And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. (I Corinthians 15:17)

It is not in dispute that the tomb of Jesus was empty on that first Resurrection morning. And that fact must have either a natural explanation or a supernatural one. There have been many over the years that have speculated natural explanations as to why the tomb of Jesus was empty, but each of those attempts downplayed, ignored, or denied outright some part of the total available evidence. There is no explanation as to why the tomb of Jesus was empty that takes into account all of the available evidence other than Jesus actually rose from the dead. Because some human does not fully understand how an event happened does not demand that the event did not happen.

We will consider some of the varied natural explanations for the empty tomb in this article. In the last installment we examined the claim that the disciples of Jesus stole His body, as was alleged initially by the Jewish religious leaders, and mentioned years later in rabbinic writings.

Next let us consider the claim that either the Jewish religious leaders or the Roman authorities took the body and hid it for safekeeping. Remember that both the Jewish and Roman authorities had a vested interest in seeing Jesus remain dead. Those who followed this itinerant Rabbi had at times numbered into the thousands. Such a movement could threaten both the religious and the political stability of the entire region. And despite Jesus’s death on a Roman cross in sight of everyone, there was still the fear that His “martyrdom” might increase the instability. “But that it spread no further,” was a concern expressed by Jewish religious leaders, who commanded Jesus’s closest disciples to preach no more in His Name. In this environment, had either the Jewish leaders or the Roman authorities been able to prove that Jesus was indeed still dead by producing His corpse, the proclamation of Jesus’s disciples that He was Risen from the dead would have been proven to be a lie. Christianity would have died before it was born. Of course, neither the Jewish nor the Roman officials possessed the body of Jesus, nor did they have any idea where it was.

Some have offered that crucified criminals were not generally buried but were thrown into an open pit and cremated. In such a case the body would be lost forever. However, the archaeological discovery in 1967 of a crucified man with the nails still embedded in his ankle bones demonstrated that the family of a crucified criminal might indeed request and receive the body of their executed loved one to give him a proper burial. That is exactly what the Bible states happened to the body of Jesus after His crucifixion and death. Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus’s great uncle on His mother’s side, and a very prominent and wealthy individual with powerful connections in Rome as well, went to Pilate and obtained the body of Jesus, burying it in his own family tomb. That is consistent with both the Bible and archaeology. The location of Joseph’s tomb would have been well known to all of Jesus’s followers. The suggestion that the women went to the wrong tomb on Resurrection morning to anoint Jesus’s body, is also so greatly improbable as to not warrant further discussion.

There are some non-Christian cults that teach that Jesus did rise on Resurrection morning, but that He did not arise bodily, but only in a “glorified spirit form.” The claim is that God must have supernaturally disposed of Jesus’s body much the same as He did the body of Moses centuries before. However, Jesus offered His physical body for examination when He encouraged His disciples to touch His hands and the wound in His side, declaring that a mere spirit would not possess flesh and bone as Jesus’s Resurrection Body obviously did. Jesus also ate and drank with His disciples, proving, as one Church Father noted, that He was indeed corporeal after the Resurrection and not merely a “glorified spirit.” In actuality, a Resurrection without a body is not really a Resurrection at all!

Others have speculated that all of the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus were simply hallucinations, brought on by the disciples’ deep emotional distress. Yet, we must remember that hallucinations are extremely personal events. The idea that more than one person will experience precisely the same hallucination at precisely the same time is unthinkable. And to suggest that five hundred people would all experience precisely the same hallucination at the same time is totally absurd. Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearances were, with a few exceptions, generally to groups of people gathered together. And the fact that all of them seemed surprised by these appearances demonstrates that they were likely not brought on by any deep emotionally distressed desire or expectation.

Some, following a pattern popularized by Schonfield, have held to some version of the “Resuscitation Theory” or as others call it, the “Swoon Theory.” In its many variations, this view has Jesus only appearing to die (whether by design or not, and whether under the influence of drugs mimicking death or not). In the cold dampness of the tomb, Jesus revived (or the drugs wore off and He awakened) and walked away.

The problem with all of the variations of the “Swoon Theory” (except those that postulate Jesus actually dying unexpectedly) is that, had the Crucifixion actually not resulted in Jesus’s death, the severe loss of blood from the deep lacerations in His body from the beating, coupled with the process of wrapping His body in cloths smeared with a gummy mixture of spices designed to stiffen around the corpse, would certainly have killed Him. In addition, in His severely weakened state, had Jesus awakened in the dark damp tomb, and had He managed to free Himself from the cocoon of cloth around His body, He would not have been able to roll away the two ton stone up the incline in front of the door of the tomb to make His escape. Beside all that, He would then walk several miles and appear to two of His followers on the road cleaned up and in perfect physical condition, though they did not recognize Him at first. And this makes sense to whom?

Finally, there is the totally unbelievable assertion that the disciples of Jesus simply lied when they reported seeing Him alive after the crucifixion. This is absurd on several fronts. Most of all, it demands to be rejected because the disciples of Jesus faced untold persecution and even death for that which they proclaimed about Jesus, including His Resurrection. Who is willing to knowingly die to promote what one knows to be a lie? All of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb, with the exception of John, died martyr’s deaths, and John faced extreme persecution and imprisonment in a penal colony on Patmos until he was finally released home to Ephesus from where he departed to Heaven at over a hundred years of age.

When the natural explanations for the empty tomb are put to rest, the only remaining explanation (however improbable it might seem to some) is the supernatural explanation. On that first Resurrection morning, Jesus Christ emerged from the tomb alive, and triumphant over sin, sickness, death, hades, and the grave! And His Victory is OUR Victory if we are “in Him!” Be Blessed!