Introduction: The Burial of Christ and Veneration of Tombs
The historicity of the burial and empty tomb of Jesus are widely discussed in historical conversation pertaining to the resurrection of Christ. Though some apologists no longer include these details in their repertoire of “minimal facts” [1], the majority of commentators feel bound to provide either an affirmative or negative evaluation of the data [2]. All too customary in such dialogues is the absence of archeology regarding the traditional site of Christ’s tomb, namely the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Why there is such silence on the topic escapes me. If inauthentic, not much is lost to those who affirm the burial and/or empty tomb narrative, as such data is usually argued independently of the site’s validity. However, if the site has a decent probability of being authentic, this evidently helps bolster the historicity of the burial of Christ.
Quite alien is the predicate that often the site is almost presupposed to be irrelevant in conversations of the resurrection; indeed, it seems that whenever veneration of Christ’s tomb is discussed, it is stated in the negative. “If the tomb was known to be empty, why was it not venerated early on?” Many have attempted to argue that Jesus's tomb was never venerated after his death, which would be unusual for a respected Jewish figure. [3] This itself would be peculiar, since it was extremely common to venerate the tombs of Jewish teachers and prophets. Jesus himself even alludes to this in Matthew 23:29, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous”. Some propose that this could be because Jesus's burial was shameful; and thus would be embarrassing for the Christian community.[4] This is unlikely; if Second Temple Judaism tells us anything, martyrs were highly esteemed post-mortem. Jews revered the burial sites of the Maccabean martyrs [5] as well as prophets killed by the unjust rulers of Israel. Christians didn’t seem to mind shameful executions by earthly rulers either. If anything, they lauded them, holding up martyrdom as worthy of honor. According to the Christian historian Hegesippus, who gives an expanded version of an account found in Josephus, James the brother of Jesus was killed by the Sanhedrin and buried near the Temple mount in a marked earth grave, "He was buried on the spot, by the Sanctuary, and his [head]stone is still there." [6] John the Baptist, despite his execution via Herod’s sword, was given a proper burial by his followers (minus his head), if Matthew 14:12 is to be believed. There are several dispute sites where John’s head is said to be venerated. I see no reason to not expect the same for Jesus.
Thus, scholars such as Gerd Lüdemann [7] and Dale Martin [8], among others, see this as surefire evidence that Christ’s tomb was not empty. If the grave was vacant, it would have been important to the early movement affirming bodily resurrection, and if it was important, surely it would have been venerated. Thus, the argument goes, the fact that it wasn’t venerated means it wasn’t empty.
This is not overly persuasive, and as a fated sense of trenchancy, it is becoming that many advocates for the authenticity of the burial and empty tomb come to the exact adverse conclusion. They suggest that the lack of veneration is actually evidence for an empty tomb, since there were no bones to venerate in the first place [9]. After all, why revere a location if the body of Christ failed to occupy the spot? The empty tomb is not a spot of adulation for the dead but a sign that death has been defeated. The word’s of the angel in Luke 24: 5-7 may represent the earliest attitudes of the church, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!”
This too rings implausible to my ear. The burial of Christ was present in all of the earliest kerygma, and consistently found among major Christian creeds. Paul states that Jesus’s burial (1 Cor. 15: 4) is among that which is of “first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3) to the Christian community. Mark 16: 6-7 follows a similar pattern, with Jesus dying, being buried, being risen, and appearing in that order. The creeds in Acts 13:28-31 likewise reflect this fortitude, and Acts 2:29 almost comes off as inviting the inhabitants of Jerusalem to visit the burial site of Jesus like they would the grave of King David, “his tomb is still with us to this day.” To say that Christ’s place of burial lacked significance to the early Christians seems premature. One would think that if the empty tomb was evidence for Jesus's resurrection, the Church would have been all too happy to preserve the location for apologetic reasons.
Given that there is, at least prima facie, reason to surmise that early Christians would be interested in veneration, what of our status for the empty tomb of Jesus? The following will argue that we may very actually have the authentic burial site of Christ, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Though it would be impractical to “prove” the site’s traditional attribution as legitimate, various lines of evidence provide us reasons (not indisputable data, but helpful clues) that such attribution may have quite a bit going for it.
