I believe this is a valid question for scholars to discuss, has anyone done so?
It does not include any miraculous claims , nor does it speculate on the thought process of any person
————
3 days after the crucifixion ?
if so, then we would assume it was begun by one of Jesus’ direct followers: one of the Marys or John or Peter? correct ?
it is a pretty spectacular claim and if part of the Christian tradition from three days after the crucifixion I would suspect it would be quickly and widely circulated.
and if so why would Paul not have heard of it? or if he had heard of it why would he never mention it?
Even if the empty tomb tradition started this early, there still is no necessity to consider it supernatural – it could be someone moved the corpse and people were confused, or it could be that Jesus revived or there may be other possibilities
————-
if on the other hand the tradition began after or even concurrent with Paul’s ministry, I would assume empty tomb was created for theological purposes
A tradition implies more than just somebody telling a story.
Ed Koch happens to be buried in my nabe, in Trinity Cemetery. To him, Manhattan was the Holy Land, so he found one of the very few available plots left in his native soil, which happens to belong to an Episcopalian Church, details, details. He had a ‘Jewish Gate’ put in (google it), and it’s all good. This is all 100% fact. He’s been down there a few years now. Decent sized stone, nothing too ostentatious. I hope he’s doing okay.
But let’s say I told you I was walking my dog on 155tth, and I looked over, and the grave was open–the coffin gone! The three term mayor of New York is missing! I don’t just tell you he’s gone, I tell a lot of people. I post it online, I tweet about it (now we know it’s mythical, since I will never use Twitter in this lifetime).
The story spreads, and mutates, and maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation in the quotidian print media, but that gets ignored in favor of conspiracy theories, Skull & Bones Society, and possibly vampirism (Though I saw him once on the street, and it was daytime–when he was still alive, I mean. Presumably.)
Now we have a tradition. Or at least a rumor, which is where traditions come from.
If there was any sort of factual basis to the empty tomb (or grave), it would have had to be something somebody reported fairly soon after Jesus’ death. But the tradition would have taken much longer to develop, because news spread so much more slowly. The disciples were running back to Galilee. There would have been some people in Jerusalem who cared about Jesus (or else why would anyone have bothered to crucify him?), but not many, not organized, and mainly not literate.
It really would not have taken much for the rudiments of the story to get started, but it would have taken years, maybe decades, for the story we have now to come into being. And with the most influential people in what would become Christianity being far from Jerusalem while this was going on, they would come back to a confusion of conflicting information, and probably didn’t know what to believe. But for whatever reason, they did believe he’d risen. And it seems like everybody believed he’d been buried. And nobody ever questioned that. Until very recently.
One of my grad school professors said, when asked if there’s any such thing as an objective fact, responded “It is a fact that I am saying these words to you right now.” Only I’m not quite sure that’s exactly what he said (which was his point, that we’d appreciate much later). I am 100% sure he said it. And I’ll check on Ed this weekend, if I get the chance.
ok when do you think the rumor started ?
I think it is a valid question for historians to investigate
John Meier, without commenting on whether any of Jesus particular deeds were ‘miracles’ (as he said this was out of the realm of investigation of the historian), DID try a historical investigation of when ‘stories of the miracles’ began.
and in a number of instances he felt ‘the stories of some of the miracles’ began prior to the crucifixion.
if I take your godspel/Koch hypothetical, a modern day historian would probably say that the story/rumor/tradition began
on the day
godspell . . was walking [his] dog on 155tth, and looked over, and the grave was open–the coffin gone! The three term mayor of New York is missing! godspell didn’t just tell [me] he’s gone, [he] t[old] a lot of people. [he] post[ed] it online, [he] tweet[ed] about . . .. . .
But see, if I actually did walk past the grave and see it was empty, that wouldn’t be a rumor. That would be a fact. The explanations people came up with would be the rumor part. And if the rumors coalesced into an involved story, that spread far and wide, that would be a tradition.
