Empty Tomb
This is a story of the Resurrection and the empty tomb understood by a self-proclaimed amateur theologian, me who warrants absolute truthfulness of the story.
In Jerusalem 2000 years ago, the Jewish religious authority charged Rabbi Jesus with blasphemy meaning that he acted as if he was God. The Roman soldiers killed him on the cross as a criminal on the Friday before the Passover. Joseph of Arimathea, a member of Sanhedrin which is the Jewish high court, obtaining the permission of Pilate, the then Roman Governor, pulled the dead body of Jesus down from the cross and buried him in his private unused tomb under the guard of the Roman soldiers. On the first Sunday morning, it was found by the women followers that Jesus’ corpse disappeared and the tomb was empty.
The reaction to the empty tomb heated up in Jerusalem. The Jews and Christians were diametrically opposite in their arguments. Here is an argument written by Matthew (Mett. 28:13):
Christians: The Lord is risen.
Jews: Jesus is stolen.
Christians: The guards were watching the tomb.
Jews: The guards fell asleep.
The stolen Jesus story was needed for both the Roman occupiers and the Jewish leaders to keep the country as usual as status quo so that taxes are collected with no interruption to the Rome and revenues are secured for the Temple authority. They were political and religious power in Jerusalem and in Judea. The veracity of the stolen Jesus was secondary to them. The Judea and the Roman empire are long gone, but still the mystery of the empty tomb is as fresh as yesterday. No contemporary natural scientist, or historian has reportedly found the cause of the empty tomb yet and probably will never find by their methods only.
The Jesus followers on the other hand had experienced very unusual things. Jesus appeared in the day light after the Sunday to talk, touch, and eat together with them, but not all the time. The appearance of Jesus was not in personal basis, but in public all together so that anyone who happened to be in the scene could see Jesus. It was not just a visionary thing, but the physical appearance of Jesus. When we say that one is spiritual, we mean that he is a physical person, whose action is motivated by the spirit. By the same token, when Jesus was said spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:44), the meaning is that the body of the risen Jesus was there with the spirit, not spirit only. Jesus was not seen in a vision like in a movie. Jesus appeared in real not just one time but in multiple times in forty days. These appearances transformed the followers’ lives to spread the resurrection story and to build the Christianity to the end of the world. These are witness stories majority of theologians today support as reliable.
The resurrection story is the most unbelievable, but the most fascinating story ever told, written, and studied in the history of mankind. The Bible, especially Psalm, Prophets, eyewitnesses, and Revelation, is clear about what happened to the empty tomb. (August 21, 2013, KYP)