Archaeological and Historical Considerations
Located in the Northwest corner of Old City portions of Jerusalem, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is said to be built on top of the site of Jesus's tomb, and remains one of the most sacred religious sites in the world today. After the conversion of Constantine in the 4th century AD, the emperor sent his mother Helena to Jerusalem to find the traditional sites associated with Jesus Christ. After convening with the local Bishops of the city, Helena was pointed to a temple dedicated to a Roman Deity constructed around 135 AD; the church leaders informed her that the Roman Emperor Hadrian had deliberately built the temple over Jesus's tomb a century earlier because Christians were venerating the site as the tomb of Christ. Hadrian saw this as an opportunity to establish dominance over the local Christians, snuffing out their influence in the region by overtaking their most esteemed holy site. Constantine ordered that the temple be destroyed, where it was revealed that there may have been some accuracy to the bishop’s original claim: there did indeed lie a tomb below the foundation of the structure, a cave without a corpse to house. A church was built over the tomb, being completed c. 335 AD. The relic has become a pilgrimage site ever since, going through multiple vandalisms and reconstructions throughout the Crusades and medieval turmoil in Jerusalem. [10]
A rough chronology of the traditions pertaining to the burial of Jesus can be constructed:
c. 50 AD, Paul’s mention of the burial in 1 Cor. 15:4, quoting from an early creed that probably dates back within a few years of the death of Jesus in the early 30s AD.
c. 70 AD, much of Jerusalem and its architecture is destroyed in the Jewish War.
c. 70-100 AD, the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is detailed in all four Gospels .
c. 135 AD, Emperor Hadrian constructs a temple over a site where Christians venerate the alleged site of Jesus’s burial.
c. 330-335 AD, Helena and Constantine, after speaking with the Jerusalem bishops, knock down the temple to uncover a tomb, and construct a Church on top of it.
Unlike the vast majority of ancient relics associated with Christ, which are typically based on next to no hard evidence and show no signs of originating from the first century, the traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre has many lines of evidence that imply its authenticity. They are as follows: 1) the site originally was outside the walls of Jerusalem during Jesus's time, 2) the tombs surrounding the site are the same kind and age as described in the Gospel narratives, and 3) the lack of deauthenticating factors that would hurt the credibility of the site.
Argument 1: The Proximity to the Walls of Jerusalem
When the tomb of Christ was first reported as being under Hadrian's temple, doubt was raised, as the temple lay inside the walls of Jerusalem, rather than outside. This is problematic; all of our sources for the death of Jesus explicitly state that He was executed outside the city gates (Jn. 19:20; Heb. 13:12), as was standard in Jerusalem in order to preserve the sanctity of the land and prevent residents from coming in contact with dead bodies, per Jewish cleanliness laws (cf. Lev. 14:40-41, 45; Jer. 22:19).
Yet further excavations by Basil Hennesey between 1964-1966 revealed that the site of the Sepulchre actually remained outside the Second Walls of Jerusalem during the time of Christ, with the current walls that encompass the site not being constructed until around a decade after the crucifixion.[11] The original set of walls had been expanded by King Herod Agrippa c. 41-44 AD,and were completed before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, during which they were completely destroyed. [12]
This is significant. Had the site been a later, legendary retroaction in an attempt to venerate a spot that had no initial significance, it would be expected that Jesus's tomb would be outside Jerusalem's expanded wall rather than its original wall. The location of the Second Wall was unknown after Herod’s expansion and its eventual destruction during the fall of Jerusalem. Did 2nd century Christians merely pick a spot within the ruins of the Third Walls and happen to get lucky by venerating a site that possessed archeological verisimilitude that would not be known until much later? Perhaps, though the better explanation is the one given by the Bishops of Jerusalem: the site was preserved in memory through the chain of command of each succeeding church leader, from the time of Christ to the era of Constantine [13]
If the tradition was formed before the expansion of the Second Walls, then this indicates that the memory of the Holy Sepulchre likely dates to around the 40s AD, as the site of the original walls was lost later on to make way for the new set of walls. This is largely considered the best piece of evidence in favor of the site's authenticity. The Encyclopedia Britannica emphasizes this point, "the site of the church lay just outside the city wall in the time of Jesus, and this could be the actual place of his Crucifixion and burial. No rival site is supported by any real evidence." [14]
Argument 2. The Presence of 1st Century Tombs
In excavations within the last half-century, it has been demonstrated that the site of the Holy Sepulchre is surrounded by other tombs, suggesting that the area was a common Jewish cemetery.[15] Though the rock itself is quite old, the actual carving methods used to hollow out the tombs dates to the first century. Tombs in the 2nd Temple Period typically consisted of a few forms: [16]
Earth graves, in which the common people would be buried in a shroud and/or coffin
Cist graves, also reserved for the average Jew. Though they were holes in the ground like earth graves, they were carved from rock and were more sturdy than their non-stone counterparts.