I tend to think now Jesus was buried in some form or other. It makes sense that people devoted to him would want to visit the grave. It is not at all hard to imagine a variety of scenarios in which they could have gotten the idea his body was gone (and maybe it was–graves get robbed–some guys tried to steal Lincoln’s body, and somebody did borrow Charlie Chaplin for a while).
What strikes me about the earliest surviving version of the story, in Mark, is that the women don’t see Jesus. They don’t see the stone rolling aside. They don’t see anything remotely miraculous or supernatural. They see a man who tells them Jesus is gone. It’s all rather mundane, however evocative. Not like Mark is always this subtle. He’s got Jesus controlling the weather, walking on the water, Jesus hobnobbing with Moses and Elijah, yelling at Satan in the desert. Why end his gospel this way, with the women frightened and not tellng anyone (at least not right away)? I get the theme of nobody knowing who Jesus is, but it’s still, all admit, a very strange way to end the story, that was later rewritten, and none of the other gospels went that way with it.
I don’t think Mark’s story is anywhere near the original version, but there’s nothing there you couldn’t easily explain without resort to the supernatural. I think there’s a lot of influences on the form of the story, but underneath all the stylistic tropes, there could be something real–that got everyone very excited, there were dreams and visions and endless elaborations, and the real story got buried. So to speak.
Let’s suppose that Mary Magdalene and a few other women went to where they believed Jesus was buried, and it didn’t come off as planned, and it was weeks or months before there was anyone they dared talk to about it. And the story has been growing inside their imaginations all that time. And they really really do not want him to be dead. And what happened mingled with what they wanted to have happened, and it’s a damn shame there really isn’t a Gospel of Mary Magdalene (that she actually wrote).
I don’t bloody know. Nobody does. Nobody ever will. But to me, this makes at least as much sense as the notion that he rotted on the cross for weeks, got thrown into a pit, and they started saying he was the Risen Messiah. There has to be some reason they decided this failed Messiah had not failed. There has to be this tiny mustard seed of fact from which the tree of faith (and myth) grew out of.
Godspell
WOW, have you ever read Is 45:2 where the Lord “will make the crooked paths straight”
you are rather making a straight path/question crooked
ok ,no judgement on whether/when/if you saw Koch’s grave dug up. NOTE cross outs
a modern day historian would probably say that the story/rumor/tradition/[even fact] began
on the day
godspell . .
was walking [his] dog on 155tth, and looked over, and the grave was open–the coffin gone! The three term mayor of New York is missing!godspell didn’t just tell [me] he’s gone, [he] t[old] a lot of people. [he] post[ed] it online, [he] tweet[ed] about . . .. . .
I have not checked, but I suspect Mr. Mayor is still there. Though if his mortal remains got swapped out for an immortal supernatural body, maybe he can just phase through solid matter and go for walks. So far, no reports of a tall spectral bald-headed man yelling “How’m I doin?”
I had to head that way this evening, so I did a walk-by. No sign of the grave being disturbed. So barring some paranormal ability to levitate through the coffin and all that dirt, Ed’s still in bed. Just as well. If he came back, he’d probably declare his candidacy for the Presidency. (Hey, better than Bloomberg.)
tompicard said
If Jesus could walk thu the wall with doors shut into room where his disciples were (Jn 20:19), why was the rock at the entrance to his tomb opened (Jn 20:1)?
is it that bodies composed of pneuma can pass thru plaster walls but not granite?
Perhaps because the Empty Tomb story serves a different purpose than verisimilitude.
I think everybody raises interesting points here. I’m new to the blog, and this is my first post. In response to this specific question, I have always filed it under the category of incredibly difficult, if not impossible to ever know. Like most of us, I have a couple of thoughts though. I imagine that the tradition of an empty tomb must have come about quite early. We know that the story predates Mark, which was likely being compiled into the narrative form we have now in the late 60s. We also know that Paul was passing on stories about the death, burial, and resurrection in the 50s, presumably from stories he heard based on older traditions. My best guess is that this story came about very early. I personally wonder if Joseph of Arimathea himself started that rumor to make himself sound important shortly after the belief in Jesus being raised cropped up, which was certainly very early on, within days or weeks after the death of Jesus. What do you guys think?
