In 1980, a team of construction workers stumbled on an ancient tomb in the process of laying the foundation for a nearby apart complex in the Talpiot neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The Talpiot Tomb, as it came to be known, was investigated by Amos Kloner of the Israel Department of Antiquities, who discovered several ossuaries, or burial chests, containing human remains. Years later, reknowned film-maker James Cameron and journalist Simcha Jacobovici produced a 2007 documentary called The Lost Tomb of Jesus that raised a storm of controversy with its claim that the site is the resting place of Jesus Christ. Long before the Talpiot Tomb, a site known as the Garden Tomb was discovered near the Damascus Gate, and reports began spreading in the 19th century that this is the true tomb of Jesus Christ. Believers point out that John 19:41 states that Jesus' tomb was in a garden, and a wine press and cistern found at the area are cited as evidence that the structure was once located in a garden.

Entrance to the Talpiot Tomb

Additionally, there is a shrine in Kashmir called the Roza Bal and a grave in Shingo, Japan that each enjoy large numbers of followers who believe them to be the burial place of Jesus. Of course, the most famous tomb of Christ is the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, which has been identified as such since the mid 4th century. With so many alleged locations for the tomb of the Christian savior, and a few of them containing remains, it has to be asked: what is the evidence for the empty tomb? In this article, we will survey the evidence from archaeological sites, as well as the evidence from some of the earliest written accounts.

I. The Significance

The empty tomb is one of the primary arguments made for the truth of Christianity. It is found in all four of the canonical gospels and regularly pops up today in the apologetics of Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, Gary Habermas, and William Lane Craig. In 2005, Habermas surveyed over 1400 scholarly publications since 1975 that reportedly show a general acceptance of the empty tomb among scholars. [1] To many believers, the empty tomb serves as confirmation of the resurrection.

However, the significance of a tomb with no body is not so evident. There are numerous explanations for why a corpse might be missing from a grave, and resurrection is rarely invoked. On the other side of things, one can believe in resurrection as a spiritual phenomenon - as the Jewish Essene sect of the Second Temple period believed - which would make an empty tomb story superfluous and unnecessary. In fact, as we'll see later on, it appears that many of the earliest Christian sources were not concerned with the empty tomb at all. So why then did so much emphasis come to be placed on this particular aspect of the gospel story?

Certainly there were some in the first century who did believe in bodily resurrection, like the Pharisees, and it's obvious that at least a few of the authors of the New Testament believed this too. For proponents of a bodily resurrection, an empty tomb would be necessary if Jesus had been crucified and buried. People in the ancient world also tended to interpret postmortem disappearances as the body being removed into the divine realm. There are even accounts of people planning to have their remains hidden after death, so that they might be venerated. [2]

Although the significance of an empty tomb in general is very open to debate, there were at least some in the first century who would've interpreted such a thing as evidence of divinity, if not physical resurrection as well. For our purposes, however, the question will simply be if there's historical evidence for the empty tomb of Jesus, regardless of how the empty tomb could be interpreted.

II. The Holy Sepulchre

Since the 4th century, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been reputed to house the grave of Christ, as previously mentioned. According to Salaminius Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History, the church was built on the ruins of a temple to Aphrodite that had been erected by scheming pagans who had hoped to, over time, erase the burial site of Jesus from collective memory. [3] The discovery of the tomb was allegedly made during the reign of Constantine, who had instructed his mother to build churches on sites connected to the life of Jesus. Eusebius, historian and Bishop of Caesarea, recorded the following about the tomb's discovery:

Eusebius provides the earliest testimony to this specific site being the tomb of Jesus.

First, it is plausible that the Roman Emperor Hadrian could have erected the temple to Aphrodite on a Christian site, because he had also been so bold as to build a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Jewish temple. Yet it's equally important to recognize that Hadrian's anti-Jewish policies were likely coming from the Jewish-Roman conflict that had been going on for many decades by then. Rome often exhibited religious tolerance, but would deal harshly with challenges to its authority. In correspondence relating to Christians, Hadrian seems to have taken a far more diplomatic stance, encouraging his proconsul in Asia to let a just standard prevail over the public outcries against the Christians. [5]

Secondly, while Eusebius neglects to tell his readers what "clear and visible proof" the tomb offered to convince Christians that it was the tomb of Christ, Sozomen writes, about a hundred years later, that three crosses, the nails that pierced Jesus, and a sign reading "Jesus, King of the Jews" were found at the site. The credibility of this claim is revealed by the further claim that the "true cross" was discovered by its ability to heal a sick woman and raise a dead person back to life. That these amazing relics were not mentioned by Eusebius is quite suspicious, as is the fact that they have not survived (if they were ever real) to the modern day.