Kokhim tombs, which were large family-tombs meant to house several generations. These often contained trenches/niches in the ground to place the body for preparation. Sometimes the body would then be placed horizontally within loculi (a narrow crevice in the wall) that was then plugged with a stone, similar to modern-day mausoleums. Only one corpse could fit into a single loculus, but the tomb would contain several loculi.
Arcosolia and quadrosolia tombs, which like the kokhim tombs were very large and could house many people within a family. These structures are notable for their inclusion of the burial bench.A straight ceiling above the bench was a quadrosolia tomb, whereas beaches with a curved archway above them denoted an arcosolia (though arcosolia models post-date the time of Jesus).
Much can be inferred from the Gospel’s description of Christ’s grave: it is rock hewn tomb, owned by a wealthy family, large enough to be able to enter (Lk. 24:3, Jn. 20:5-6, 8), and likely had some kind of bench or niche to place a body on (as implied by the description of the body’s placement in Jn. 20:12) This is most consistent with either a kokhim or quadrosolia tomb. However, it is unlikely that the body of Christ was already sealed with a kokh (loculus), as it would be impossible to see from the the chamber entrance. The burial clothes could clearly be seen (Lk. 24:12, Jn. 20:5-6) , as well as the bench/niche in which the body had been temporarily laid. (Jn. 20:12). Therefore this seems to have been either a quadrosolia tomb, or a kokhim tomb with a bench to place the body prior to its internment in a loculus. [17] The meaning of καινῷ αὐτοῦ μνημείῳ (new tomb) and οὐδεὶς οὔπω κείμενος (no one had yet been laid) per Matthew 27:60 and Luke 23:53 is not overly clear; considering that tombs of this kind were generational, it is very improbable that the tomb was completely unused. Perhaps the emphasis on the precise location of Jesus within the burial place is meant to distinguish him from other bodies in the tomb. [18] It is possible that the Gospels authors have in mind not the newness of the tomb itself, but of the recentness of the particular niche that the corpse would be placed in. As Jodi Magness proposes, “The "new" tomb mentioned by Matthew apparently refers to a previously unused loculus.” [19]
This level of detail cannot be overlooked. The cemetery excavated underneath and around the site of the Holy Sepulchre are indeed graves of this caliber; large, 1st century rock-hewn tombs containing both loculi and quadrosolia have been found. [20] The most well-known of these has been appropriately named “the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea”, though the evidence that that particular tomb belonged to Joseph is next to null. Commentators have noticed this verisimilitude, "Joseph’s tomb is described as being a bench or acrosolia tomb...Near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site for Jesus’s grave, acrosolia tombs have been found." [21] Funerary structures have also been found both underneath and around the site that date to around the time of Jesus's ministry and crucifixion. [22]
The presence of other hollowed out tombs near the site of Golgotha is consistent with the Gospel’s depiction of Joseph burying the martyred Nazarene. If Joseph was burying Jesus shamefully as a criminal, then the site could have been a set of tombs reserved for criminals (hence why they were near the site of execution) per the graveyards mentioned in Mish. Sanh. 6.5-6.6. [23] If Joseph was providing Christ with an honorable burial in his own tomb as the Gospel of Matthew states (27:60) then this could have been a Pharisitic cemetery reserved for the elite, which would be in line with Joseph’s role as a rich man (Matt. 27:57) and a member of the Sanhedrin (Mk. 15:43, Lk. 23:51). The latter seems more likely; with the exception of the crucified Jeohannan, there is a starking lack of evidence that condemned criminals were buried in above-earth rock tombs. [24] Joseph is likewise in the Gospels said to anoint the body of Jesus with expensive perfume and oil, hardly the treatment given during a dishonorable burial. [25] If then Jesus was buried honorably (or at least quasi-honorably) by Joseph in his own family tomb, then this would best explain why the quarries unearthed around the site of the Holy Sepulchre are 1st century acrosolia tombs that likely belonged to wealthy families.
