Empty tomb

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"entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment" - an image from the Pericopes of Henry II

In the Gospels, the empty tomb is the first sign of the Resurrection of Jesus. When (a) certain female follower(s) of Jesus go to the tomb where his body was laid after the crucifixion, they discover his body gone, and a young man or angel(s) waiting within to tell them that he is risen from the dead. In the most reliable ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, the narrative finishes at this point, with only the body missing, and other ancient manuscripts present quite wildly varying endings; most scholars are certain that the traditional text of Mark 16:9-20 was never part of the original text.

1 The visitors and their purpose
2 The occupant(s)
3 The tomb
4 The grave clothes
5 Historical Significance of the Empty Tomb
6 See also

[edit] The visitors and their purpose

The four canonical gospels all agree that it was Mary visiting Jesus' tomb, though which Mary this Mary is, and whether she was on her own, varies between the texts:

According to most ancient versions of John (and most modern translations), Mary was Mary Magdalene, though the Codex Sinaiticus' version of John only names her Mary.
In Mark, Mary is Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James, and these two are joined by Salome
In Luke, it only explicitly mentions that the women from Galilee visited the tomb, though it states that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the other women from Galilee, later told the disciples about the visit to the tomb
In Matthew, Mary is Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, presumably Mary the mother of James

According to John, this visit was on the first day of the week, i.e Sunday, the day after Shabbat (the end of the Jewish week), while it was still dark. According to Mark and Luke it was light. These discrepancies between the three synoptic gospels and John are often excused with complex resolutions, though in the eyes of several scholars of biblical criticism the issues stem from John being pro-orthodoxy propaganda against those who used the content of the other three gospels to support non-orthodox beliefs. Alfred Loisy 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 as the sole visitor, with later copyists substituting Mary Magdalene to make John match the other three accounts more closely. A more religiously conservative attempt at resolving the discrepancy is where Mary is seen 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, by their visit, to continue the Jewish burial rituals, though Matthew merely says that they came just to look at the tomb, as if there on the off-chance of something being amiss. John on the other hand makes no mention of such non-Christian ritual, and the apocryphal, but heterodox, Gospel of Peter claims that she came to mourn, a view favoured by many modern-day heterodox Christians. While Rabbis of the time, such as Bar Kappera were frequently of the opinion (as recorded in the Midrash Rabbah) that the third day was the prime point for mourning, Bernard considers the whole trip improbable, as it is highly unlikely that a lone woman, would go to a place of execution, outside the city walls, while it was still dark.

[edit] The occupant(s)

Mary (and her companions, if existing), is then described by the gospels as discovering the tomb to be empty, though the specifics vary:

According to Mark, Mary and Mary find that the tomb has been opened, and a man clothed in a long white garment is seated inside, who tells them not to be afraid because Jesus is risen and is not here.
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
According to John, Mary merely discovers the tomb had been opened. Though a later appearance of Jesus portrays Mary again at the tomb and seeing two angels inside dressed in white.

Resolving the differences between the accounts is intimately tied to the resolution of the synoptic problem. With the prevailing theory of Markan priority, the original figure in the tomb was a mysterious man in white, which Matthew alters to an angel, and Luke, writing for a non-Jewish audience, to two angel-like men, while John just abridges this altogether. Scholars who believe that Mark is a gnostic document, often see the person in the tomb as being meant to be the mysterious initiate mentioned in the Secret Gospel of Mark, and hence as the Beloved Disciple, identified, by implication, as Lazarus. Such scholars interpret this figure, and his appearances throughout the narrative, not as being meant to be an historical individual, but as a metaphor, representing the reader as an initiate into gnosticism- first being told to give up his worldly life, then dying and being brought to new life, then learning the mysteries of the religion, and finally clothed in white and speaking from a position of wisdom. Most Christians, and almost all scholars pre-dating the discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark, tend to view the figure as having been intended to refer to an angel.

Some have linked the two angels guarding the tomb with the pair that were traditionally said to guard the Ark of the Covenant, but Wetstein has advanced a thesis linking the pair of angels to the pair of criminals who were crucified alongside Jesus. White or radiant clothing is stereotypically the description of angels in the New Testament, and so very little further detail about their nature could be ascertained. Neither is it possible to identify whether the angels were in the form of men, allowing harmonisation with Mark, or whether they took the form of more unusual beings like Cherubim or Seraphim.

