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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

Part of a series on the

Death and resurrection of

Jesus

Passion

Last Supper
Arrest
Trial

Before Pilate

Empty tomb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Empty tomb most often refers to the tomb of Jesus which was found
to be empty by the women who were present at Jesus’ crucifixion.
They had come to his tomb to anoint his body with spices. These are
things his close disciples should have done, but Mark portrays Jesus’
female followers as consistently showing more faith and courage than
the men.

The gospels report the incident with slight variations. Although Christ's
body is said to have been laid out in the tomb after crucifixion and
death, the tomb is found to be empty, the body gone, and a young
man or angel(s) within the tomb tells the women that Christ has
risen.

[1]

These accounts lead to beliefs concerning the Resurrection of

Jesus. According to all four gospels, the empty tomb led to the
revelation of Jesus' resurrection, implicitly in the canonical Gospel of
Mark (without the later endings) and explicitly in the other three
canonical gospel narratives.

Contents

1 Agreements and differences in the gospels
2 The visitors
3 The time
4 Resolving differences
5 The tomb
6 The grave clothes
7 The four accounts
8 Cultural background and parallels
9 See also
10 References

Agreements and differences in the gospels

All four gospels agree in their emphasis upon the event taking place on the
first day of the week and that those who found the tomb empty were
women, all give prominence to "Mary" and attention to the stone that had
closed the tomb. They do not appear to agree on the time at which the
women visited the tomb, the number and identity of the women, the
purpose of their visit, the nature and appearance of the messenger(s),
whether angelic or human, their message to the women and the response
of the women to the visitor in the tomb.

[1]

The account of (John 19:39-42 (http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?
passage=John%2019%3A39-42;&version=ESV;) ) tells of the

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Flagellation
Crown of Thorns
Via Dolorosa

Crucifixion and Death
Burial
Resurrection
Appearances
Ascension

Hypotheses

Instrument of crucifixion
Resurrection
Stolen body
Swoon
Vision
Lost body

Holy Week

Palm Sunday
Maundy Thursday
Good Friday
Easter

Miscellaneous

Atonement
(substitutionary)
Crucifixion eclipse
Empty tomb
Roza Bal
Talpiot Tomb

Other Views

Ahmadi
Islamic

intervention of influential followers of Jesus, such as Nicodemus and
Joseph of Arimathea, who take Jesus' body down from the cross and lay
him in a tomb. The account is marked by a sense of urgency in doing this
before the coming festival of the Sabbath, during which rest would be
observed and no work could occur. It was necessary to use a tomb
already prepared; the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, the Jews, knowing of Jesus' claim of
resurrection placed a Jewish guard to guard the tomb of Jesus
(Matthew 27:62-66 (http://www.biblegateway.com/bible?
passage=Matthew%2027%3A62-66;&version=ESV;) ).

The visitors

The four canonical gospels all agree that "Mary" visited Jesus' tomb,
though they differ on which Mary and whether she was on her own.

According to most ancient versions of the gospel of John (and most
modern translations) Mary was Mary Magdalene , though the Codex
Sinaiticus' version only calls her Mary. No other woman is mentioned
explicitly, though when Mary says that she doesn't know where Jesus'
body is, she uses the plural, which may indicate that there were other
women with her.

In the Gospel of Mark both Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of
James are mentioned, joined by Salome.

[2]

The gospel according to Luke relates that the women from Galilee
visited the tomb and 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 Magdalene is with another Mary, presumably the
mother of James.

When the women came back from the cemetery on Passover morning,
they brought with them word of an empty tomb and the report that "He is
not here but has risen!" The apostles were dismissive. Some have
suggested a lack of enthusiasm because the messengers were women.
Josephus (Ant. iv.:8:15) writes that Jewish tradition stated: "From women
let not evidence be accepted because of the levity and temerity of their
sex." Theologian Thomas G. Long has offered two other possibilities
besides their sex;

Perhaps the news of the empty tomb, the resurrection, of Jesus'
victory over death was simply too overwhelming for them to
believe, too difficult to assimilate all at once.
Perhaps any anticipation of the resulting challenge was too great at
the moment. Luke's account shifts from calling them "the Eleven" to
"the Apostles" ("those who are sent.") Long writes they knew that they would be sent to Jerusalem,
Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. There would be arrests and shipwrecks, outpourings of the

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Spirit, persecutions and Gentiles, stonings and miles of weary travel. If the women were right—that Jesus
was risen from the dead, then the story was just beginning for the Apostles.