A summary: Israeli archeology confirms that the site of the Holy Sepulchre was originally within a Second Temple Jewish cemetery, a cemetary that, given the luxurious nature of the tombs, undoubtedly housed wealthy families. Does this prove that this location marked the spot in which Joseph buried Jesus? Hardly, but it is at the same time exactly what we would expect to find if the site was in fact authentic and in line with the Gospel records.
 |
| Kokhim tombs found underneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre |
Lack of Deauthenticating Features
The criterion of the “lack of deauthenticating features” may seem strange, treating the site as innocent until proven guilty. It is not in itself an argument to say “you cannot disprove this, therefore its true.” The burden of proof can be a stubborn construction indeed. Yet in the realm of archeology this principle is important; when details in a text, especially rather specific details, match up well with archeology, that is a sign of confirmation. Certainly this is paramount by the reality that we have plenty of examples of archeology disproving certain claims. Josephus for example is quite infamous for exaggerating numbers, and excavations in places like Galilee prove that he was overestimating the number of inhabitants by a substantial amount. [26]
Compare for example the traditional site of Jesus’s grave to its competitors. Some alternative sites for Jesus's grave have been suggested, such as the Garden Tomb and Talpiot Tomb, both found in Jerusalem. Humorously, there is even a site claiming to be the burial place of Jesus in Japan. However, these locations have been almost unanimously rejected by scholars and archaeologists, who instead favor the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the genuine tomb due to the archaeological evidence supporting it. [27] The Garden Tomb for example can be proven to be far too old to be a new sepulchre as the Gospels describe, dating to the First Temple period. [28] The Talpiot tomb has a number of features that render it astronomically unlikely to be the grave of Jesus of Nazareth; during a conference on the tomb, 48 out of 50 of archeologists and scholars rejected the site as authentic. We have no such defeaters for the Holy Sepulchre, and as discussed above, there are a number of features that act as positive evidence in support of the site’s authenticity.
The absenteeism of evidence against the Holy Sepulchre is not itself a proof. At the same time, it does render outright rejection of the site as an epistemically unjustified position, especially given how we have seen archeology handedly falsify other alleged sites of Christ’s final resting place. This is not hard evidence on either side, but it does put the ball in the opposition’s court. If there is a burden of proof to disprove the site, I see no good strategy here. Jerusalem archaeologist Dan Bahat summarizes this sentiment quite adequately, "We may not be absolutely certain that the site of the Holy Sepulchre Church is the site of Jesus' burial, but we certainly have no other site that can lay a claim nearly as weighty, and we really have no reason to reject the authenticity of the site."[29]
Affirmation by Scholars
One should always be leery in appealing to majority rule and consensus as an argument; after all, if one disagrees with the methodology utilized to reach conclusions within the field, then consensus will not be able to plug a leaky ship within scholarship. Conversely though, general agreement among credentialed experts is not worthless. What are the general scholarly attitudes towards the site’s authenticity?