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

[edit] The tomb

In John, the angels are described as sitting where Jesus' body had been, which most people think was probably not a reference to squatting or sitting cross legged, but instead suggesting that the tomb possessed a raised shelf or ledge, on which the body had been placed. However, early pilgrims to Jesus' tomb report that his body was placed in a trough in the tomb, and so 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, tombs of the era were accessed via doors at ground level that 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, but since Mary is able to see into Jesus' tomb from the outside, it suggests the former type, and this is the traditional view.

[edit] The grave clothes

According to both Luke and John, within the tomb the disciples see grave clothes of some description. Luke states that strips of linen were on the ground, but though John states that they were lying there, this may not imply the same thing, and Brown has argued that John is using a turn of phrase that actually describes the linen as lying on a shelf within the tomb. According to Luke, Jesus had been wrapped in a shroud, and this became the traditional view. What became of the grave clothes after the disciples have seen them is not mentioned by the bible, though some works of the New Testament apocrypha do make mention of it, and a Roman Catholic tradition arose that they found their way to Turin, becoming the Turin Shroud, though many scientists and academic view the Turin Shroud as a mediaeval forgery.

John additionally describes the presence of a soudarium, for the head, that was set apart. A soudarium 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 Sudarium was a turban, and that it later found its way to Oviedo in Spain, becoming the Sudarium of Oviedo. Although it may initially seem insignificant, that the item for the head was set apart fundamentally affects Christology. 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 interpretations. Conversely, it being set apart infers the opposite - that someone took the clothes off in an ordinary manner, and hence many scholars see this as a direct attack by the author of John on docetism, and the gnosticism that used the synoptic accounts to advocate it.

In more recent times, Jesus passing through the cloth/dematerialisng has frequently been regarded as evidence of divine action by God, though this interpretation was not one that existed in the early church, which viewed such interpretations as docetism, and hence these recent views have somewhat blurred the issue into a more minor one. Those advocating for a more supernatural account have argued that being set apart merely reflects the distance between the head and the body due to the neck, 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, but most scholars see it as a very clear attempt by John to rule out docetism, and hence view John as recounting that the cloth was moved to a part of the burial place or tomb apart well away from the other.

The level of detail the author of John adds to this section is to Brooke Foss Westcott evidence that the author was an eyewitness, but C.K. Barrett disagrees, pointing out that such details are exactly what a modern author adds to a fictional account to give it a feeling of verisimilitude, and there is no reason to believe an ancient writer would not have these same skills. Dodd argues that, having already reached the narrative climax with the crucifixion scene, these later sections deliberately slow down the narrative to act as dénouement. However, like many scholars, Schnackenberg interprets the level of detail as apologetic in origin, though Schnackenberg regards the detail as an attempt to disprove the allegation that Jesus' tomb had simply been robbed, rather than an attempt to assert a Christology.

A side issue is whether abandoning the grave clothes meant that Jesus was wandering around naked, a view held for example by Kastner. While many Christians disagree with this, instead arguing for direct divine intervention to provide clothes, since it would be a comparatively minor issue after raising someone from the dead, many others argue that even resurrection is more minor than conjuring clothes from nowhere, as a person waking from a coma would not be viewed anywhere near as miraculously as clothes appearing from thin air.

[edit] Historical Significance of the Empty Tomb

The existence of an "empty tomb" is not necessarily a proof of Jesus's resurrection, and many people who don't even believe that Jesus ever existed would be able to agree that Jesus' body was not found in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

In the Gospel accounts (John 19:39-42) we see the intervention of influential followers of Jesus such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who wish to take Jesus's body down from the cross and lay him in a tomb, rather than just let it be eaten by wild animals. In the Gospel of John the account is marked by a sense of urgency to do this before the coming festival of the Sabbath, during which rest would be observed and no work would occur. These account for Jesus being placed in an individual tomb, whose location was known by his followers. It has also been suggested that Joseph of Arimathea may have moved the body after the Sabbath and intentionally not told the apostles.