[3]

The time

According to John the visit was on the first day of the week (Sunday, the day after Shabbat, the end of the
Jewish week), while it was still dark. According to Mark and Luke it was light. 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, while later copyists substituted Mary Magdalene so that the gospel according to
John matched accounts given in the other gospels more closely. An attempt at resolving the discrepancy in order
to preserve the idea of infallibility describes Mary 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 to continue the Jewish burial rituals. Matthew merely
says that they came just to look at the tomb. John makes no mention of ritual and the apocryphal, heterodox
Gospel of Peter claims that she came to mourn. Rabbi Bar Kappara was of the opinion (recorded in the
Midrash Rabbah) that the third day was often the prime point for mourning in those days.

Resolving differences

Resolving the accounts is a matter tied to the synoptic problem. The prevailing theory of Markan priority would
suggest that the original story had a mysterious man in white in the tomb. In Matthew he becomes an angel and
in Luke, written for a non-Jewish audience, he becomes two angel-like men. In John's gospel this part of the
account is omitted. Most Christians and scholars before the discovery of the Secret Gospel of Mark tend to the
view that the figure was an angel. It is not possible to tell whether the "angels" supposedly were in the form of
men.

Wetstein has advanced a thesis linking the pair of angels to the pair of criminals who were crucified alongside
Jesus. Raymond Brown has argued that the text for John 20 was combined from two separate sources, that
John inexpertly interlaced together. The narrative in John between Mary discovering that the tomb is open and
later witnessing angels inside it, is considered by some to be misplaced: it seems illogical for Mary not to have
looked into the tomb the first time and her presence at the tomb when she witnesses the angels seems somewhat
abrupt when the intervening narrative last mentions her some distance away.

Scholars; L. Michael White and Helmut Koester see the account of the guards in Matthew as an apologetic
insertion, an attempt by the writer to explain the Jewish claims that the disciples stole the body; which were
circulating at the time.

[4][5]

The guards and the stolen body claims are not mentioned in the other three gospels.

The apocryphal Gospel of Peter, on the other hand, is more detailed, specifying "Petronius the centurion with
soldiers to guard the tomb".

The tomb

In John, the angels are described as sitting where Jesus' body had been, thought to be a reference to squatting
or sitting cross legged, suggesting that the tomb possessed a raised shelf or ledge, on which the body had been
placed. F. F. 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

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Tomb of Jesus, Church of the Holy
Sepulchre, venerated by some
Christians as the place where Jesus
was buried.

accessed via doors at ground level which 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. Mary is able to see into Jesus' tomb from the outside suggesting the former type. This is
considered a traditional view.

The grave clothes

According to both Luke and John, the disciples see grave clothes in the tomb. Luke states that strips of linen
were "lying alone", or "laid by themselves", per the Greek, keimena
mona, although the NRSV translation uses the phrase--"by
themselves"—instead of "alone", and omits the word, "lying". John
states that they were "lying", or, per the NRSV, "lying there". These
two descriptions may or may not imply the same thing. Brown has
argued that John is using a 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
described in the Bible, though some works of the New Testament
apocrypha do make mention of it. A Roman Catholic tradition
describes the shroud as being taken to Turin, becoming the Turin
Shroud.

John additionally describes the presence of a soudarion, for the head,
that was set apart. A soudarion 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 Sudarion 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, the fact 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 implies the opposite - that someone took the clothes
off in an ordinary manner; furthermore, the Greek text uses the word, entetuligmenon, "having been folded up",
seeming to imply some intentional action had been taken on the soudarion . Some

[citation needed]

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, The possibility that Jesus passed through cloth and dematerialized has frequently been
regarded as evidence of divine action by God. This interpretation, however, was not one that existed in the early
church, which viewed such interpretations as docetism. Those advocating a more supernatural account have
argued that the fact that the soudarion and the other grave clothes were set apart merely reflects the distance of
the neck as it is situated between the head and the body, 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. Some see this as a very clear
attempt by John to rule out docetism.

