Empty tomb - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Empty tomb most often refers to the tomb of Jesus

Tomb of Jesus

Several places have been proposed as the tomb of Jesus, the place where Jesus Christ was buried:*Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, accepted by many Christians and scholars as built on ground on which Jesus was crucified and buried...

which was found to be empty by the women

Myrrhbearers

In Eastern Orthodoxy the Myrrhbearers are the individuals mentioned in the New Testament who were directly involved in the burial or who discovered the empty tomb following the resurrection of Jesus...

who were present at Jesus’ crucifixion. They had come to his tomb to anoint his body with spices. These are things his close disciples should have done, but Mark portrays Jesus’ female followers as consistently showing more faith and courage than the men.

The gospels report the incident with slight variations. Although Christ's body is said to have been laid out in the tomb after crucifixion and death, the tomb is found to be empty, the body gone, and a young man or angel

Angel

Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...

(s) within the tomb tells the women that Christ has risen. These accounts lead to beliefs concerning the Resurrection of Jesus

Resurrection of Jesus

The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus states that Jesus returned to bodily life on the third day following his death by crucifixion. It is a key element of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures"...

. According to all four gospels, the empty tomb led to the revelation of Jesus' resurrection, implicitly in the canonical Gospel of Mark (without the later endings) and explicitly in the other three canonical gospel narratives.

Agreements and differences in the gospels

All four gospels agree in their emphasis upon the event taking place on the first day of the week and that those who found the tomb empty were women, all give prominence to "Mary" and attention to the stone that had closed the tomb. They do not appear to agree on the time at which the women visited the tomb, the number and identity of the women, the purpose of their visit, the nature and appearance of the messenger(s), whether angelic or human, their message to the women and the response of the women to the visitor in the tomb.

The account of tells of the intervention of influential followers of Jesus, such as Nicodemus

Nicodemus

Saint Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, who, according to the Gospel of John, showed favour to Jesus...

and Joseph of Arimathea

Joseph of Arimathea

Joseph of Arimathea was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels.-Gospel references:...

, who take Jesus' body down from the cross and lay him in a tomb. The account is marked by a sense of urgency in doing this before the coming festival of the Sabbath

Shabbat

Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...

, during which rest would be observed and no work could occur. It was necessary to use a tomb already prepared; the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the Jews, knowing of Jesus' claim of resurrection placed a Jewish guard to guard the tomb of Jesus .

The visitors

The four canonical

Biblical canon

A biblical canon, or canon of scripture, is a list of books considered to be authoritative as scripture by a particular religious community. The term itself was first coined by Christians, but the idea is found in Jewish sources. The internal wording of the text can also be specified, for example...

gospels all agree that "Mary" visited Jesus' tomb, though they differ on which Mary and whether she was on her own.

According to most ancient versions of the gospel of John (and most modern translations) Mary was Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...

, though the Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the four great uncial codices, an ancient, handwritten copy of the Greek Bible. It is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in the 4th century in uncial letters on parchment. Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of...

' version only calls her Mary. No other woman is mentioned explicitly, though when Mary says that she doesn't know where Jesus' body is, she uses the plural, which may indicate that there were other women with her.

In the Gospel of Mark

Gospel of Mark

The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...

both Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James are mentioned, joined by Salome

Salome (disciple)

Salome , sometimes venerated as Mary Salome, was a follower of Jesus who appears briefly in the canonical gospels and in more detail in apocryphal writings...

.

The gospel according to Luke relates that the women from Galilee visited the tomb and that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna

Joanna

Joanna is a feminine given name deriving from Koine Greek Iōanna from Hebrew יוֹחָנָה meaning "God is gracious". Variants in English include Joan, Joann, Joanne, and Johanna...

and the other women from Galilee later told the disciples about the visit to the tomb.

In Matthew, Mary Magdalene is with another Mary, presumably the mother of James.

When the women came back from the cemetery on Passover morning, they brought with them word of an empty tomb and the report that "He is not here but has risen!" The apostles were dismissive. Some have suggested a lack of enthusiasm because the messengers were women. Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

(Ant. iv.:8:15) writes that Jewish tradition stated: "From women let not evidence be accepted because of the levity and temerity of their sex." Theologian Thomas G. Long has offered two other possibilities besides their sex;

Perhaps the news of the empty tomb, the resurrection, of Jesus' victory over death was simply too overwhelming for them to believe, too difficult to assimilate all at once.
Perhaps any anticipation of the resulting challenge was too great at the moment. Luke's account shifts from calling them "the Eleven" to "the Apostles" ("those who are sent.") Long writes they knew that they would be sent to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. There would be arrests and shipwrecks, outpourings of the Spirit, persecutions and Gentiles, stonings and miles of weary travel. If the women were right—that Jesus was risen from the dead, then the story was just beginning for the Apostles.

