Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE CLIMAX OF JESUS' MISSION §18.2
c. The Absence of Any Hint of an Undisturbed Tomb
The relevance of the archaeological evidence is obvious. In Jerusalem (and elsewhere
in the land of Israel) any claim that a body had been raised would most
likely be understood in terms of restoration or reconstitution of the dead body.
The corollary would have been that the (old) body had disappeared: physical resurrection
necessarily implied empty tomb. 45
It is notable, then, that there is no hint at any point in the material available
to us of questions being posed to early Christian claims regarding the resurrection
of Jesus by reference to an undisturbed burial location. 46 The subsequent
rabbinic polemic against Christian claims has not taken up the point or suggested,
for example, that the disciples had forgotten where Jesus' tomb was. Matthew
tells us that in his day the story was still being circulated that the disciples
had stolen the body (Matt. 28.15). 47 If that is indeed the case, then the opponents
of the Christian interpretation of events apparently did not deny that the tomb
was empty. They followed the same logic: empty tomb could imply resurrection,
unless there was another explanation for the tomb being empty. 48
This silence is all the more impressive, since the story of the empty tomb
was probably being told in Jerusalem shortly after the event. As we shall see
later, the indications are strong that the Jesus movement 'took off' within Jerusalem
within a short time after Jesus' death. 49 Whatever the precise details and
dates, the resurrection of Jesus, and not just a re-preaching of Jesus' earlier message,
seems to have been the heart of infant Christianity's distinctive message
from the first. 50 Acts indicates that such preaching drew hostile fire from those
45. Against the thesis that Mark created the narrative of the empty tomb (J. D. Crossan,
'Empty Tomb and Absent Lord [Mark 16:1-8]', in Kelber, ed., Passion in Mark 135-52; also
Birth 556-59; A. Yarbro Collins, 'The Empty Tomb and Resurrection According to Mark', Beginnings
of the Gospel 119-48), it has to be asked whether an empty tomb tradition in support
of a belief in resurrection would have emerged anywhere outside Palestine.
46. The same would apply if it had been known, or was assumed, that Jesus' body had been
casually discarded; but there is no hint of that either (§ 17. lg). Of the possibility that the place of
burial/disposal was unknown (still being recycled by Carnley, Structure 55-57, and Wedderbum,
Beyond Resurrection 65) there is not the slightest hint in early anti-Christian polemic.
47. G. Stanton, 'Early Objections to the Resurrection of Jesus', in S. Barton and
G. Stanton, eds., Resurrection, L. Houlden FS (London: SPCK, 1994) 79-94, notes that the
same explanation was current at the time of Justin's Dialogue with Trypho 108 (84-86).
48. 'The rise of the Jewish polemic is of considerable importance, for it shows that "resurrection"
to the Jewish mind naturally suggested resurrection from the grave' (Fuller, Formation
73).
49. See vol. 2.
50. Luke's use of primitive material in the sermons in Acts is notable here; see particularly
2.22-32; 3.13-15, 19-21; 10.36-41 (see also n. 4 above and further below, vol. 2).
836