Christian Monthly Standard

Attempts To Explain the Empty Tomb (3)

Some scholars declare that the disciples went to the wrong tomb. Thus, Jesus’ tomb was never empty and Jesus did not really raise from the dead. When the disciples went to the wrong tomb and found it empty, they assumed a resurrection but were mistaken. I would hope that this theory quickly goes against the reader’s logical reasoning process.

Two problems ought to be readily apparent to us. First, do we really want to accept a theory which states that every disciple of Jesus was confused and did not know where his tomb was? The scriptures state, “And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid” (Luke 23:55). Even though the women saw the tomb and where the body of Jesus was laid, the wrong tomb theory suggests that the first century women were stupid to remember three days later where the tomb was. Not only this, we must also accept that the other disciples, including Joseph and Nicodemus who were the very ones who put the body in the tomb (John 19:38-42), forgot which tomb was the correct tomb. Even worse, the tomb that Jesus was laid in was Joseph’s tomb. How could he forget where his own tomb was!!!

But let us go ahead and suppose that all of the disciples of Jesus went to the wrong tomb. When the disciples claimed a resurrection of Jesus, the Jewish leaders would simply have gone to the proper tomb, produced the body, and killed the testimony of the disciples and put an end to Christianity. No one could fabricate a story about a resurrection when the Jewish leaders would have simply shown all the people of Jerusalem where the true tomb sat. It is clear the tomb where the body of Jesus lay was empty.