Finally, since the 18th century there has been substantial debate over how the sepulchre fits into biblical description of Jesus' tomb. A point often brought up is that Hebrews 13:12 implies that the burial site of Christ was outside the city walls, but the Holy Sepulchre is inside the walls. Additionally, Jews considered graves to be unclean, which would be why they were located outside the city walls (and typically not to the west of the city, as the Talmud condemns in Baba Batra 25a). The Holy Sepulchre is quite close to the ruins of Herod's Palace as well, arguably too close for a tomb. Advocates of the sepulchre reinterpret the garden reference in John 19:41, because archaeology has shown that the area of the sepulchre was a stone quarry until the mid-to-late 1st century CE. [6]

The most that the Holy Sepulchre seems to have on its side is tradition established on the questionable testimony of Eusebius and Sozomen. Even if there had been rumors circulating long before Constantine about the site being the burial place of Jesus, there is still spectacularly little to verify. In 1009, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre be completely destroyed. About 20 years later, reconstruction on the sepulchre commenced, but the aedicule which allegedly contains the tomb of Jesus has remained enclosed by marble. There may indeed be a tomb in the sepulchre, though whether or not 4th century Christians were right about it being the tomb of Jesus is another matter, and with nothing to examine, the case for the Holy Sepulchre is extremely thin.

III. The Garden Tomb

In 1883, Major-General Charles Gordon noticed a rocky escarpment near the Damascus Gate that appeared to him like the face of a skull. In the gospels, Golgotha, the site of Christ's crucifixion, is referred to as "the place of a skull." Gordon claimed that this must be the real Golgotha, rather than the one at the Holy Sepulchre. He even found a groove outside the entrance to the tomb that he believed to be the slot where the stone was rolled in front of the tomb. Later on, a wine press and cistern were also discovered, which were characteristic of gardens in ancient Jerusalem, but it wasn't until the 1980s that a proper archaeological investigation was undertaken.

Gabriel Barkay, professor of biblical archaeology, investigated the site and published his findings in the academic journal Biblical Archaeology Review. [7] He found the groove in front of the tomb to be inconsistent with other rolling-stone tombs, which had walls holding the stone, rather than a simple groove

The "skull" face at the Garden Tomb

in the ground. The cistern had waterproofing of a kind used by the Crusaders, he also determined, and the groove was likely a water trough built for the Crusaders' animals. The design of the tomb interior dated to the 8th/7th centuries BCE, having fallen out of use later in history. Further investigations done by Amos Kloner and others have yielded very similar conclusions. [8] The recognition of a skull-looking structure may be less than it seems too. Jerome suggested in the 4th century that the translation of Golgotha given in the gospels might be incorrect, and the word could actually be a contraction of Gol Goatha in Aramaic, meaning "mount of execution." However, "the place of a skull" need not mean a place that looks like a skull either, but could refer to the high number of executions that may have occurred there. Despite these details, the evidence has come in on the Garden Tomb, and it is not from any time near the first century CE.

IV. The Talpiot Tomb

What about the Talpiot Tomb, discovered by Amos Kloner and popularized by James Cameron? Inside the tomb, ten ossuaries were found, with six of them bearing inscriptions. According to The Lost Tomb of Jesus, the inscriptions are of the names Yeshua bar Yehosef (Jesus son of Joseph), Maria (Mary), Yose (Joseph or Joses), Yehuda bar Yeshua (Judah son of Jesus), Mariamene e Mara (Mary known as the master), and Matya (Matthew). Like I already alluded, the Talpiot Tomb is easily the most controversial of the three common sites proposed for the tomb of Jesus. Aside from the claim that one of the ossuaries contains the remains of Jesus of Nazareth, it is also suggested in the documentary that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had a child named Judah.

Amos Kloner, the original excavator of the site, has been one of the foremost critics of the assertions made by Cameron and Jacobovici. He points out the ambiguity of several of the names reportedly inscribed on the ossuaries, noting that Jesus is a name that's been found 71 times in burial caves from the same time period. [9] On multiple occasions, he told the popular press that the claims made throughout the film are "nonsense." [10] Kloner also appeared on Ted Koppel's critique The Lost Tomb of Jesus - A Critical Look to dispute the documentary's claim that the tenth ossuary had been lost but was, in fact, the James ossuary that had turned up earlier in another collection.

