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Did the Early Christians Believe in the Empty Tomb?

04/08/2014 Comments (64)

Did the first Christians believe in the empty tomb?







Jenkins on the Empty Tomb

Over at his blog, Dr. Jenkins writes:


Where is the empty tomb story before 70?


How can I respond? Help me.



Challenging a Premise









Challenging a Second Premise

The book of Acts doesn’t refer to the empty tomb? It would seem to do so in this passage, where Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost:


Note the contrast between David and Jesus. David died and was buried in a tomb. Jesus died and, presumably, was also buried in a tomb, though the text is not explicit on this.

It is explicit on what happened next: David’s tomb is with us “to this day.” He’s still buried in it. But Jesus experienced “resurrection” he was “not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.” He was “raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.”

Even if you interpreted “resurrection,” “raised up” and “we are all witnesses” as some kind of visionary, spiritual experience, that would not explain “nor did his flesh see corruption.”

If Jesus was still in his tomb—if his tomb was not empty—then he flesh did see corruption. It would have experienced quite a bit of corruption this many weeks after the Crucifixion.

Over all, this passage seems to envision a contrast between David’s non-empty tomb and Jesus’ empty tomb.


Challenging a Third Premise

Then there is the claim that the apostles, or their audience, would have understood Jesus’ resurrection as some kind of visionary or spiritual experience.


First century Jews were familiar with visions and the appearances of disembodied spirits after their deaths, but they did not identify either of these types of experiences with resurrection, which was understood as a bodily phenomenon.

I won’t argue this at length here, because it is argued at length by N. T. Wright in his book The Resurrection of the Son of God.

But given that first century Jews understood resurrection as a bodily experience, every mention of Jesus’ resurrection in the New Testament implies the empty tomb.


The Empty Tomb and Apologetics

The fact that Christ’s tomb was empty is of apologetic significance, as it forces one to consider what happened to Jesus’ body, but it has not always played the same kind of role that it does in our age.

Apologetics has taken on different shapes in different ages. In our skeptical age, which is hostile to visions and miracles, the emptiness of the tomb strikes us with particular force.

Something happened to the body—so what was it? If the tomb was empty, we have to explain this by either natural or supernatural means.

But in the first century, which was by no means hostile to visions and miracles, the empty tomb was less essential to the apologetic enterprise.

People—like St. Paul—could be convinced of the Resurrection by having a vision of the risen Christ.

People who were witnesses of the risen Christ could then convince others by the force of their testimony, or by appeals to Old Testament prophecy, or by performing miraculous healings and exorcisms.

Indeed, the New Testament records the first evangelists convincing people by all of these means.

So they had additional tools in their apologetic toolboxes that people in the skeptical, 21st century find less persuasive. That tends to focus our attention on the empty tomb in a way that was not necessary for first century evangelists.

We thus should not expect them to focus on the empty tomb as much as we would.

That leads to a question . . .


Why Mention It at All?

If we look at the times when the empty tomb is clearly and explicitly mentioned (thus eliminating the reference in Acts and other references to the resurrection), we do have the mentions in the four Gospels.

Why would these mention it? Why would they mention it at all?

Because they’re telling the story of Jesus, and this is part of that story.

Acts isn’t the story of Jesus. It’s the story of what happened after Jesus’ ministry, and so we wouldn’t expect it to go through the events of how the Resurrection happened the same way that Luke—or the other Gospels—do.

None of the epistles are even narrative works. They are hortatory (like James) or polemical (like Galatians and Hebrews) or pastoral (like 1 and 2 Corinthians) or prophetic (like Revelation). But none of them are narratives, much less narratives of the life of Christ.

Thus we would not expect them to have anything more than passing references to the life of Christ.

Also, none of them are catechetical or apologetic works. They are not meant to be read by outsiders to introduce them to the Christian Faith and argue why Jesus is the Messiah or that he rose from the dead.

The speeches in Acts do provide that kind of material, and, as we’ve seen, one of the speeches in Acts does indicate the empty tomb in a way that goes beyond the ordinary references to Christ’s Resurrection.

The most directly catechetical/apologetic/evangelistic works in the New Testament—the ones that we would expect to mention the empty tomb most explicitly—are the Gospels, and it is precisely these that go into detail about it as they recount how the apostles and their associates first came to learn of the Resurrection.


Added Significance to Acts

It’s been noted that there is a progression in the speeches in Acts, so they don’t all cover the same material. It would be rather repetitious if they did! And so, having one mention of the empty tomb in Acts is quite sufficient.

But whether or one is inclined not to view Acts 2:29-32 as referring to the empty tomb, the fact that the matter is not presented as explicitly as in Luke itself reveals the relevance of the genre question to whether or not the empty tomb should be mentioned.

Acts isn’t as explicit as Luke on the subject, because Acts is the sequel to Luke, and the reader is expected to have already read Luke.

In the same way, the other books of the New Testament are all for an “in-house” audience that is expected to already know the story of Jesus, and so they don’t need to present apologetic arguments based on the empty tomb to their readers.

In short, they are not the kind of literature, they’re not written in the kind of genres, where we would expect mentions of the empty tomb.

The books that are written as types of literature where the empty tomb would be expected to appear “on camera”—the Gospels—do mention it.


If the Tomb Weren’t Empty

According to the evidence we have, the Christian movement remained centered in Jerusalem for quite some time. It was only in the A.D. 60s that the Christian population (apparently) largely left as the Jewish War loomed.

This means that they were living right there, right next to Jesus’ tomb for all those years.

Given the Jewish—not just Christian—understanding of resurrection as a bodily phenomenon, then, if Jesus’ tomb were not empty, their critics would have pointed this out. Repeatedly.

This would have forced the early Christian leaders to respond by making explicit the fact that they only believed in a “spiritual” Resurrection.

“Yes, we know Jesus’ body is a-molderin’ in the grave, but he’s been spiritually raised from the dead,” they would have had to say.

That statement would have been unintelligible to a first century Jewish audience, but it’s the kind of statement they would have been forced to make, explain, and defend—over and over again—during those formational decades in Jerusalem, with the tomb of Jesus right there.

And both word of Jesus’ non-empty tomb and the response would have spread throughout the Jewish and Christian communities around the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East (which were quite connected with Jerusalem, as the crowd gathered on Pentecost in Acts 2 illustrates).

But we don’t find either of those claims reflected in the New Testament or the Church Fathers or any other early writings.

Indeed, we don’t have any evidence that Jesus’ tomb remained full. There seems to have been general agreement that it was empty, as illustrated by Matthew’s citation of the alternative story that the disciples stole the body, which he says remained current among non-Christian Jews “to this day” (Matt. 28:15).

Whether “this day” was in the A.D. 50s or the A.D. 90s, the evidence points to a prior and widespread circulation of the alternative story for a significant period before these days, and thus a consensus among Jews and Christians before these dates that the tomb was empty.


Controversy Leaves Traces

Both of those dates are within a human lifetime of the Crucifixion, and if the original story had been of a “spiritual” Resurrection, there would have been Christians who remembered it and who objected to the change.

This would be a parallel to the Christians who understood Christianity originally as a Jewish phenomenon and who objected when Gentiles were admitted to the Christian community.

That left a marked trace on early Christian literature, and we would expect the same if an equally momentous change took place on the question of Jesus’ Resurrection.

It also would have given Christianity’s critics an additional charge to lay against them: that they had changed their story about what happened to Jesus.

But we have no evidence of such controversies.

The evidence points, consistently, to the empty tomb.


What Now?





He had a lot of interesting things to say!


Just email me at if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

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