Surprisingly this question yields an answer not often seen in New Testament scholarship: agreement. To be sure, the vast majority of New Testament historians have failed to comment on the site, in either affirmation or opposition. Though there is debate as to the nature of Jesus’s burial, the existence of Joseph of Arimathea, and the historicity of the empty tomb narrative, the question of the Holy Sepulchre almost never comes up. We can’t know the majority opinion simply because so few have even given their opinion to begin with.
There does however seem to be quite wide agreement from archeologists excavating in the Jerusalem area that the site, whether it is authentic or not, has a sporting chance at being legitimate. Virtually all (that I am aware of) who have expressed their opinion concede that it is moderately probable that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could indeed be the site of Jesus's burial, as the tradition is seemingly very early and presupposes the location of the original walls instead of the later walls. The only specialists who disputed the site did in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, before most of the major excavations revealed just how consistent the site was with the Gospel descriptions. The vast majority of experts today now seem quite optimistic. Many fawning comments seem to be quite approving of authenticity,
Kristen Romey (archeologist and paleontologist with National Geographic)- "While it is archaeologically impossible to say that the tomb recently uncovered in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the burial site of an individual Jew known as Jesus of Nazareth, there is indirect evidence to suggest that the identification of the site by representatives of the Roman emperor Constantine some 300 years later may be a reasonable one."[30]
Dan Bahat (Jerusalem archaeologist)- "We may not be absolutely certain that the site of the Holy Sepulchre Church is the site of Jesus' burial, but we certainly have no other site that can lay a claim nearly as weighty, and we really have no reason to reject the authenticity of the site."[31]
Katharina Galor (archeologist and historian) holds that the validity of the site cannot be discounted or refuted on archaeological grounds. [32]
Amos Kloner (Jerusalem archeologists)- In response to the question “Which site has the most archeological evidence of being the tomb of Jesus”, Kloner responded, “Definitely the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” [33]
Shimon Gibson (Jerusalem archeologist)- “I think we have to accept that the tradition relating to the position of the tomb of Jesus, situated under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the actual spot [of Jesus’s tomb].” [34]
Jodi Magness (Jerusalem archeologist), “According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus was crucified and buried outside the walls of the city. Because we have what is clearly a Jewish cemetery [at the site of the Holy Sepulchre] at the time of Jesus, this is the best archeological evidence we have that this site was located outside the walls of the city, and therefore indirectly it verifies the Gospel accounts.” [35]
Of particular agreement is New Testament scholar Craig Evans, a specialist in Jewish burial practices, who has said the authenticity of the cite is "probable". [36], Historian Dale Allison accompanies this by exclaiming “There is a real chance that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on the site of Jesus’s burial.”[37] The verbiage here is appropriate; “probable” and “real chance” seem just about right. History rarely grants us the gift of certainty, with most of historicity of the events within the ancient world ranging on a careful scale: 1) virtually impossible, 2) highly unlikely, 3) more improbable than not, 4) balanced/equally as likely as unlikely, 5) more probable than not, 6) highly likely, and 7) virtually certain.
Here I think the Holy Sepulchre’s legitimacy falls under spot number five, “more probable than not.” As with any proposition, here I can of course give the advocatus diaboli. There are at least some suggestions raising questions to the authenticity of the Church, mainly the strange lack of textual attestation for the first 300 hundred years of its existence. Paul and the Gospels, despite mentioning Jesus’s burial, never care to emphasize the location as being known in their day. This raises an eyebrow, for along with Acts 2:29, the appeal to locations or traditions as continuing to be relevant in the author’s day is a prevalent theme in both the Old (Gen. 19:37; 22:14; 26:33; 32:32; Josh. 7:26; 9:27; 1 Chron. 4:43) and New Testament ( 1 Cor. 15:6; Matt. 27:8; 28:15). One could easily imagine one of the Gospel authors ending their exclamation of the resurrection by proclaiming, “And the tomb is still there to this day.” Yet this is not what our sources report. Was the site truly forgotten by the time the Gospels were constructed, perhaps due to Jerusalem’s fall? Or did the authors simply not yield ministration? What if John Dominic Crossan is correct to suggest that those who knew of the burial didn’t care, and those who cared did not know of its whereabouts? [38] We have no real way of ascertaining this either way.