Jacob
JacobSapp01 said
I think everybody raises interesting points here. I’m new to the blog, and this is my first post. In response to this specific question, I have always filed it under the category of incredibly difficult, if not impossible to ever know. Like most of us, I have a couple of thoughts though. I imagine that the tradition of an empty tomb must have come about quite early. We know that the story predates Mark, which was likely being compiled into the narrative form we have now in the late 60s. We also know that Paul was passing on stories about the death, burial, and resurrection in the 50s, presumably from stories he heard based on older traditions. My best guess is that this story came about very early. I personally wonder if Joseph of Arimathea himself started that rumor to make himself sound important shortly after the belief in Jesus being raised cropped up, which was certainly very early on, within days or weeks after the death of Jesus. What do you guys think?
Jacob
I don’t think Joseph of Arimathea existed. Maybe some person or persons inspired that story, but seems likely that if a member of the Sanhedrin did intervene to get Jesus buried (which I don’t think would have been an insuperable task for a man of influence and means), he would have done so as a Jew, offended by the sight of a fellow Jew hanging on a cross, food for scavengers, with a mocking legend hanging above him. There’s evidence that Jews under Roman rule often went out of their way to see that crucified co-religionists were buried, regardless of whether they were of the same faction. There’s also substantial evidence that the crucified often received burial, regardless of race and belief.
I agree the story started early, and I tend to think that’s because the core of it was based in reality–Jesus was buried. But that is not at all to say that the story we have of his grave–and his purported absence from it–are to be considered (for want of a better term) gospel. Details of what happened were fuzzy, probably exaggerated and distorted almost from the start, then mythologized to beat the band.
But I think at the heart of all the mendacity and myth, there was a grave. Perhaps a very humble one.
godspell said
I don’t think Joseph of Arimathea existed. Maybe some person or persons inspired that story, but seems likely that if a member of the Sanhedrin did intervene to get Jesus buried (which I don’t think would have been an insuperable task for a man of influence and means), he would have done so as a Jew, offended by the sight of a fellow Jew hanging on a cross, food for scavengers, with a mocking legend hanging above him. There’s evidence that Jews under Roman rule often went out of their way to see that crucified co-religionists were buried, regardless of whether they were of the same faction. There’s also substantial evidence that the crucified often received burial, regardless of race and belief.
I agree the story started early, and I tend to think that’s because the core of it was based in reality–Jesus was buried. But that is not at all to say that the story we have of his grave–and his purported absence from it–are to be considered (for want of a better term) gospel. Details of what happened were fuzzy, probably exaggerated and distorted almost from the start, then mythologized to beat the band.
But I think at the heart of all the mendacity and myth, there was a grave. Perhaps a very humble one.
I am open to the idea that stories of his burial are rooted in some form of truth. I haven’t been fully convinced either way from any of the (admittedly very little) research I have tried to conduct on this specific aspect of the historical Jesus. It’s possible that Joseph never existed. It’s also possible that somebody who actually lived inspired that story. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus had followers among The Sanhedrin, and I agree that Jesus hanging on a cross may have been supremely offensive to Jewish sensibilities regardless of faction. I am not entirely convinced that means he was buried, but I don’t think some form of burial can be ruled out. A common grave seems more likely to me than a special tomb or identifiable burial place.
I would be surprised if Jesus had followers among the Sanhedrin, but John the Baptist might have had admirers there. And Jesus had many of the same beliefs, that were shared by many Pharisees, regarding the Apocalypse and the Kingdom.
