Empty tomb

All four gospels tell how Mary Magdalene, whether alone or accompanied by other women, came to the tomb on the first day of the week following the crucifixion of Jesus and found the body gone.[9][1] The four were almost certainly not by eyewitnesses, at least in their final forms, but were instead the end-products of long oral and written transmission.[10] Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptics, from the Greek word synopsis, meaning "viewed together", because they present the life of Jesus from a similar perspective.[11] It is generally agreed that Mark was the first,[12] and probably dates from c. AD 70, some forty years after the death of Jesus.[13] Matthew and Luke date from around AD 85–90,[14] and their authors, acting independently, used Mark as their primary source.[15] John, the last to be completed, began circulating between 90 and 110;[16] its narrative of the empty tomb is not merely a different form of the story told in the synoptics, but a different story, with a different sequence of events after John 20:2,[17] to such an extent that it cannot be harmonised with them.[18]

The general scholarly view is that Mark 16:1-8, the abrupt ending with the women fleeing from the empty tomb and telling no one what they have seen, was the original ending of this gospel;[3] it probably represents a complete unit of oral tradition taken over by the author.[19] The imagery of a young man in a white robe, and the reaction of the women, indicate that this is an encounter with an angel.[20] The empty tomb fills the women with fear and alarm, not with faith in the risen Lord,[21] although the mention of a meeting in Galilee is evidence of some sort of previous, pre-Markan, tradition linking Galilee and the resurrection.[22] The remaining verses, Mark 16:9-16, which detail the resurrection of Jesus, were likely appended later .[23]

Matthew revises Mark's account to make it more convincing and coherent.[4] The description of the angel is taken from Daniel's angel with a face "like the appearance of lightning" (Daniel 10:6) and his God with "raiment white as snow" (Daniel 7:9), and Daniel also provides the reaction of the guards (Daniel 10:7-9).[24] The introduction of the guard is apparently aimed at countering stories that Jesus' body had been stolen by his disciples, thus eliminating any explanation of the empty tomb other than that offered by the angel, that he has been raised.[4] Matthew introduces a curious doublet whereby the women are told twice, by the angels and then by Jesus, that he will meet the disciples in Galilee (Mathew 28:7-10) - the reasons for this are unknown.[4]

Luke changes Mark's one "young man" to two, makes reference to earlier passion predictions (Luke 24:7), and adds Peter's inspection of the tomb.[5] He also deletes the promise that Jesus would meet his disciples in Galilee - [6] in Mark and Matthew Jesus tells the disciples to meet him there, but in Luke the post-resurrection appearances are only in Jerusalem.[25] Mark and Luke tell the reader that the women visited the tomb in order to finish anointing the body of Jesus, but this explanation seems artificial given that it could have done on the evening of the crucifixion rather than 36 hours later; in Matthew the women came simply to see the tomb,[26] and in John no reason is given.[27] The story ends with Peter (alone, not with the "beloved disciple" as in John) visiting the tomb and seeing the burial cloths, but instead of believing in the resurrection he remains perplexed.[28]

The following table, with translations from the New International Version, allows the three versions to be compared.[17] (Luke 24:12, in which Peter goes to the tomb, may be an addition to the original gospel taken from John's story).[29]

John introduces the "beloved disciple", who visits the tomb with Peter and understands its significance before Peter.[7] The author seems to have combined three traditions, one involving a visit to the tomb by several women early in the morning (of which the "we" in "we do not know where they have taken him" is a fragmentary remnant), a second involving a visit to the empty tomb by Peter and perhaps by other male disciples, and a tradition involving an appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene.[27] John has reduced this to the solitary Mary Magdalene in order to introduce the conversation between her and Jesus, but the presence of "we" when she informs the disciples may be a remnant of the original group of women,[8] although since mourning and the preparation of bodies by anointing were social rather than solitary activities the original version probably involved the group of women.[8]