To contrast, though this argument is by no means unforceful, its force is palliated by the robust archeology aligning with the site’s location. It may be relinquished that it is surprising that an authentic site could escape historical record for so long, especially in places where its mention would be expected; the argument also works in the inverse though, as it is also very flabbergasting that an inauthentic site would manage to get so many things right! The question is then posed: which of these surprises is harder to explain? I am inclined to think the latter. Though the silence of the early Church is considerable, it is ultimately just that- an argument from silence. There are at least plenty of other examples in history where known events go strangely unmentioned in places where a citation would be predicted. [39] I am however unaware of any demonstrably inauthentic relic or archeological site that manages to have as much verisimilitude as the Holy Sepulchre. Therefore I will surmise, with some degree of hesitancy, that agnosticism on the matter may too be stringent: the evidence weighs more heavily in favor of the site’s authenticity than its illegitimacy.
Implications
If the Holy Sepulchre were in fact the authentic burial site of Jesus, what would this mean for future discourses pertaining to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ? A few points come to mind:
If the site’s location was preserved at or prior to the expansion of the Second Wall in 40 AD, then it is likely that early Christians already circulated the tradition that he was buried in a rock-hewn tomb in the days of Paul. While the apostle’s use of ἐτάφη, that he was buried, in 1 Cor. 15:4 does not necessitate burial in a tomb, it also does not contradict it. This adds to the probability that Paul had in mind tomb burial, as paralleled in Acts 13:29.
Though the authenticity of the site does not prove undoubtedly that Jesus was buried in the tomb of a wealthy Sanhedrin member (nothing short of a label, plaque, or etching within the tomb could prove that), it is nonetheless perfectly consistent with the preclusion. It does nothing to add doubt to the narrative, and if anything increases the probability that the tradition of Joseph’s role as undertaker may go back to historical reminiscence. The consistency of the archeology with the Gospel narrative could theoretically be coincidence, though likelihood ratios imply something more deliberate.
If Jesus was buried in a rock-hewn tomb as the archeology of the site suggests, then this would almost certainly falsify the notion some have raised that Jesus would never have received a proper burial to begin with (because most crucifixion victims allegedly didn’t receive proper burial). Other articles on this blog have already refuted this suggestion on textual and archeological grounds, but the Holy Sepulchre would act as perhaps the most definitive argument against the non-burial hypothesis.
Matthew’s discussion of a stolen body polemic in 28:15 is of note; some have hand-waived this claim as worthless given that the date of its origination is unknown.[40] The Jews may not have known where the tomb of Christ was in the 80s AD when Matthew composed his Gospel, and merely threw out such a polemic as a default reaction to a then-unfalsifiable rumor. Yet this rebuttal will not hold if the site was still preserved after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. If Christians were venerating and remembering the site between 40 AD and 135 AD up until Hadrian’s siege of the location, then the spot would be known in local memory by both Jew and Christian alike. Jews in the 80s AD could still visit the site to see whether or not the body remained. The Semitic rebuttal then of a stolen body, rather than a full tomb, presupposes both a known location and admission of the grave’s vacancy.
Lastly and most obviously, there is no body currently residing in the tomb, which acts as a contemporary proof that it is indeed empty. Whether it was originally empty on that fateful Easter morning is hard to say with just the archeological data alone, though it is at least an everlasting testament to part of the Christian’s claim: if Jesus’s body originally occupied the sepulchre, it does so no longer.
Conclusion
After surveying the data, I find myself reaching the same conclusions as Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, "It is not at all unlikely that the early church in Jerusalem did remember the site of Jesus’ burial and that that site is known today. By contrast to hold that the early church in Jerusalem did not know the location of Jesus’ burial would require us to say that the story of Jesus’ burial and empty tomb are late-developing legends, which contradicts the multiple lines of evidence for the earliness of both these traditions."[41] Though Craig is an apologist with conservative leanings, his affirmation of the site’s authenticity is not a sentiment only held by apologists. We will almost certainly never be able to verify with any degree of conviction that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre actually houses the authentic burial site of Jesus Christ. That is to say however, that the evidence for the Church is stronger than most scholars and laymen realize. If the probability of the tomb’s historicity is above 50 percent, as I would argue it is, then it should not be so readily ignored. There is a good chance (perhaps more; perhaps a legitimate probabilistic argument) that historical reconstruction of Jesus’s empty grave may not only be reserved to dissection of the Epistles and Gospels. Maybe, just maybe, we are staring into the caverns of the empty tomb at present.
