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17. THE EMPTY TOMB

The only unanimity among the widely divergent New Testament accounts of the resurrection is the peculiar fashion in which they all hedge on this fundamental Christian event, surrounding it with fear, ambiguity, and mistaken identity. There is, however, one consistent feature in the narratives provided by all four New Testament gospels: Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb of Jesus, finds it empty, and is told by angels that Jesus has risen from the dead. The most reliable version of Mark ends there; Mary Magdalene and her companion, Jesus' mother, Mary, "went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid" (Mk 16.8). Interestingly, the Cross Gospel, upon which Mark may have based his passion narrative, offers a clearly symbolic scene in which neither the two Marys nor any of Jesus' disciples witness the empty tomb. Instead, Roman soldiers and the entire Sanhedrin watch two angelic beings leading a third out of the sepulchre, while a voice from heaven speaks. Apparently the author of Mark did not find this scene credible, although it does echo the passage in Matthew, which we have seen above, about the Roman soldiers detailed to watch the tomb (in the Cross Gospel, Pilate tells them not to mention what they have seen). However, the Signs Gospel, which is contemporary with the Cross Gospel, does place Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, and so we can place her in the earliest Christian tradition.

In Luke 24.13-31, the risen Jesus first appears to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The disciples have heard about the empty tomb, but they don't recognize Jesus, even after he accompanies them to Emmaus, talking all the time of himself: "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Finally, at dinner, the disciples realize they have been in the company of the resurrected Jesus all day. In Matthew's version (Mt 28.9-20), Jesus meets the Marys as they flee in fear from the empty tomb, and directs them to send the disciples to Galilee. There he appears to the disciples on a mountaintop; even then some still don't believe it's him. In John, as in the Signs Gospel, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene at the tomb; at first she thinks he's the gardener. Jesus goes to the disciples in the house where they are hiding, but must prove himself to Thomas Didymus -- "doubting Thomas." Then Jesus pops in on the disciples at Tiberias in Galilee, where he speaks to them and is not immediately recognized.

These episodes are not as ridiculous as they sound in abstract. They raise the important issue of how one is to believe in the resurrection of Jesus without having witnessed it. They may also, in the empty tomb tradition, recall the temporary sequestering of Jesus' body in one of the first-century tomb complexes at the site known today as Ketef Hinnom -- the saddle of Hinnom -- a hilltop necropolis very close to the roadside site where Jesus most likely was crucified. Mary Magdalene may indeed have gone to this tomb; or perhaps the Mary Magdalene tradition is simply a nod to the women of the Jesus movement, who may have been the most courageous and faithful of his followers in the turbulent days following the crucifixion. Whatever the historicity of Mary at the tomb, the overall intent of the resurrection accounts is clearly didactic rather than documentary. Indeed Paul, the only New Testament author who offers us a first-hand account of the risen Jesus, describes a purely spiritual being emanating a brilliant light. We might reasonably assume that the resurrection was always a similar sort of spiritual phenomenon, a symbol of Jesus' enduring presence within his disciples and his embodiment in the vital and burgeoning Christian church he bequeathed to his followers.

Yet it is exactly with that vital and rapidly growing Christian church that the notion of Jesus' spiritual resurrection runs into some logical problems of its own. We have seen the evidence of the extraordinary commitment of Jesus' closest followers just after his crucifixion, risking their lives to return to the Jerusalem Temple and preach the message of the imminent kingdom of God. Within several years the church in Jerusalem had become so powerful that the high priests were forced to initiate Saul's secret terror campaign against it; the Jesus movement had also spread far enough that Saul was sent to Damascus to purge the synagogues there.

All this was accomplished by the same disciples who, as Christian tradition was forced to openly acknowledge, cravenly deserted their leader on the night he was captured and executed; the cowardly, scattered sheep of Mark 14.27 had somehow become, after Jesus' crucifixion, the fearless lions of the nascent Christian church. What transformed their faith? It challenges logic to suggest that warm and fuzzy feelings about the spirit of the deceased Jesus produced this conversion when the words and example of the living Jesus had not.

The simplest explanation is that the disciples believed, with utter conviction, that they had seen the resurrected Jesus; guilt, mass hysteria, or mass post-hypnotic suggestion are regularly advanced as causes for such a phenomenon. However, these theories overlook the most common reason why someone might appear to return to life after having been crucified: Evidently it was not uncommon to survive the cross. Josephus (Life 420-421) tells how, after his capture, while working as a sort of scout for the Romans, he saw near Jerusalem a group of crucified prisoners. Recognizing three acquaintances among them, Josephus went to the Roman commander, Titus, and begged him to spare them. Titus had the three taken down and placed under a physician's care. "Two of them died in the physician's hands, while the third survived." Obviously the three had been on the cross for some time before they were removed, if two subsequently died despite a physician's care. Even so, all three were still alive, and one did survive.

On the other hand, we don't hear that Josephus' anonymous acquaintance was hailed as the Messiah simply for getting himself crucified and living to tell the tale. Merely rising from the dead did not convey great spiritual authority in the ancient world; that authority usually was invested in those who did the raising. That is certainly why Elijah raises his housemate's son and Jesus raises Lazarus and Jairus' daughter, and not vice versa. So the mere fact that Jesus had returned from the dead was probably not the evidence of higher spiritual authority required to convert his sheep into lions. His authority had to come from some other source.

Next: THE MYSTERY OF THE KINGDOM

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