He never ...

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in Munich, fresh with a master of arts degree from Trinity Evagelical Divinity School and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Birmingham in England, is where Craig studied the Resurrection for the first time, while earning another doctorate, this one in theology from the University of Munich, later he taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and then served as a visiting scholar at the Higher Institute of Philosphy at the University of Louvain near Brussels, his books include Reasonable Faith; No Easy Answers; Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection; The Only Wise God; The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe; and (with Quentin Smith) Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, published by Oxford University Press, he also contributed to The Intellectuals Speak Out About God; Jesus Under Fire; In Defense of Miracles; and Does God Exist?, in addition, his scholarly articles have appeared in such journals as the New Testament Studies; Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation; and Philosophy, he is a member of 9 professional societies, including the American Academy of Religion and the American Philosophical Assocation, while he is internationally known for his writings about the intersection of science, philosophy and theology, he needs no prompting to discuss the subject that still makes his heart beat fast: the Resurrection of Jesus

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before looking at whether the tomb of Jesus was empty, we need to establish whether his body had been there in the first place, history tells us that as a rule, crucified criminals were left on the cross to be devoured by birds or were thrown into a common grave, this has prompted John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar to conclude that Jesus' body probably was dug up and consumed by wild dogs, based on these customary practices, wouldn't it be admitted that this is most likely what happened? if all you looked at was customary practice, yes, Craig would agree, but that would ignore the specific evidence in this case, ok, then let's look at the specific evidence, pointing out an immediate problem: the gospels say Jesus' corpse was turned over to Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the very council - the Sanhedrin - that voted to condemn Jesus, that's rather implausible isn't it? no, not when you look at all the evidence for the burial, for one thing, the burial is mentioned by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, where he passes on a very early creed of the church, which has already been described in some detail by Dr. Craig Blomberg, Craig agrees with Blomberg that the creed undoubtedly goes back to within a few years of Jesus' crucifixion, having been given to Paul, after his conversion, in Damascus or in his subsequent visit to Jerusalem when he met with the apostles James and Peter, the first passage: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ..." the creen then goes on to list several appearances of the resurrected Jesus, this creed is incredibly early and therefore trustworthy material, essentially, it's a 4 line formula, the first line refers to the Crucifixion, the second to the burial, the third to the Resurrection and the fourth to Jesus' appearances, as you can see, the second line affirms that Jesus was buried, wait a minute, he may have been buried, but was it in a tomb? and was it through Joseph of Arimathea, this mysterious character who comes out of nowhere to claim the body? this creed is actually a summary that corresponds line by line with what the gospels teach, when we turn to the gospels, we find muliple, independent attestation of this burial story, and Joseph of Arimathea is specifically named in all 4 accounts, on top of that, the burial story in Mark is so extremely early that it's simply not possible for it to have been subject to legendary corruption, how can we tell it's early? 2 reasons, first, Mark is generally considered to be the earliest gospel, second, his gospel bascially consists of short anecdotes about Jesus, more like pearls on a string than a smooth continuous narrative, but when you get to the last week of Jesus' life - the so-called passion story - then you do have a continuous narrative of events in sequence, this passion story was apparently taken by Mark from an even earlier source - and this source included the story of Jesus being buried in the tomb

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Mark's says that the entire Sanhedrin voted to condemn Jesus, if that's true, this means Joseph of Arimathea cast his ballot to kill Jesus, isn't it highly unlikely that he would have then come to give Jesus an honorable burial? Luke may have felt this same discomfort, which could explain why he added one important detail - Joseph of Arimathea wasn't present when the official vote was taken, so that would explain things, but the significant point about Joseph of Arimathea is that he would not be the sort of person who would have been invented by Christian legend or Christian authors, why not? given the early Christian anger and bitterness toward the Jewish leaders who had instigated the crucifixion of Jesus, it's highly improbable that they would have invented one who did the right thing by giving Jesus an honorable burial - especially while all of Jesus' desciples deserted him! besides, they wouldn't make up a specific number or a specific group, whom people could check out for themselves and ask about this, so Joseph is undoubtedly a historical figure, if this burial by Joseph were a legend that developed later, you'd expect to find other competing burial traditions about what happened to Jesus' body, however, you don't find these at all, as a result, the majority of New Testament scholars today agree that the burial account of Jesus is fundamentally reliable, John A. T. Robinson, the late Cambridge University New Testament scholar said the honorable burial of Jesus is one of the earliest and best-attested facts we have about the historical Jesus, these explanations satisfy that Jesus' body was indeed placed in Joseph's tomb, but the creed left an ambiguity; perhaps even after the Resurrection, his body remained entombed, while the creed says Jesus was crucified, buried and then resurrected, it doesn't specifically say the tomb was empty, doesn't this leave room for the possibility that the Resurrection was only spiritual in nature and that Jesus' body was still in the tomb? the creed definitely implies the empty tomb, you see, the Jews had a physical concept of resurrection, for them, the primary object of the resurrection was the bones of the deceased - not even the flesh, which was thought to be perishable, after the flesh rotted away, the Jews would gather the bones of their deceased and put them in boxes to be preserved until the resurrection at the end of the world, when God would raise the righteous dead of Israel and they would come together in the final kingdom of God, in light of this, it would have been simply a contradiction of terms for an early Jew to say that someone was raised from the dead but his body still was left in the tomb, so when this early Christian creed says Jesus was buried and then raised on the third day, it's saying implicitly but quite clearly: an empty tomb was left behind