The time

According to John the visit was on the first day of the week (Sunday, the day after Shabbat

Shabbat

, the end of the Jewish week), while it was still dark. According to Mark and Luke it was light. Alfred Loisy

Alfred Loisy

Alfred Firmin Loisy was a French Roman Catholic priest, professor and theologian who became the intellectual standard bearer for Biblical Modernism in the Roman Catholic Church...

believed that the original form of John here was similar to that recounted in the Codex Sinaiticus, and was intended to point to the Virgin Mary

Mary (mother of Jesus)

Mary , commonly referred to as "Saint Mary", "Mother Mary", the "Virgin Mary", the "Blessed Virgin Mary", or "Mary, Mother of God", was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee...

as the sole visitor, while later copyists substituted Mary Magdalene so that the gospel according to John matched accounts given in the other gospels more closely. An attempt at resolving the discrepancy in order to preserve the idea of infallibility describes Mary as making two different trips to the tomb, the first being in the dark on her own and the second at dawn with a group of women, including the other Mary.

Mark and Luke explain that the women were intending to continue the Jewish burial rituals. Matthew merely says that they came just to look at the tomb. John makes no mention of ritual and the apocryphal, heterodox Gospel of Peter

Gospel of Peter

The Gospel According to Peter , commonly called the Gospel of Peter, is one of the non-Canonical gospels which were rejected by the Church Fathers and the Catholic Church's synods of Carthage and Rome, which established the New Testament canon, as apocryphal...

claims that she came to mourn. Rabbi Bar Kappara

Bar Kappara

Shimon Bar Kappara was a Jewish rabbi of the late 2nd and early 3rd century CE, during the period between the tannaim and amoraim. He was active in Caesarea in the Land of Israel, from around 180 to 220 CE. His name, meaning “Son of Kapparah”, was taken from his father, Eleazar ha-Kappar...

was of the opinion (recorded in the Midrash Rabba

Midrash Rabba

Midrash Rabba or Midrash Rabbah can refer to part of or the collective whole of aggadic midrashim on the books of the Tanach, generally having the term "Rabbah" , meaning "great," as part of their name...

h) that the third day was often the prime point for mourning in those days.

Resolving differences

Resolving the accounts is a matter tied to the synoptic problem. The prevailing theory of Markan priority

Markan priority

Markan priority is the hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was the first written of the three Synoptic Gospels, and that the two other synoptic evangelists, Matthew and Luke, used Mark's Gospel as one of their sources. The theory of Markan priority is today accepted by the majority of New Testament...

would suggest that the original story had a mysterious man in white in the tomb. In Matthew he becomes an angel and in Luke, written for a non-Jewish audience, he becomes two angel-like men. In John's gospel this part of the account is omitted. Most Christians and scholars before the discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark

Secret Gospel of Mark

The Secret Gospel of Mark is a putative non-canonical Christian gospel known exclusively from the Mar Saba letter, which describes Secret Mark as an expanded version of the canonical Gospel of Mark with some episodes elucidated, written for an initiated elite.In 1973 Morton Smith , professor of...

tend to the view that the figure was an angel. It is not possible to tell whether the "angels" supposedly were in the form of men.

Wetstein has advanced a thesis linking the pair of angels to the pair of criminals who were crucified alongside Jesus. Raymond Brown

Raymond E. Brown

The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...

has argued that the text for John 20 was combined from two separate sources, that John inexpertly interlaced together. The narrative in John between Mary discovering that the tomb is open and later witnessing angels inside it, is considered by some to be misplaced: it seems illogical for Mary not to have looked into the tomb the first time and her presence at the tomb when she witnesses the angels seems somewhat abrupt when the intervening narrative last mentions her some distance away.