References
[1] See for example Licona, Michael R. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. Inter-Varisty Press Academic, 2010. Licona does not consider the burial or empty tomb to be “historical bedrock”.
[2] For an overview of scholarly opinion surrounding the empty tomb, see Habermas, Gary. "Resurrection Research From 1975 to the Present: What are Critical Scholars Saying?." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3, no. 2 (2005): 135-153.
[3]Dunn, James D. G. Jesus Remembered. (Grand Rapids, MI:W.B. Eerdmans Pub.) 2003: pg. 837.
[4] McCane, Byron R. “Where No One Had Yet Been Laid’The Shame of Jesus’ Burial.” The Historical Jesus: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies. Vol. III (2004): 253-71.
[5] Obermann, Julian. "The Sepulchre of the Maccabean Martyrs." Journal of Biblical Literature (1931): 250-265.
[6] Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 2.23.15-18.
[7] Lüdemann, Gerd. The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology. Translated by Bowden Fortress. (London: SCM Press) 1994: pg.45.
[8] Debate with Mike Licona and Dale Martin on the resurrection of Jesus, https://youtu.be/oU5z4AlxJ4U. See also Martin’s book The Corinthian Body (Yale University Press, 1999) where he argued that Paul did not accept Christ’s body as leaving the tomb.
[9]See Dunn, James. The Evidence for Jesus Westminster. 1985 and Craig, William Lane. Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus. E. Mellen Press, 1989: pg. 372-373.
[10]For a summary of the tomb’s history and a case for its authenticity, see the following: Taylor, Joan E. "Golgotha: A Reconsideration of the Evidence for the Sites of Jesus' Crucifixion and Burial." New Testament Studies 44, no. 2 (1998): 180-203; Biddle, Martin. The Tomb of Christ. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1999; Stephenson, Paul. Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor. New York: The Overlook Press, 2009; and Murphy-O'Connor, Jerome. "The Argument for the Holy Sepulchre." Revue Biblique (2010): 55-91.
[11] Lecture by Christopher Gornold-Smith, ‘Where is the Tomb of Jesus?’ https://youtu.be/_5VrPlVd72g
[12] Galor, Katharina. Finding Jerusalem: Archaeology between science and ideology. University of California Press, 2017: pg. 137-138.
[13] Gornold-Smith, ‘Where is the Tomb of Jesus?’ He summarizes a list of bishops from c. 30 AD to 135 AD, and a list from 135 AD to the 330s AD, using data from Eusebius.
[14]“Church of the Holy Sepulchre.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, inc., February 1, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/place/Holy-Sepulchre. One online commentator makes this point more explicitly, “Neither Constantine nor the Christians living in Jerusalem in the 4th century could not have known that the site they identified as Jesus’ tomb was outside the city walls in the first century AD, nor that the site was once a garden (Jn 19:41). Only an accurate preservation of the memory of Jesus’ burial site could account for this.” See Thinking to Beieve’s article ‘The Tomb of Jesus’ https://thinkingtobelieve.com/2011/10/06/the-tomb-of-jesus/
[15]Romey, Kristin. “Unsealing of Christ's Reputed Tomb Turns Up New Revelations.” National Geographic, October 31, 2016. The excavation in 2016 also determined that the granite in the Church dated to the time of Constantine. See also Schein, Bruce E. "The Second Wall of Jerusalem." The Biblical Archaeologist 44, no. 1 (1981): 21-26.
