- If Jesus rose, why does nobody know where the empty tomb lay? Even Paul was ignorant. Yet the empty tomb should have become the greatest shrine or pilgrimage in history.
There are two candidates for Jesus’ tomb. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre site seems the most likely.
In Jesus’ time, things pertaining to dead bodies were very “treif” – “un-kosher.” So, there was a story in the Early Church that Peter told Judas Thaddeus to give Jesus’ shroud to Abgar of Edessa, a Gentile, because the miraculous cloth was “treif” to Jews. The same would have applied to the tomb: Being a place where a dead body had lain, the tomb, to the early Christians, who viewed themselves as Jewish, would not have been a place about which there would have been great enthusiasm – it wouldn’t have been regarded as a place to throw a picnic, so to speak. So, knowledge of the tomb began to fall by the wayside, not being a celebrated thing, but rather something “dirty” to early Jewish Christians.
- Moreover, the four Gospel accounts of the reusrrection are highly contradictory in their details, for example in the women’s reactions and immediate actions.
Re. Jesus’ birth: The Gospel of Luke mentions the census taken by Quirinius when he was governor of Syria, as part of a census of the “whole world”. HOWEVER, Luke and Matthew date Jesus’ birth to the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, nearly ten years before Quirinius became governor! Generally, Luke is assumed to be in error.
The facts of Jesus’ life are encased within accounts written in accord with histories of the time – they are not masterpieces of historical accuracy, down to the jot and tittle level. The writers then felt free to embellish accounts for secondary editorial reasons.
The Holy Spirit’s inspiration impacted the gospels more subtly than what today’s fundamentalistically-inclined Bible readers demand of God. Many of today’s Christians don’t want to hear that the Bible is something other than literally true, period. Internally, they “require” God to write an absolutely simple, straightforward, uncontradictory set of gospels. They think that this makes things “simple.”
In fact, the opposite occurs. Reading the gospels as literally true generates huge mountains of difficulties.
What in fact occured is that the true facts of Jesus’ life are set forth in the gospels, as well as facts that aren’t true, added for this or that reason – sometimes, BY THE HOLY SPIRIT!!! Why? Answer: To teach perfectly correct theology, not just historical fact.
For example: Luke says that Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Was He? Who cares? Why is that my attitude?
Because when Jesus is wrapped-up in swaddling clothes, He is made to look like a dead body wrapped-up in a burial shroud. And when He is laid in a manger, a feeding trough, He is in effect being put onto a kind of “dinner plate.”
Jesus’ actual sacrificed dead body being offered as food on a dinner plate.
Where did you hear that before?
How about in the theology of the Real Presence in the Eucharist?
Do you see what I mean? The Holy Spirit put that there! Not bad!
- Do any contemporary historians mention Jesus? And are the Later references by Josephus, held by scholars to be early church frauds/manipulations? Are the other references to Jesus mostly oblique and without historical details?
The gospels themselves are as close to contemporary histories as we can get. We have to remember that a rebel nation invested by brutal Roman rulers, who subsequently reduced the area to ashes in the Jewish rebellions against the Romans in the first two centuries after Christ’s death, is not exactly the place where history writing is going to thrive. Instead, it’s going to be dead.
Thus, the sources are all post-contemporary.
Opponents of historicity feel that if they question a source, it should automatically be ignored. They question the gospels, so, ignore them! They question Josephus, so, ignore him!
They’ll do that to every single source.
My favorite source is the absolute last place one would expect to find Jesus validated: The earliest Talmudic writings! The references to Jesus are garbled, because the references were written in the Diaspora after Roman exile has badly damaged Jewish cultural memory, And, the references are to a man Whom the Jews regarded as an abomination, Christ the Second Person of the Trinity, so, they are not exactly favorable references. But, they are there.