Absolute conviction is and ought to be a rare commodity in ancient history, but where are all these common graves for the crucified? If they were so common, why have none ever been discovered? The dogs ate them? I can just see my First Grade teacher frowning at that excuse. The fact is, mass graves are found all the time. Just not these particular mass graves.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
If he was tossed into a burial pit, that to me says no one intervened. Intervention would have meant giving him a decent if not necessarily ostentatious burial. And almost certainly a quiet one. Swept under the rug. Nobody other than his followers intended for him to be remembered. The question still must be asked–why didn’t his followers forget him as well? And agreeing with Bart that for his memory to endure as it has, it was necessary for people to believe he had risen–that’s begging the question. Why did they come to believe that? Why not John the Baptist, or many other failed saviors? Why Jesus? What triggered that?
The idea that the Jesus movement had fellow travelers among the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem rests largely on which gospel chronology you accept. The synoptics paint a picture of a relatively short ministry, bookended by an itinerant Galilean period and the disaster in Jerusalem at Passover. There doesn’t seem time enough for converts among the Sanhedrin. John depicts an extended ministry and much back and forth between the Galilee and Jerusalem. That would at least make it possible to have members of the Sanhedrin fall under Jesus’ spell.
One strong objection to Jesus’ having a special tomb is the lack of any tradition of tomb veneration in a time and place where it was common practice. To the question as to why they would venerate an empty tomb the answer is, why do they venerate it now? If you go to Jerusalem they will show you some places where they pretend the empty tomb might have been. But there was no interest in the location of Jesus’ tomb until the fourth century. The same sources that describe the special burial describe the fact the disciples knew right where the empty tomb was. If you don’t accept the one report why accept the other?
Would evidence of a shallow mass grave open to the elements and subject to scavengers last two thousand years?
All we have are questions. We have no evidence whatsoever as to what actually happened to Jesus’ body. We have a fairly good idea as to what normally happened in these cases and in the face of a lack of evidence the logical conclusion is that what normally happened is what happened. But I repeat myself.
We all do, and I actually have no problems with anything you just said. But I still think there was probably a grave.
The real problem is that once you put all these various negations of the gospel story together, we have no explanation for why Jesus’ followers came to believe he’d risen. As Bart says, this is unique in history–he says it, and then fails to explain it. Unique events have unique causes.
No empty grave/tomb. In fact, he hung on the cross for weeks, in full view of the public.
He wasn’t anything special, no original ideas, just another dime a dozen religious fanatic, maybe a bit charismatic (so was John–what happened to his body? Not to mention his head.) But he just randomly picked a lot of brilliant talented people to be his followers, and then more of them showed up, including one who started out persecuting the others. Bart doesn’t think they made up the story about him rising–they believed that. But they made up the grave?
He didn’t tell his randomly chosen brilliant followers he would die and be resurrected, thus preparing them to imagine this happening when the first part of his prophecy came true.
Once you’ve eliminated everything in the story that explains the story–and remembered all the other messianic claimants, who did not inspire resurrection myths and new religions–we’re left with “They had visions. Because they did!” Okay, I buy that’s what happened–but I don’t see why. If it all played out as Bart says, they wouldn’t have had visions. They would have just moved on with their lives, or found another cult leader.
He was crucified as a criminal, the Kingdom didn’t come, they fled in terror and disgrace. And yet someow their devotion to him redoubled, they began to make converts, and they believed his defeat was a victory. Because they did!
It’s pretty forced, there’s a lot of gaps, and it begs too many questions.
A select bibliography
** you do not have permission to see this link ** by Oliver Sacks wherein among other things he points out that a hallucination of a recently deceased loved one is one of the most common reported “visionary” experiences. (Note: A small unscientific survey revealed one relative and one acquaintance who have had this experience. Also I was previously aware of a former girlfriend who described such. And as if to one untimely born I’ve had this experience myself.)
** you do not have permission to see this link ** by Leon Festinger. A classic in the sociological literature wherein it is revealed that apocalyptic groups who have their hopes disconfirmed do not collapse as one would expect but actually double down on the intensity of their belief.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** by Frank Kermode, a classic literary/cultural study wherein the influence of apocalyptic mindset on our culture and the reasons for its attractiveness are explicated.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** is the larger work from which the essay is derived.
I conclude with a brief ** you do not have permission to see this link ** about English usage.
I offer these works to those who may find benefit.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)