Such shining endorsement from the initial qualified investigator should give us plenty of reason to doubt the candidacy of the Talpiot Tomb, and Kloner is far from alone in his criticisms. The Lost Tomb of Jesus has been roundly debunked by archaeologists, historians, and theologians. [11] In one particular example of the especially bad logic used in the video, DNA testing is performed on the remains of Jesus and Mariamene, and when it's determined that the two do not share the same mother, the conclusion is made that they must have been married. Of course, this ignores the possibility of other sorts of familial relationships, like cousins, but it also demonstrates a problem of pre-determined assumptions through which all evidence is filtered.

The Talpiot Tomb does, however, serve as a worthwhile lesson. Proving that a grave belonged to Jesus of Nazareth may be next to impossible in our time. Even if we find inscriptions of a "Jesus son of Joseph," or other associations with the gospel story, it will not be enough evidence. We could date artifacts in the tomb to the first century, and find that it coheres with the description of the tomb in the bible, and yet we would still be jumping to conclusions. We've got no DNA on file for Jesus of Nazareth, nor do we have any kind of tradition that dates back reliably to an identifiable location for a tomb. The alleged burial sites of Jesus in Kashmir and Japan are even less credible, because they both assume additional things about Jesus that go well beyond any of our sources. These examples should remind us to take great caution in how zealously we pursue a theory. The evidence needs to speak for itself.

V. The Written Accounts: Paul's Epistles

So the archaeological claims for the tomb are presumptuous and unconvincing, but there is another kind of evidence we can examine. Many scholars, theologians, and apologists believe that a good case for the empty tomb can be made on the basis of early written accounts. It is possible that Jesus' grave has been destroyed, that it's still buried somewhere, or that it's so unexceptional that we've yet to recognize it. Thanks to written records, we know of many ancient structures and locations that no longer exist. The closer these records are to a time when the place in question did exist, the more reliable they are, because there is less chance of faulty memory, mythologizing, and so on. On top of that, if we have multiple records that are independent of each other, reliability is stronger still, because several people reporting the same thing around the same time, without borrowing from each other, is much harder to argue with than the report of one single individual.

What do we find when we look at the New Testament? Scholars typically identify seven of the letters of Paul (1 Thessalonians, Philippians, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Philemon) as the earliest texts of the New Testament. Among these writings, there is no reference to an empty tomb. Even in the so-called early Christian creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, the closest we get is the statement that "He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day." Some apologists, like William Lane Craig, have argued that this remark presupposes an empty tomb, because raising after a burial would imply that one is no longer buried... right?

I previously noted that believers in a spiritual resurrection would have no need for an empty tomb. In this case, "raised on the third day" could simply mean the spirit was raised out of the body. But another, more intriguing possibility is that Paul could have believed that the physical body of Christ was changed into an immaterial spirit. Jesus' body was buried, and then he was raised by his physical body being transformed into a new body of a non-material nature. This would not have required an empty tomb either, and it seems to fit more with both the vision of Christ that Paul claimed to have had, and his apparent views on the distinction between the flesh and the spirit (1 Corinthians 15:40-49).

However, the absence of the empty tomb in Paul's writings is an even greater problem if Paul did believe in a bodily resurrection. When it came to proving the gospel, Paul was probably the boldest and most enthusiastic Christian of his time. "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God," he wrote in 2 Corinthians 10:5, "and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Would the tale of an empty tomb not have been of great use to Paul's ministry, or at least something exciting enough to check into, even for the experience alone? Amazingly, William Lane Craig almost seems to get this when he observes the following:

Yet we find no traces of this feeling in Paul's epistles, nor do we find mention of an empty tomb in any capacity, as I've already stated. Craig's observation also raises the question of why early Christians did not seem inclined to venerate the tomb of Jesus. There is no evidence for it at all until the suspicious claims of Eusebius in the 4th century. This appears to suggest that Paul and the early Christians simply were not aware of an empty tomb. Absence of evidence doesn't necessarily mean evidence of absence, but as Craig has illustrated in his debates before, when we should expect to find evidence of something and we don't, then an argument from silence will carry weight. It's certainly hard to imagine why Paul would be silent on the empty tomb if he had known of it.

VI. The Written Accounts: The Gospels

Of course, the canonical gospels each include the empty tomb story, but their testimony is not as impressive as one might think, for a number of reasons. The Two Source Hypothesis is a theory accepted by the majority of biblical scholars [13] that places Mark as the earliest gospel, and claims that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their writings, as well as a lost document known as Q. This means that Matthew and Luke are not independent accounts of the empty tomb, since they rely on Mark's version of it. Thus, it seems Mark and John are the only gospels that constitute independent evidence.

