JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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It is estimated that there were at least fifty tombs of holy men during the time of Jesus in
Jerusalem that were sites of religious veneration. The location of Jesus' tomb, therefore, would
have been carefully noted by His followers in order to venerate Him after His death. Yet there is
no evidence that His tomb was ever a site of veneration.31 The obvious explanation for this is
that His tomb was empty.
Scholars are generally agreed that Jewish beliefs about the afterlife included the concept
of a physical resurrection of the body.32 This involved a continuity with the body that a person
had before death. This is one of the reasons why Jewish religion, unlike most other religions, has
such a high regard for the human body. Jewish New Testament scholar Pinchas Lapide has
examined the various schools of Jewish thought during and prior to New Testament times, and
all schools agreed in holding to a notion of physical resurrection.33 Even though the Sadducees
denied the resurrection altogether, even they agreed that if there was a resurrection, it would be
bodily. Lapide concludes: "Any life in general was conceived of as bodily and spatial."34
British New Testament scholar James Dunn has shown that this view of the afterlife is
confirmed by archeological discoveries about some first-century Jewish customs.35 During
Jesus' time, it was common to visit a loved one's tomb about a year after his burial to gather up
the bones and put them in an ossuary. This practice was tied to the belief that the bones should be
kept together, so that in the resurrection God could easily use them to reconstruct the body. This
testifies to the belief that the resurrection body had some continuity with the body a person had
before his death.
Theologians Jurgen Pannenberg and Paul Althaus agree that the proclamation of the
resurrection in Jerusalem so soon after Jesus' death (most likely within seven weeks) is very
significant. Within the earliest Christian community there must have been a reliable testimony to
the empty tomb. Had there been no empty tomb, there would have been no belief in a
resurrection and no preaching of the resurrection. Thus, the early preaching is evidence that the
tomb was empty. Pannenberg also observes that in the Jewish polemic against the Christian
message of Jesus' resurrection there is no claim at all that Jesus' grave was not empty.36
A theory that used to be quite popular was the so-called "swoon theory." This holds that
Jesus did not really die on the cross but rather swooned and therefore was believed to be dead
and thus He was buried alive. However, in the cool temperature of the tomb He revived, moved
the stone, and appeared to a crowd as having risen from the dead. Such an outlandish explanation
is untenable for several reasons.
In the first place, it is difficult to believe that a Roman guard entrusted with the execution
could be fooled in such a way. Secondly, it is highly improbable that the spear thrust into Jesus'
side would not have killed Him even if He had been swooning. Thirdly, how likely is it that a
weak person who has barely survived a gruesome whipping and crucifixion could have moved a
large stone and overcome Roman guards? Not only that, but then He would also have convinced