Was the Tomb Empty?

If you were to go back in time to the first Easter Sunday morning, what would you have seen at the tomb of Jesus? This is a question that has been asked by both Christians and skeptics.

In some ways, this is an important question. What did the earliest Christians believe happened to the physical body of Jesus? The answer could affect our confidence in the resurrection of Jesus.

Let’s look at it this way. Imagine I told you that I had a brother who had died but who had been raised. When you pointed out that his body was still in the grave, I responded that it was a spiritual resurrection that left a physical body behind. You probably would not be convinced.

So the presence or absence of a body in Jesus’ tomb speaks to the reliability of the resurrection tradition.

One example of the criticisms of the empty tomb is found in the article The Resurrection of Jesus: Was there a missing Body?

There are basically three points that the author makes:

1. Paul never mentions the empty tomb.
2. Mark, the earliest Gospel, never mentions the empty tomb.
3. There are very few descriptions of the ascension.

The author is correct on all three points. However, he is wrong when it comes to the significance of them.

Paul and the Empty Tomb

Does Paul ever mention the empty tomb? No he does not. However, Paul was a strong believer in the resurrection. In fact, it could be argued that the resurrection is the central doctrine for Paul. Paul was fully convinced that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Does lack of mention of an empty tomb mean that Paul thought that there was still a physical body in the tomb, even Jesus’ spirit was in heaven?

As many people have stated, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. We need to be careful in interpreting Paul’s (or any one else’s) silence on specific topic.

Here is an example. Did Paul believe that Mary was the mother of Jesus? Most likely. And yet Paul never mentions Mary. Even in Galatians 4:4, when Paul describes Jesus as “born of a woman,” Paul never mentions Mary. Paul probably assumed that the mother of Jesus was common knowledge and had no reason to specify that detail.

When Paul speaks of the resurrection, he most likely understands it in the Jewish tradition of a physical raising of the dead. When Paul says that Jesus was raised, he probably thought there was no need to specify the empty tomb. If Jesus walked out, who else would be there?

Mark and the Empty Tomb

This argument assumes the priority of Mark, something I accept. Why does Mark not specify the empty tomb? The other Gospels speak of the empty tomb. Why not Mark?

I should specify that Mark actually ends at Mark 16:8. The following verses are later additions. So to understand what Mark believed, we need to look no further than Mark 16:8.

I was looking at this passage and I want to quote it here:

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:4-8)

What we find in this passage are the details that the stone that blocked the entrance had been moved and a message that Jesus was no longer there.

What would an average reader assume based on these verses? Would they assume that Jesus’ physical body was still there in the tomb and that Jesus was only alive spiritually? Probably not.

Like Paul, Mark most likely did not specify that the tomb was empty because it was kind of obvious. If Jesus was raised from the dead, why would he still be in the tomb?

The Ascension and the Empty Tomb

It is also true that there is not much mention of the ascension of Jesus. It is only recorded by Luke, once in his Gospel and once in Acts. How does that affect our understanding of early Christian views of the physical body of Jesus?

I actually think this is a good question and I would love to know why the other Gospels do not mention the resurrection. My guess would be that they understood the crucifixion and resurrection to have direct spiritual relevance to Christians in ways that the ascension did not.

But I would add that all of the Gospel-writers, as well as Paul, understood some sort of change in terms of the appearances of Jesus immediately after the resurrection and what was happening later. Something happened that made Jesus less immediately available. This would be what we call the ascension.

Final Thoughts

The article that I am responding to relies on the shock value of the three points that are being made. Many Christians assume that Paul and all four Gospel-writers specify that the tomb was empty. They would assume that there are multiple accounts of the ascension by different authors.

And yet once we get past the rhetorical effect of these details, the power of the argument quickly evaporates. None of these points persuasively demonstrate that the earliest Christians lacked a belief in the empty tomb.