Historian Maurice Casey on the Pauline tradition in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 and the empty tomb of the historical Jesus

When I began to research the topic of the historical Jesus, one of the things that surprised me was the good evidence in favour of the empty tomb story and above all the bad objections against it. Also, and contrary to my expectations, I was schoked to discover that most scholars who write about the topic (including anti-Christian, atheists, jewish, agnostic, etc.) accept that the empty tomb of Jesus is a historical fact.

Despite of the evidence in its favor, some few scholars still remain skeptical or it.

One of the standards arguments against the empty tomb is that in Paul's earliest tradition, the empty tomb is not mentioned. 

In the earliest tradition of 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5, Paul writes:

For I passed on to you as of the first importance what I also received-- that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Note that the earliest Christian proclamation included 3 propositions:

1-That Christ died for our sins

2-That he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures

3-That he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

Note that Paul doesn't mention explicitly the empty tomb. But does it justify concluding, on historical grounds, that the empty tomb was not historical? Can a resurrection (in the Jewish-Christian sense of bodily resurrection) occur without the empty tomb? 

Well, in his modestly entitled book "Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching", historian Maurice Casey casts doubt on the empty tomb story.

Casey comments that "the Pauline tradition is that there is no mention of an empty tomb" (p.458).

But as William Lane Craig has argued:

We have seen that the second line of this [1 Corinthians 15: 3-5] saying refers to the burial of Jesus in the tomb. When Paul says "He was raised", this therefore implies that the tomb was left empty. (The Son Rises, p.66)

Craig's argument is that Paul's tradition in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-5 presents a temporal and sucesive sequence of events, from Jesus' death to Jesus' apparitions. In between, Jesus was buried and THEN he was raised. Craig's argument is that empty tomb is implied, because the same body which was buried is the same body which was resurrected (because we are talking of a bodily resurrection of the dead, not simply of the soul's immortality).

Now Casey is skeptical of this argument. In reply to Craig, Casey writes:

Some scholars have argued that the empty tomb is implied by the information "he was buried"...  For example, Craig comments that "in saying that Jesus died--was buried--was raised--appeared, one automatically implies that an empty grave has been left behind". This reflects Craig's own beliefs rather than those of Paul and the Second Temple Jews, and his supporting arguments are extraordinary weak. (p.458)

But Craig's argument doesn't reflects simply his own beliefs. On the contrary, such arguments reflects the beliefs of Paul and the first century Jews, who believed in a bodily resurrection (not in a immaterial one).

According to liberal New Testament scholar Dale Allison:

 there is no good evidence for belief in a non-physical resurrection in Paul, much less within the primitive Jerusalem community... Even Paul, in 1 Cor 15, when defending the notion of a "spiritual body", teaches -like Bar 51:10- the transformation of corpses, not their abandonment" (Resurrecting Jesus, p. 317)

Given that Paul's own view is that a resurrection affects the physical body, it is impossible that Paul held the resurrection of Jesus without implying the empty tomb. The corpse which was buried is the same which was raised, and this implies (as Craig correctly notes) the empty tomb, regardless of whether any mention of it is done explicitly by Paul.

In fact, perhaps Paul didn't mentioned the empty tomb precisely because it was obvious that a "resurrection" implies the empty tomb and there is not point in stressing this obvious fact. Only a 20th or 21th century "independent" scholar would ask the silly question "Does the resurrection imply an empty tomb?". This question would sound ridiculous to first century Jews who believed in bodily resurrections, not in non-physical resurrection (a contradiction in terms).

Let's to see an analogy (a crude one, I concede):

 

When I say "Hey, I sent you an e-mail yesterday", I'm implying that I was connected to the internet in the moment when I sent it (otherwise it would impossible to me to send it). I don't need to explicity say, let alone to stress, that I had an internet connection which allowed me to send the e-mail to you. The single fact that the e-mail was received sufficed to prove my internet connection. I assume that everybody, specially the one to whom I'm sending the e-mail, understand that and no more clarification is needed.

Only a person unfamiliar with internet and online communication (or someone incredibly stupid or retarded) would remain skeptical of me having an internet connection in the moment of sending the e-mail.

When studying the New Testament material, we have to keep in mind the full context and culture of first-century Judaism, the fact that Jesus and his first followers were monotheistic Jews, and the religious categories, idioms and expressions typical of that time. It is an egregious mistake to try to interpret that material in terms of our contemporary culture, sensibilities, fashions and prejudices of the men of the 21th Century.

In this sense, as Allison observes, among Jews, no other concept of resurrection besides the physical one existed. Therefore, when speaking about resurrection in that Jewish context, the empty tomb is implied, regardless of whether it is mentioned explicitly or not. Stressing the lack of mention of the empty tomb, bypassing the full context of the meaning of the resurrection,  only reflects the scholar's superficiality and unability to put himself in the shoes of a first century Jew.

So, far from just reflecting his own beliefs, Craig's arguments for Paul implying the empty tomb (and other evidences for it) are among the best and most convincing arguments of contemporary New Testament scholarship (arguments which, I repeat, have convinced most of scholars who write about this topic). 

  

Moreover, not just Paul implies the empty tomb, also there are other evidences explicitly supporting the historicity of the empty tomb, and this is precisely what makes the evidence for the empty tomb pretty good.  For this reason, even many skeptical scholars, atheists and critics of Christianity affirm the historicity of the empty tomb. 

For example, agnostic Bart Ehrman writes in one of his scholarly work:

the earliest accounts we have are unanimous in saying that Jesus was in fact buried by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, so it's relatively reliable that that's what happened. We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later" (From Jesus to Constantine: Lecture 4, the teaching company, 2003).

Another secular historian, Michael Grant, comments:

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 (Jesus, An Historian’s Review of the Gospels, p. 176).

A popular, non-technical and very easy to understand presentation of the main historical arguments of contemporary scholarship for the historicity of the empty tomb (and reply to some common objections), are summarized in William Lane Craig's book The Son Rises, Chapter 3.