The level of detail that the author of the Gospel According to 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 what a modern author adds to a fictional account to give it a feeling of verisimilitude, and that 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

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dénouement. Schnackenberg interprets the level of detail as apologetic in origin, though he does regard the
details concerning the placement of the grave clothes to be an attempt to disprove the allegation that Jesus' tomb
had simply been robbed, rather than as an attempt to assert a Christology.

A side issue is whether abandoning the grave clothes meant that the risen Jesus was naked, a view held for
example by Kastner.

The four accounts

According to Mark, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome find that the tomb has
been opened:

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome
bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the
week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who
will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw
that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they
saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He
has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and
Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to
anyone, because they were afraid.

— Mark 16:1-8 (NIV)

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:

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going
to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his
clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became
like dead men. The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are
looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and
see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead
and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you.

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his
disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet
and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go
to Galilee; there they will see me."

— Matthew 28:1-10 (NIV)

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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.

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had
prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when
they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about
this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright
the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do
you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told
you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands
of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " Then they remembered his
words.

— Luke 24:1-8 (NIV)

The gospel of John contains the most complete narrative including the appearance of Jesus:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb
and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon
Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of
the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" So Peter and the other disciple
started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the
tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then
Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen
lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded
up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first,
also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that
Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she
wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus'
body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, "Woman, why are
you crying?" "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have
put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that
it was Jesus.

— John 20:1-13 (NIV)

By comparison, the apocryphal Gospel of Peter describes two men carrying a third out of the tomb, with
a cross following them and speaking:

And in the night in which the Lord's day was drawing on, as the soldiers kept guard two by
two in a watch, there was a great voice in the heaven; and they saw the heavens opened, and
two men descend with a great light and approach the tomb. And the stone that was put at the
door rolled of itself and made way in part; and the tomb was opened, and both the young

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Major events

Jesus' life

in the

Gospels

Nativity of Jesus
Baptism
Temptation
Ministry
Commissioning apostles
Sermon on the Mount
Rejection
Transfiguration

men entered in.

When therefore those soldiers saw it, they awakened the centurion and the elders, for they
too were close by keeping guard. And as they declared what things they had seen, again they
saw three men come forth from the tomb, and two of them supporting one, and a cross
following them. And the heads of the two reached to heaven, but the head of him who was
led by them overpassed the heavens. And they heard a voice from the heavens, saying, You
have preached to them that sleep. And a response was heard from the cross, Yes.

— Gospel of Peter, 9-10

[6]

Cultural background and parallels

For many people of antiquity, empty tombs were seen as signs not of resurrection but of assumption, that is, the
person being taken bodily into the divine realm. In Chariton’s ancient Greek novel Callirhoe, Chaereas finds his
wife’s tomb empty and "All kinds of explanations were offered by the crowd, Chaereas, looking up to heaven
and stretching up his hands said 'Which of the gods has become my rival and carried off Callirhoe and now has
her instead of me, against her will but constrained by a better fate?'"

[7]

In Ancient Greek thinking, the connection

between postmortem disappearance and apotheosis was strong and there are numerous examples of individuals
conspiring, before their deaths, to have their remains hidden in order to promote their postmortem
venerations.

[8]

Arrian wrote of Alexander the Great planning his own bodily disappearance so that he would be

revered as a god.

[9]

Disappearances of individuals to be taken in the divine realm also occur in Jewish

literature,

[8]

although they do not involve an empty tomb. Smith has recently proposed that the empty tomb

stories in the gospels reflect traditions about Jesus' absence or assumption, in contrast to the resurrection
appearance stories which were about Jesus' presence. He concludes that the gospel writers took the two
traditions and weaved them together.

[8]