Johnny Skeptic

Many Christians claim that the empty tomb implies that Jesus rose from the dead. However, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, where would that leave the Christian argument that if the tomb was not empty, critics could have produced the body?

There could not have been much of a commotion about Jesus' supposed claim that he would rise from the dead since the women at the tomb forgot that he even made the claim, and since none of Jesus' critics took the claim seriously, and certainly not the Roman government in Palestine.

In "The Rise of Christianity," Rodney Stark estimates that there were only 7,530 Christians in the entire world in 100 A.D. In Christian apologist James Holding's article "The Impossible Faith," Holding quotes N.T. Wright as saying "This subversive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire."

If Christians were a tiny group with very little influence, and could not have started a riot even in a small village, that indicates that, as I said previously, "there could not have been much of a commotion about Jesus' supposed claim that he would rise from the dead."

The logical conclusion is that the Christian argument that if the tomb was not empty, critics could have produced the body could only have become an issue if it had "previously" become an issue that Jesus rose from the dead. So, Christians who argue that the empty tomb implies that Jesus rose from the dead have the cart before the horse.

Huon

In this discussion, there are two important "facts" :
- Jesus rose from the dead,
- the tomb was empty.

"An empty tomb" shows nothing very significant.
"Jesus rose from the dead" is a miracle.

IF Jesus rose from the dead, THEN the tomb was emptied.

Unbelievers in the initial miracle would say : "Bah, you took away the corpse !"
Answer : "Oh, there were guards !"
Unbelievers : "You bribed them !" etc... etc...

The beginning is clearly "Jesus rose from the dead".

Kapyong

Gday,

What empty tomb?
When?

The empty tomb story appears unknown to early Christians, and did not become known until later.


K.

Johnny Skeptic

Yep.

Yes, that has to be the case. A tiny group of uninfluential Christians could only have caused a commotion if a sizeable number of people had claimed that they had seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. The only sizeable number of people that the texts mention is the over 500 people who Jesus appeared to in Corinth, Greece.

Even if Jesus did rise from the dead, if he did not appear to at least dozens of people in various places in Palestine, as far as most people who lived in Palestine were concerned, the empty tomb was not an issue.

Johnny Skeptic

I wish to revise the opening post as follows:

Regarding the Christian claim that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, critics could have produced the body, that presumes that critics knew where the body was buried. There is not any non-biblical evidence that critics knew where the body was buried. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, it is doubtful that the followers of Jesus would have taken critics to the right tomb. If Jesus did rise from the dead, a living Jesus would have been much better evidence than an empty tomb, in which case, why would the followers of Jesus have needed to make a big issue out of the empty tomb? Since the empty tomb did not convince Peter and Mary Magdalene that Jesus had risen from the dead, how could critics have been convinced by the empty tomb even if they had seen the body put there?

Doug Shaver

Quite regardless of whether the resurrection really happened, it's a ridiculous argument.

Holding is a fruitcake. I can understand why naive believers take him seriously, but it's quite beyond me why skeptics pay him any more attention than they do to Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell.

Juststeve

The standard Christian apologetic assumes a lot of facts not in evidence, as we say in the court room. For example:

1. That there were critics who know about the Christian claims very soon after the crucifixion;

2. That they knew how to find Jesus’ body;

3. That they were sufficiently motivated to go to the trouble of retrieving the body and displaying it;

4. That even if they did display a body anyone would recognize it as Jesus;

5. That if the critics had made such a showing it would be recorded in the Bible.

It seems to me that the standard empty tomb apologetics is based on an anachronism. It assumes that because the death and supposed resurrection of Jesus is a big deal today it was likewise a big deal immediately after the first Easter. At that time Jesus was just one of many Jews crucified by the Romans. By the time he became a big deal the evidence one way or the other was gone.

Steve

rhutchin

Not Paul.

1 Corinthians 15
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

aa5874

But, if the death, burial and resurrection of JESUS was ALREADY WRITTEN in the Scriptures then EVERYBODY, whether Christian or NOT, who read the Scriptures should have known about the EMPTY TOMB.

Now, the scriptures that have information about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus are the MEMOIRS of the Apostles that was read in the Churches on Sundays according to Justin Martyr.

"First Aology" LXVII And in "Church History"3.4.8 Paul was after the Scriptures of the Jesus story was written.

Doug Shaver

As Juststeve just got through saying, you're assuming facts not in evidence.