Who is Jesus?

Is the empty tomb evidence for the resurrection?

The short answer

Yes, the empty tomb is an important piece of the evidence, though not the whole of it. That the tomb was found empty is widely accepted, in part because it was first reported by women, whose testimony a fabricator in that culture would not have chosen, and because Jesus' opponents never produced his body to end the movement. The empty tomb needs explaining, and combined with the many who saw Jesus alive, the resurrection accounts for it best.

An empty tomb by itself does not prove a resurrection; a body could in principle be moved. Its force comes from the details around it and from what accompanied it.

Signs that the report is genuine

The Gospels say women discovered the empty tomb. In that setting, a maker of legends would have chosen respected male witnesses, since women's testimony was widely discounted. Recording the women instead is an awkward detail that points to honest memory rather than invention. It is the kind of thing you keep only because it is true.

“He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”
Matthew 28:6

The silence of the opponents

The movement was proclaimed in Jerusalem, steps from the tomb. The simplest way to crush it would have been to display the body. That never happened. Instead the earliest counter-claim was that the body had been stolen, which itself concedes the tomb was empty. Something had to account for that emptiness, and the many eyewitnesses of the living Jesus point to what.

It comes back to Jesus

The empty tomb is one thread; the appearances of the risen Jesus are another; the transformed disciples are a third. Pulled together, they point beyond an unexplained absence to a living presence. Look at the whole picture, and consider whether the man who left that tomb empty might be exactly who he said he was.

Enter Living Breadprayer, Scripture, a family near you