John's chapter 20 can be divided into three scenes: (1) the discovery of the empty tomb, verses 1-10; (2) appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, 11-18; and (3) appearances to the disciples, especially Thomas, verses 19-29; the last is not part of the "empty tomb" episode and is not included in the following table.[30]

Jewish belief in resurrection has very deep roots, but its first clear statement is found in the final chapter of the Book of Daniel, c. 164 BCE: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt";[31][32] by the time of Jesus it was widespread.[33] Professor Daniel R. Schwartz from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem states that without the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity "would have disappeared like the movements following other charismatic Jewish figures of the 1st century."[34]

The Osiris-bed, where he renews the harvest cycle in Egypt.

Although the afterlife was reserved solely for the Pharaohs during the Old Kingdom,[35] by the New Kingdom the concept of all souls continuing after death was a central tenet to the ancient Egyptian religion and worldview.[36] The god of resurrection was Osiris, whose own resurrection made him the mythic embodiment of the rebirth of the dead.[37]

The Greeks and Romans also believed in the reality of resurrection, and Christians knew of the numerous resurrection-events which had been experienced by persons other than Jesus: the early 3rd century theologian Origen, for example, did not deny the resurrection of the 7th century BCE poet Aristeas or the immortality of Antinous, the beloved of the 2nd century CE emperor Hadrian, but said the first had been the work of daemons, not God, while the second, unlike Jesus, was unworthy of worship.[38]

Emphasis on resurrection after death permeated throughout the Greco-Roman world through the Hellenic Mysteries of Isis, which were themselves modeled after the Eleusinian Mysteries.[39] Carl Jung considered the rebirth in the Osiris myth and Isis mysteries as the precursor archetypes for the resurrection of Christ and afterlife beliefs of Christianity.[40] The ancient Eleusinian Mysteries beliefs centered on the rebirth of Persephone as the mythic image of the eternity of life and initiation was motivated by a reward in the afterlife.[41]

For 1st-century Jews and Greeks an empty tomb was a sign that the dead person had been taken into the divine realm.[42] These rapture stories, told always from the point of view of witnesses left behind, described the subject taken body and soul into heaven at the conclusion of life and following the appearance of a heavenly being, whether an angel or God himself,[43] and any serious rapture claim needed at least the absence of a corpse and preferably an empty tomb.[44] In the gospels Jesus is presented as resurrected in the body, but it is clearly not the everyday body: he is not recognised by the disciples on the road to Emmaeus in Luke (the episode follows immediately from Luke's empty tomb narrative), and in John Mary Magdalene fails to recognise the "gardener" until he speaks to her.[45]

Mark and Matthew have Jesus promising to meet the disciples in Galilee; Luke has all the post-resurrection appearances in Jerusalem, replacing one tradition (Galilee) with another (Jerusalem).[46] These two gospels were most probably written in the period between 85 and 90 AD.[47] The earliest account appears in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, written by the Apostle Paul about 55 CE, may have originated in the Christian community of Antioch in the thirties:[48]

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas (i.e. Peter), and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.(1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

The earliest Christian tradition was that Jesus was raised directly to heaven and seated on the right hand of God from the moment of his resurrection, with no intervening earthly appearances; Paul sets out this concept - known as exaltation Christology - in, for example, Rom. 8.34; Eph. 1.19-23; 2.6-7; Col. 3.1-4; Phil. 2.8-9,[49] and it is preserved also in Luke 23:43, where Jesus tells the penitent thief, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise".[44] The empty tomb stories arose from the belief in the resurrection of Jesus.[50] The resurrection belief was held by his followers at a very early date, but it was based on his appearances (as recorded in Paul), on traditions that he had predicted it, and on Jewish scriptural prophecy.[51] The empty tomb seems to be a comparatively late development:[52] it is not explicitly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8,[53] and in Acts 2:14-36 Peter proclaims the resurrection on the basis of psalm 16 (Jesus will not go to Sheol) and psalm 110 (he will instead be seated in heaven on the right hand of God) without mentioning the tomb.[54]