However, even this is not that certain. The gospel of John does differ from the synoptic gospels in many ways, but it also shows evidence of the use of other sources. Scholars usually date John to 90 CE at the earliest, at least 20 years after the composition of Mark. The odds are relatively good that the author of John encountered an empty tomb story in the traditions he had heard circulating at the time. It's important to remember that the gospels not only emerged from oral traditions, but that they also contributed to oral tradition. John's tomb story has quite a bit in common with Luke's, and although there are definite differences, it's not inconceivable that John may have heard readings of Luke before, or possibly of another tomb story.

If we stick with the earliest accounts from the New Testament, all we really have of an independent testimony for the empty tomb is Mark. To get a better impression of the loneliness of this source, I should note that not even the early Christian writings outside the canon show knowledge of an empty tomb story. 1 Clement is thought to have been written around 80-95 CE, according to scholars. What's interesting about this text is that, when the author argues for the resurrection, he does not do so by bringing up the empty tomb, or any other historical claim, but by merely invoking nature and the myth of the phoenix. [14] Other early Christian documents like the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas do not mention an empty tomb either.

So, hypothetically, if there was no tradition of an empty tomb until Mark, where did Mark get his story from? Wherever the tale originated from, Mark's version bears fascinating similarities to the story of Daniel in the lion's den. Randel McCraw Helms lays out the evidence, which will be quoted here for the full effect:

These similarities are especially interesting in light of the title used for Jesus throughout the gospels: "Son of Man" - a divine apocalyptic figure found in Daniel 7:13. It's not uncommon that the gospel authors modeled their stories on Old Testament stories. This typology, as it's called, has been noted for parallels between the miracles of Jesus and Elijah, between the slaughter of the innocents and the drowning of the Israelite children in Egypt, and between the ascensions to power of Jesus and Joseph, to name a few examples. Of course, while many believers ascribe typological similarities to divine prophecy, I infer the more natural and simple explanation that the gospel authors - who we know were very familiar with the Hebrew scriptures - modeled their stories on parts of the Tanakh, with the intent of implying special status and significance for their characters and events.

VII. The Verdict

On the evidence for the empty tomb, there is nothing in archaeology that has been verified or withstood scrutiny thus far. In the written accounts, there is a peculiar silence among the earliest sources, a lack of multiple independent testimony, and an abundance of typological similarities in the first empty tomb account that raises serious doubts about its historicity. Contrary to the claims of apologists and theologians, the empty tomb is not a 'well attested fact' in the historical record, but seems to be the exact opposite. Perhaps one day we'll finally find the elusive burial site of Jesus of Nazareth, yet in the approximately 1,979 years it's been since his alleged death, it doesn't really look like the odds are getting any better.

[On the historicity of the resurrection, see my article: Why the Resurrection is Historically Improbable]

Sources:

1. Gary Habermas, Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 3.2 (2005), pp. 135-153.
2. Daniel A. Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter (Fortress Press, 2010).
3. Salaminius Sozomen, The Discovery of the Life-Bringing Cross and of the Holy Nails, Ecclesiastical Histories, Book II, Ch. I.
4. Eusebius, Discovery of the Most Holy Sepulchre, Life of Constantine, Book III, Ch. XXVIII.
5. Hadrian, quoted in Eusebius, The Rescript of Hadrian to Caius Municius Fundanus, Early Church Texts. Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
6. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, Sacred Destinations (2010). Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
7. Gabriel Barkay, "The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?" Biblical Archaeology Review (March/April 1986).
8. "Jerusalem Report: Israeli Scholars Date Garden Tomb To The Israelite Monarchy," Bible and Spade, 11:1.
9. Ed Pilkington & Rory McCarthy, Is this really the last resting place of Jesus..., The Guardian (February 2007). Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
10. Brent Bozell, What Bones of Jesus?, Townhall.com (2007). Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
11. Mati Milstein, Jesus' Tomb Claim Slammed By Scholars, National Geographic (February 2007). Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
12. William Lane Craig, The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus, New Testament Studies 31 (1985): 39-67. Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
13. Joan Montserrat, The Two-Source Hypothesis, Synoptic Problem (2005). Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
14. 1 Clement 24-25, Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Retrieved Apr. 7, 2012.
15. Randel McCraw Helms, Gospel Fictions (Prometheus Books, 1988), p. 135-136.