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now we've heard convincing evidence that Jesus had been in the tomb, it seems important to know how secure his grave was from outside influences, the tighter the security, the less likely the body could have been tampered with, how protected was Jesus' tomb? Craig describes how this kind of tomb looked, as best as archaeologists have been able to determine from excavations of 1st century sites, there was a slanted groove that led down to a low entrance, and a large disk shaped stone was rolled down this groove and lodged into place across the door, a smaller stone was then used to secure the disk, although it would be easy to roll this big disk down the groove, it would take several men to roll the stone back up in order to reopen the tomb, in that sense it was quite secure, however, was Jesus' tomb also guarded? some skeptics have attempted to cast doubt on the popular belief that Jesus' tomb was carefully watched around the clock by highly disciplined Roman soldiers, who faced death themselves if they failed in their duty, only Matthew reports that guards wre placed around the tomb, but in any event, the guard story is not considered to be an important facet of the evidence for the Resurrection, for one thing, it's too disputed by contemporary scholarship, it's prudent to base arguments on evidence that's most widely accepted by the majority of scholars, so the guard story is better left aside, doesn't that weaken the case? no, frankly, the guard story may have been important in the 18th century, when critics were suggesting that the disciples stole Jesus' body, but nobody espouses that theory today, when you read the New Testament, there's no doubt that the disciples sincerely believed the truth of the Resurrection, which they proclaimed to their deaths, the idea that the empty tomb is the result of some hoax, conspiracy or theft is simply dismissed today, so, the guard story has sort of become incidental

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is there any good evidence that the guard story is historical? yes, there is, think about the claims and counter-claims about the Resurrection that went back and forth between the Jews and Christians in the 1st century, the initial Christian proclamation was, "Jesus is Risen." the Jews responded, "The disciples stole his body." to this Christians said, "Ah, but the guards at the tomb would have prevented such a theft." the Jews responded, "Oh, but the guards at the tomb fell asleep." to that the Christians replied, "No, the Jews bribed the guards to say they fell asleep." now, if there hadn't been any guards, the exchange would have gone like this: in response to the claim, "Jesus is Risen.", the Jews would say, "No, the disciples stole his body." Christians would reply, "But the guards would have prevented the theft." then the Jewish response would have been, "What guards? You're crazy! There were no guards!" yet history tells us that is not what the Jews said, this suggests the guards really were historical and that the Jews knew it, which is why they had to invent the absurd story about the guards having been asleep while the disciples took the body, there seems to be another problem here, why would the Jewish authorities have placed guards at the tomb in the first place? if they were anticipating a resurrection or the disciples faking one, this would mean they had a better understanding of Jesus' predictions about his resurrection than the disciples did! after all, the disciples wre surprised by the whole thing, maybe they placed the guards there to prevent any sort of tomb robbery or other disturbances from happening during Passover, we don't know, that's a good argument: it's granted full force, but it's not thought to be insuperable, but it does raise some question concerning the guard story, Matthew says the Roman guards reported to the Jewish authorities, but doesn't that seem unlikely, since they were responsible to Pilate? if you look carefully, Matthew doesn't say the guards are Romans, when the Jews go to Pilate and ask for a guard, Pilate says, "You have a guard." now, does he mean, "All right, here's a detachment of Roman soldiers." or does he mean, "You've got your own temple guards, use them." scholars have debated whether or not it was a Jewish guard, initially it was thought that the guard was Jewish, it's been rethought however, because the word Matthew uses to refer to the guards is often used with respect to Roman soldiers rather than just temple officers, and remember, John tells us it was a Roman centurion who led Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus under the direction of Jewish leadership, so there is precedent for Roman guards reporting to Jewish religious leaders, it seems plausible that they could also be involved in the guarding of the tomb, weighing the evidence, one can be persuaded that the guards had been present, now it's time to confront what seems to be the most persuasive argument against the idea that Jesus' tomb was empty on Easter Morning

