The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus body (Matt 28:15) confirms that the it was missing. The location of Jesus burial pl
{"Image DocumentName": "2Accepted fact. Jesus\u2019 tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers.", "Image ImageDescription": "The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus\u2019 body (Matt 28:15) confirms that the it was missing. 1. The empty tomb story is also part of the old passion source used by Mark. The passion source used by Mark did not end in death and defeat, but with the empty tomb story, which is grammatically of one piece with the burial story. 2. The old tradition cited by Paul in I Cor implies the fact of the empty tomb. For any first century Jew, to say that of a dead man that he was buried and that he was raised is to imply that a vacant grave was left behind. Moreover, the expression on the third day probably derives from the women\u2019s visit to the tomb on the third day, in Jewish reckoning, after the crucifixion. The four-line tradition cited by Paul summarizes both the gospel accounts and the early apostolic preaching (Acts ); significantly, the third line of the tradition corresponds to the empty tomb story. 3. The story is simple and lacks signs of legendary embellishment. All one has to do to appreciate this point is to compare Mark\u2019s account with the wild legendary stories found in the second-century apocryphal gospels, in which Jesus is seen coming out of the tomb with his head reaching up above the clouds and followed by a talking cross! 4. The fact that women\u2019s testimony was discounted in first century Palestine stands in favor of the women\u2019s role in discovering the empty tomb. According to Josephus, the testimony of women was regarded as so worthless that it could not even be admitted into a Jewish court of law. Any later legendary story would certainly have made male disciples discover the empty tomb. 5. The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus\u2019 body (Matt ) shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb. The earliest Jewish response to the disciples\u2019 proclamation, He is risen from the dead! was not to point to his occupied tomb and to laugh them off as fanatics, but to claim that they had taken away Jesus\u2019 body. Thus, we have evidence of the empty tomb from the very opponents of the early Christians. One could go on, but I think that enough has been said to indicate why, in the words of Jacob Kremer, an Austrian specialist in the resurrection, By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb. The location of Jesus burial place would have been common knowledge in Jerusalem. most exegetes hold to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb.", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}