Scholars; L. Michael White

L. Michael White

L. Michael White is an American Biblical scholar. He is Ronald Nelson Smith Chair in Classics and Christian Origins, and director of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins, at the University of Texas at Austin...

and Helmut Koester

Helmut Koester

Helmut Koester is a German-born American scholar of the New Testament and currently Morison Research Professor of Divinity and Winn Research Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School. He teaches courses at both the Divinity School and at Harvard Extension School, and was the...

see the account of the guards in Matthew as an apologetic insertion, an attempt by the writer to explain the Jewish claims that the disciples stole the body

Stolen body hypothesis

The stolen body hypothesis posits that the body of Jesus Christ was stolen from his burial place. His tomb was found empty not because he was resurrected, but because the body had been hidden somewhere else by the apostles or unknown persons. Both the stolen body hypothesis and the debate over it...

; which were circulating at the time. The guards and the stolen body claims are not mentioned in the other three gospels. The apocryphal Gospel of Peter

Gospel of Peter

, on the other hand, is more detailed, specifying "Petronius the centurion with soldiers to guard the tomb".

The tomb

In John, the angels are described as sitting where Jesus' body had been, thought to be a reference to squatting or sitting cross legged, suggesting that the tomb possessed a raised shelf or ledge, on which the body had been placed. F. F. Bruce argues that the angels, as supernatural beings, were sitting on thin air. John also describes the angels as sitting so that one was where Jesus' head had been, and one where his feet had been, and some scholars think that this clear distinction between head and foot is an indication that the tomb had a built-in headrest, though others believe the writer is just referring to the direction in which Jesus had been placed.

John portrays Mary as stooping to view the tomb. According to modern archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

, tombs of the era were accessed via doors at ground level which were generally less than a metre tall, fitting the description given to Mary's viewing. These tombs either had a lone chamber for a single individual, or a passage lined with entrances to a number of tombs. Mary is able to see into Jesus' tomb from the outside suggesting the former type. This is considered a traditional view.

The grave clothes

According to both Luke and John, the disciples see grave clothes in the tomb. Luke states that strips of linen were "lying alone", or "laid by themselves", per the Greek, keimena mona, although the NRSV translation uses the phrase--"by themselves"--instead of "alone", and omits the word, "lying". John states that they were "lying", or, per the NRSV, "lying there". These two descriptions may or may not imply the same thing. Brown

Raymond E. Brown

The Reverend Raymond Edward Brown, S.S. , was an American Roman Catholic priest, a member of the Sulpician Fathers and a major Biblical scholar of his era...

has argued that John is using a phrase that actually describes the linen as lying on a shelf within the tomb. According to Luke, Jesus had been wrapped in a shroud

Shroud

Shroud usually refers to an item, such as a cloth, that covers or protects some other object. The term is most often used in reference to burial sheets, winding-cloths or winding-sheets, such as the famous Shroud of Turin or Tachrichim that Jews are dressed in for burial...

, and this became the traditional view. What became of the grave clothes after the disciples have seen them is not described in the Bible, though some works of the New Testament apocrypha

New Testament apocrypha

The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that claim to be accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. These writings often have links with books regarded as "canonical"...

do make mention of it. A Roman Catholic

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

tradition describes the shroud as being taken to Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, becoming the Turin Shroud

Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin or Turin Shroud is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy. The image on the shroud is...

.

John additionally describes the presence of a soudarion, for the head, that was set apart. A soudarion is literally a sweat rag; more specifically it was a piece of cloth used to wipe away sweat, but in the context of dead bodies, most scholars believe it was used to keep the jaw closed. Tradition holds that the Sudarion was a turban, and that it later found its way to Oviedo

Oviedo

Oviedo is the capital city of the Principality of Asturias in northern Spain. It is also the name of the municipality that contains the city....

in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, becoming the Sudarium of Oviedo

Sudarium of Oviedo

The Sudarium of Oviedo, or Shroud of Oviedo, is a bloodstained cloth, measuring c. 84 x 53 cm, kept in the Cámara Santa of the Cathedral of San Salvador, Oviedo, Spain. The Sudarium is claimed to be the cloth wrapped around the head of Jesus Christ after he died, as mentioned in the Gospel of...

. Although it may initially seem insignificant, the fact that the item for the head was set apart fundamentally affects Christology

Christology

Christology is the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature and person of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament. Primary considerations include the relationship of Jesus' nature and person with the nature...

. If the head cloth remained in the same location as the remainder of the clothes, and if these remained where the body had been, it implies that Jesus' body was lifted through the clothing, or that Jesus' body de-materialised and re-materialised elsewhere, hence supporting more docetic

Docetism

In Christianity, docetism is the belief that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die...

interpretations. Conversely, it being set apart implies the opposite - that someone took the clothes off in an ordinary manner; furthermore, the Greek text uses the word, entetuligmenon, "having been folded up", seeming to imply some intentional action had been taken on the soudarion . Some see this as a direct attack by the author of John on docetism, and the gnosticism

Gnosticism

Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...

that used the synoptic accounts to advocate it.