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through the years, critics of Christianity have attacked the empty tomb story by pointing out apparent discrepancies among the gospel accounts, for example, Charles Templeton said recently, "The 4 descriptions of events ... differ so markedly at so many points that, with all the good will in the world, they cannot be reconciled." taken at face value, this objection seems to penetrate to the heart of the reliability of the empty tomb narratives, consider this summary by Michael Martin of Boston University:

In Matthew, when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrived toward the dawn at the tomb there is a rock in front of it, there is a violent earthquake, and an angel descends and rolls back the stone. In Mark, the women arrive at the tomb at sunrise and the stone had been rolled back. In Luke, when the women arrive at early dawn they find the stone had already been rolled back. In Matthew, an angel is sitting on the rock outside the tomb and in Mark, a youth is inside the tomb. In Luke, two men are inside. In Matthew, the women present at the tomb are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In Mark, the women present at the tomb are the 2 Marys and Salome. In Luke, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna and the other women are present at the tomb. In Matthew, the 2 Marys rush from the tomb in great fear and joy, run to tell the disciples and meet Jesus on the way. In Mark, they run out of the tomb in fear and say nothing to anyone. In Luke, the women report the story to the disciples who do not believe them and there is no suggestion that they meet Jesus.

and Martin points out that John conflicts with much of the other 3 gospels, he concludes, "In sum, the accounts of what happened at the tomb are either inconsistent or can only be made consistent with the aid of implausible interpretations." in light of all this, how in the world can the empty tomb story be considered to be credible? with all due respect, Michael Martin is a philosopher, not a historian, and it is not thought he understands the historian's craft, for a philosopher, if something is inconsistent, the law of contradiction says, "This cannot be true, throw it out!" however, the historian looks at these narratives and says, "I see some inconsistencies, but I notice something about them: they're all in the secondary details." the core of the story is the same: Joseph of Arimathea takes the body of Jesus, puts it in a tomb, the tomb is visited by a small group of women followers of Jesus early on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion and they find that the tomb is empty, they see a vision of angels saying that Jesus is risen, the careful historian, unlike the philosopher, doesn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, he says, "This suggests that there is a historical core to this story that is reliable and can be depended upon, however conflicting the secondary details might be." so, we can have great confidence in the core that's common to the narratives and that would be agreed upon by the majority of New Testament scholars today, even if there are some differences concerning the names of the women, the exact time of the morning, the number of the angels and so forth, those kinds of secondary discrepancies wouldn't bother a historian, even the usually skeptical historian Michael Grant, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and professor at Edinburgh University, concedes in his book Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, "True, the discovery of the empty tomb is differently described by the various gospels, but if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was, indeed, found empty

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sometimes during criminal trials, two witnesses can give the exact same testimony, down to the nitty-gritty details, only to find themselves ripped apart by the defense attorney for having colluded before the trial, if all 4 gospels were identical in all their minutiae, that would have raised the suspicion of plagiarism, the differences between the empty tomb narratives suggest that we have multiple, independent attestation of the empty tomb story, sometimes people say, "Matthew and Luke just plagiarized from Mark." but when you look at the narratives closely, you see divergences that suggest even if Matthew and Luke did know Mark's account, nevertheless they also had separate, independent sources for the empty tomb story, so with these multiple and independent accounts, no historian would disregard this evidence just because of secondary discrepancies, here is a secular example: we have 2 narratives of Hannibal crossing the Alps to attack Rome, and they're incompatible and irreconcilable, yet no classical historian doubts the fact that Hannibal did mount such a campaign, that's a non-biblical illustration of discrepancies in secondary details failing to undermine the historical core of a historical story, aren't there some ways to harmonize some of the differences between these gospel accounts? yes, there are, for example, the time of the visit to the tomb, one writer might describe it as still being dark, the other might be saying it was getting light, but that's sort of like he optimist and the pessimist arguing over whether the glass was half empty or half full, it was around dawn, and they were describing the same thing with different words, as for the number and names of the women, none of the gospels pretend to give a complete list, they all include Mary Magdalene and other women, so there was probably a gaggle of these early disciples that included those who were named and probably a couple of others, it would be pedantic to say that's a contradiction, what about the different accounts of what happened afterward? Mark said the women didn't tell anybody and the other gospels say they did, when you look at Mark's theology, he loves to emphasize awe and fright and terror and worship in the presence of the divine, so this reaction of the women - of fleeing with fear and trembling, and saying nothing to anyone because they were afraid - is all part of Mark's literary and theological style, it could well be that this was a temporary silence, and then the women went back and told the others what had happened, in fact, it had to be a temporary silence; otherwise Mark couldn't be telling the story about it! Jesus said in Matthew 12:40, "For as Jonah was 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be 3 days and 3 nights in the heart of the earth." however, the gospels report that Jesus was really in the tomb 1 full day, 2 full nights and part of 2 days, isn't this an example of Jesus being wrong in not fulfilling his own prophecy? some well meaning Christians have used this verse to suggest Jesus was crucified on Wednesday rather than on Friday, in order to get the full time in there! but most scholars recognize that according to early Jewish time-reckoning, any part of a day counted as a full day, Jesus was in the tomb Friday afternoon, all day Saturday and on Sunday morning - under the way the Jews conceptualized time back then, thise would have counted as 3 days, again, that's just another example of how many of these discrepancies can be explained or minimized with some background knowledge or by just thinking them through with an open mind