[16] For overview of Jewish burial practices and types of entombment, see Magness, Jodi. Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2011; Zias, Joseph. "A Rock-Cut Tomb in Jerusalem." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 245, no. 1 (1982): 53-56; Evans, Craig. "Jewish Burial Traditions and the Resurrection of Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3, no. 2 (2005): 233-248; and Ḥak̲lîlî, Rāḥēl. Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period. Vol. 94. Brill, 2005.
[17] The seemingly unfinished nature of the burial, per Mk. 16:1, could lead credence to the idea that the body lay on a bench inside the tomb, not yet fully interred. For the argument that Jesus’s tomb was a kokhim grave, see Nitowski, Eugenia. “Reconstructing the Tomb of Christ” Ministry Magazine, April 1981. https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/1981/04/reconstructing-the-tomb-of-christ
[18]Goodacre, Mark. "How Empty Was the Tomb?." Journal for the Study of the New Testament 44, no. 1 (2021): 134-148.
[19] Magness, Jodi. "Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James." Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 121-154. pg. 148.
[20] Dan Bahat, “Does the Holy Sepulchre Church Mark the Burial of Jesus? in The Burial of Jesus, Biblical Archaeology Society, Kathleen E. Miller et al, ed., 2007.
[21] Craig, Assessing, pg. 187
[22] Galor, Finding Jerusalem. 138.
[23] Brown, Raymond E. "The Burial of Jesus (Mark 15: 42-47)." The Catholic Biblical quarterly 50, no. 2 (1988): 233-245.
[24] Magness, “Burial of Jesus”, pg. 148, “There is no evidence that the Sanhedrin or the Roman authorities paid for and maintained rock-cut tombs for executed criminals from impoverished families.”
[25] Contra McCane in “Yet Been Laid”, who argued that the honorable elements are later apologetic invention. For response, see Craig, William Lane. "Was Jesus Buried in Shame? Reflections on B. McCane's Proposal." The Expository Times 115, no. 12 (2004): 404-409.
[26] Weiss, Zeev. "Josephus and Archaeology on the Cities of the Galilee." In Making history, pp. 385-414. Brill, 2007. For Josephus’s errency in estimating populations based on water supply, see J. Wilkinson, “Ancient Jerusalem, Its Water Supply and Population”, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 106 (1974), pp. 33–51.
[27] Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Jerusalem: the biography. Knopf, 2011.
[28] Galor, Finding Jerusalem. 138.
[29] Dan Bahat, quoted in Romey, “Unsealing of Christ's Reputed Tomb Turns Up New Revelations.”
[30] Ibid.
[31] Dan Bahat, quoted in Ibid.
[32] Galor, Finding Jeruslem. 138.
[33] Gibson and Kloner state their support for the Holy Sepulchre as likely authentic in the documentary "The Tomb of Jesus Unmasked" https://youtu.be/YuQzVfANJis
[34] Ibid.
[35] Jodi Magness interviewed by Morgan Freeman, see “The Story of God” https://youtu.be/wZORPVmXN7k]
[36] See the lecture "Was The Body of Jesus Placed in a Known Tomb?" by Craig Evans, https://youtu.be/JMd5THZA9-Y
[37] Allison Jr, Dale C. Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and its Interpreters. (Bloomsbury Publishing USA) 2005: pg. 313.
[38] Crossan, John Dominic, and John P. Meier. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. 1991: pg. 394.
[39] For a critique of the argument from silence in historical method, see McGrew, Timothy. "The Argument from Silence." Acta Analytica 29, no. 2 (2014): 215-228.
[40] Lowder, Jeffrey Jay. “A Wigmorean Analysis of the Jewish Hearsay Evidence for the Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus”. Academia. N.d. https://www.academia.edu/67888040/A_Wigmorean_Analysis_of_the_Jewish_Hearsay_Evidence_for_the_Historicity_of_the_Empty_Tomb_of_Jesus. See also Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, pg. 312.
[41] Craig, William Lane. “Local Knowledge of Jesus' Empty Tomb.” Reasonable Faith.https://www.reasonablefaith.org/question-answer/P70/local-knowledge-of-jesus-empty-tomb/.
