not that Jesus was still buried in the place he had been laid. The rumor was an alternative explanation for an empty tomb. In other words, the common assumption of believer and unbeliever alike was that Jesus’ tomb was empty.