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the gospels agree that the empty tomb was discovered by women who were friends and followers of Jesus, but, that, in Martin's estimation, makes their testimony suspect, since they were "probably not objective observers", does the women's relationship with Jesus call the reliability of their testimony into question? actually, this argument backfires on people who use it, certainly these women were friends of Jesus, but when you understand the role of women in 1st century Jewish society, what's really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women as the discoverers of the empty tomb in the first place, women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in 1st century Palestine, there are old rabbnical sayings that said, "Let the words of the Law be burned rather than delivered to women" and "Blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female", women's testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren't even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of law, in light of this, it's absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women who were friends of Jesus, any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb - Peter or John, for example, the fact that women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb is most plausibly explained by the reality that - like it or not - they were the discoverers of the empty tomb! this shows that the gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened, even if it was embarrassing, this bespeaks the historicity of this tradition rather than it's legendary status

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why were the women going to anoint the body of Jesus if they already knew that his tomb was securely sealed? do their actions arelly make sense? Craig strongly feels that scholars who have not known the love and devotion that these women felt for Jesus have no right to pronounce cool judgements upon the feasibility of what they wanted to do, for people who are grieving, who have lost someone they desperately loved and followed, to want to go to the tomb in a forlorn hope of anointing the body - it's just not thought that some later critic can treat them like robots and say, "They shouldn't have gone." maybe they thought there would be some men around who could move the stone, if there were guards, maybe they thought they would, certainly the notion of visiting a tomb to pour oils over a body in a historical Jewish practice; the only question is the feasibility of who would move the stone for them, and we're not in the right position to pronounce judgement on whether or not they should have simply stayed at home

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if you go to the internet sites of several atheist organizations to see the kinds of arguments they are raising against the Resurrection, you'll find that for some reason few atheists deal with this topic, but an objection raised by one critic needs to be addressed, essentially he said a major argument against the empty tomb is that none of the disciples or later Christian preachers bothered to point to it, he wrote, "We would expect the early Christian preachers to have said: You don't believe us? Go look in the tomb yourselves! It's at the corner of Fifth and Main, 3rd sepulcher on the right." yet, he said, Peter doesn't mention the empty tomb in his preachings in Acts 2, concluded this critic, "If even the disciples didn't think the empty tomb tradition was any good, why should we?" that is just not believed to be true, in the second chapter of Acts, which records Peter's sermon at Pentecost, the empty tomb is found in Peter's speech, he proclaims in verse 24 that "God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death." then he quotes from a psalm about how God would not allow His Holy One to undergo decay, this had been written by David, and Peter says, "I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is there to this day." but, he says, Christ "was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life and we are all witnesses to the fact." this speech contrasts David's tomb, which remained to that day, with the prophecy in which David says Christ would be raised up - his flesh wouldn't suffer decay, it's clearly implicit that the tomb was left empty, turning to a later chapter in Acts, 13:29-31, Paul says, "When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb, but God raised him from the dead, and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem." certainly the empty tomb is implicit there, it's rather wooden and unreasonable to contend that these early preachers didn't refer to the empty tomb, just because they didn't use the 2 specific words empty tomb, there's no question that they knew - and their audiences understood from their preaching - that Jesus' tomb was vacant