- The discovery of the empty tomb in multiply attested in early, independent sources. The pre-marken passion source, Paul’s letter to Corinthians mentions it, Matthew is an independent source since he includes the guard at the tomb, which is not in Mark.
It is well established that the 3 synoptic gospels are not independent. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Anyway, the facthat sveral newspapers publish different articles base on one report does not entail multiple attestation.
Mark’s story is simple and lacks significant legendary development.
Sure, but Mark’s story also lack any post-mortem appearances by Jesus.
And even in modern times, legends do not take many years to develop.
The empty tomb was discovered by women. Women were not regarded as reliable witnesses, so their presence indicates the account is probably legit, since no one would invent women as discovers of the empty tomb.
The simplest explanation why one would invent women is precisely the fact that women were not regarded as reliable witnesses. “If your Jesus’ grave was really empty, why haven’t we heard from it?” “Well, it was discovered by women who were first told not to speak about it”
The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb. The only reason to put that story there was if the Jews were really claiming that Jesus’s followers stole his body,
Christian: “Jesus has risen his grave was empty”
Jew:“Don’t be silly, dead people don’t rise. Even if his grave was empty, who knows, maybe his disciples stole his body”
Christian:“There were guard at the tomb”
- The disciples could never have preached the resurrection unless the tomb were really empty. No one would have believed them, it would have been absurd.
So, this entails that all the people who believed the disciple’s stories went to visit the tomb to make sure it was empty?
Now, if I were the Roman centurion or part of the Jewish sanhedrin, I would just roll the stone back in its place and send all bystanders away.
Apart from the body being stolen , it is also very well possible that the Romans changed their minds and threw Jesus’ body in some anonymous grave.
- “The list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances which is quoted by Paul in I Cor. 15. 5-7 guarantees that such appearances occurred. .”
None of the gospels report these 500
anonymous witnesses. And how does just stating in a letter to people living as far away as Corinthia that 500 people have seen something prove anything? Do you think it would have been possible for a 1st century Corinthian “Joe Nickell” to interrogate these 500 ‘brethern’ whose name wasn’t even given?
The gospels account for multiples appearances, including to the women. They would not have been made up.
Why not, since the disciples wanted to spread their religion. So why not make up spectacular stories to convince people?
The appearances were physical. Paul in Corinthians implies this, Jesus invites Thomas to touch his side, If the appearances were not physical, they’d say they saw his ghost.
That’s what Paul says, despite the fact that he himself never met the risen Christ in that way.
The disciples came to believe, in spite of every reason not to, that Jesus was really raised from the death
.
The ancient world always used the work “Resurrection” to mean a physical bodily resurrection.
In spite of every reason not to? They saw Lazarus being bodily resurrected, and they still had no reason to believe this was possible?
Jesus was not the first person to resurrect.
The sole exception was the Jews, who came to believe …the end of time.
And the Egyptians, who tried to preserve their Pharao’s body in order for him to resurrect.
- Yet Christians claimed that God raised Jesus, ahead of time, that this man was the messiah, and the resurrection was something to which they could contribute in the present life. …Rather there was virtually unanimous agreement on what it meant.
- Beliefs in life after death tend to be very conservative For Christians to 1). show such changes and 2). agree almost completely, this demands explanation.
Some people, according to the gospels, thought that Jesus was one of the phrophets that had risen from the dead, so it is very hard to deny that at least some jews already believed in a bodily resurrection.
An there wasn’t ‘virtually unanimous agreement about what it meant.’ A big part of Pauls letter to the Corinthians is an attempt to counter different beliefs about what it meant.
The most probable explanation of these three facts is that Jesus really did rise from the dead leaving behind an empty tomb. So the evidence obligates us to conclude that it is historically probable that Jesus rose from the dead.
Only if one already believes this is possible. “The disciples stiole his body and made up some stories” is a far better explanation.
none of these arguments assume the Bible was written early or that it was written by the first generation. I only claim that it is sufficient, when treated as a normal historical source, to establish the facts listed above, as most scholars agree.
But that’s the crux: the Bible isn’t a normal historical source. It is a source from people who had a definite agenda: spreading what they believed was the word of God.
All that being said, though, the three facts you discussed are established even with this terrible tradition in mind, which is awesome.
