The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus

Abstract

Until recently the empty tomb has been widely regarded as both an offence to modern intelligence and an embarrassment for Christian faith; an offence because it implies a nature miracle akin to the resuscitation of a corpse and an embarrassment because it is nevertheless almost inextricably bound up with Jesus's resurrection, which lies at the very heart of the Christian faith. But in the last several years, a remarkable change seems to have taken place, and the scepticism that so characterized earlier treatments of this problem appears to be fast receding. Though some theologians still insist with Bultmann that the resurrection is not a historical event, this incident is certainly presented in the gospels as a historical event, one of the manifestations of which was that the tomb of Jesus was reputedly found empty on the first day of the week by several of his women followers; this fact, at least, is therefore in principle historically verifiable. But how credible is the evidence for the historicity of Jesus's empty tomb?