In more recent times, The possibility that Jesus passed through cloth and dematerialized has frequently been regarded as evidence of divine action by God. This interpretation, however, was not one that existed in the early church

Early Christianity

Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....

, which viewed such interpretations as docetism. Those advocating a more supernatural account have argued that the fact that the soudarion and the other grave clothes were set apart merely reflects the distance of the neck as it is situated between the head and the body, or that it simply means that the cloth was curled in a ball rather than lying flat, i.e. that it was lying in a different manner to the others. Some see this as a very clear attempt by John to rule out docetism.

The level of detail that the author of the Gospel According to John adds to this section is to Brooke Foss Westcott

Brooke Foss Westcott

Brooke Foss Westcott was a British bishop, Biblical scholar and theologian, serving as Bishop of Durham from 1890 until his death.-Early life and education:...

evidence that the author was an eyewitness, but C.K. Barrett disagrees, pointing out that such details are what a modern author adds to a fictional account to give it a feeling of verisimilitude, and that there is no reason to believe an ancient writer would not have these same skills. Dodd argues that, having already reached the narrative climax

Climax (narrative)

The Climax is the point in the story where the main character's point of view changes, or the most exciting/action filled part of the story. It also known has the main turning point in the story...

with the crucifixion scene, these later sections deliberately slow down the narrative to act as dénouement. Schnackenberg interprets the level of detail as apologetic

Apologetics

Apologetics is the discipline of defending a position through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers...

in origin, though he does regard the details concerning the placement of the grave clothes to be an attempt to disprove the allegation that Jesus' tomb had simply been robbed, rather than as an attempt to assert a Christology.

A side issue is whether abandoning the grave clothes meant that the risen Jesus was naked, a view held for example by Kastner.

The four accounts

According to Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome find that the tomb has been opened:

According to Matthew, an angel in shining garments is seen by Mary and Mary opening the tomb, and the angel tells them not to be afraid since Jesus is risen from the dead:

According to Luke, the women discover the tomb has been opened, and two men in shining garments come up to them and tell them not to be afraid since Jesus is risen.

The gospel of John contains the most complete narrative including the appearance of Jesus:

By comparison, the apocryphal Gospel of Peter
Gospel of Peter
The Gospel According to Peter , commonly called the Gospel of Peter, is one of the non-Canonical gospels which were rejected by the Church Fathers and the Catholic Church's synods of Carthage and Rome, which established the New Testament canon, as apocryphal...

describes two men carrying a third out of the tomb, with a cross following them and speaking:

Cultural background and parallels

For many people of antiquity, empty tombs were seen as signs not of resurrection but of assumption

Assumption

In logic an assumption is a proposition that is taken for granted, as if it were true based upon presupposition without preponderance of the facts...

, that is, the person being taken bodily into the divine realm. In Chariton

Chariton

Chariton of Aphrodisias was the author of an ancient Greek novel probably titled Callirhoe , though it is regularly referred to as Chaereas and Callirhoe...

’s ancient Greek novel Callirhoe, Chaereas finds his wife’s tomb empty and "All kinds of explanations were offered by the crowd, Chaereas, looking up to heaven and stretching up his hands said 'Which of the gods has become my rival and carried off Callirhoe and now has her instead of me, against her will but constrained by a better fate?'" In Ancient Greek thinking, the connection between postmortem disappearance and apotheosis

Apotheosis

Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...

was strong and there are numerous examples of individuals conspiring, before their deaths, to have their remains hidden in order to promote their postmortem venerations. Arrian

Arrian

Lucius Flavius Arrianus 'Xenophon , known in English as Arrian , and Arrian of Nicomedia, was a Roman historian, public servant, a military commander and a philosopher of the 2nd-century Roman period...

wrote of Alexander the Great planning his own bodily disappearance so that he would be revered as a god. Disappearances of individuals to be taken in the divine relam also occur in Jewish literature, although they do not involve an empty tomb. Smith has recently proposed that the empty tomb stories in the gospels reflect traditions about Jesus' absence or assumption, in contrast to the resurrection appearance stories which were about Jesus' presence. He concludes that the gospel writers took the two traditions and weaved them together.