The tomb found empty by women
Research gradeProbable
Mark tells the discovery plainly. The women came to anoint the body and heard: "Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him" (). The first witnesses were women, a feature the pagan critic Celsus later used to mock the story; a story invented to persuade would hardly have chosen them. Mark's short, unadorned account, which the later Gospels kept expanding, "looks like a memory Christians sought to upgrade", in Allison's words. The earliest Jewish reply did not say the body was still in the tomb, but that "His disciples came by night, and stole him away" (), which assumes the tomb was empty.
Probable, raised from uncertain once the evidence on Roman burial practice had been read in full. The rating covers the discovery of an empty tomb, not the cause.
Explore the counterarguments
Mark, written some 35 to 45 years later, is the first explicit account, and Paul never mentions the empty tomb. Tomb robbery was a known problem in the region, and the bodies of the violently killed were sought for magic, so theft is an ordinary way a tomb could be found empty, though no theft is recorded here. The Jewish counter-claim may answer the Christian story rather than first-hand knowledge of the tomb.