That, at any rate, is what Mark says in 16:1-8. His account has repeatedly been called into question. Even in the first century the empty tomb was interpreted as a fantastic invention, a shameless fraud, or a simple mistake. Since the eighteenth century the empty tomb has had it even worse. Enlightened minds repeatedly declare it a legend or part of a great myth.
It is true that the tomb story contains fictive elements. The longer the story was told, the more they multiplied. The “stone rolled away” in Mark becomes in Matthew “an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, [who] came and rolled back the stone and sat on it” (Matt 28:2). Mark’s one angel becomes two in Luke (Luke 24:4). And the apocryphal Gospel of Peter describes how Jesus himself emerged from the tomb; his form reached not only to heaven, but beyond (GosPet 10:39-40).
But I do not see myself in a position to call the whole story that lies behind Mark 16:1-8 a fiction. There are elements in it that still bear the whiff of real events.
First of all, there is the burial by Joseph of Arimathea and thus certain knowledge of the location of the tomb. That knowledge cannot have vanished from the minds of the original Jerusalem community.
Then there is the date: the first day of the week. That day would from that time forth play an extraordinary role in the history of the church: the first day of the Jewish week became the Christian Sunday, the “day of the Lord.” In the Jewish method of counting this was the “third day” after Jesus’ death. The very oldest creedal formula we have speaks of Jesus’ being raised “on the third day” (1 Cor 15:4). Where does that date come from? It is not “spun out” of the Old Testament, e.g., from Hosea 6:2,12 nor does it date the first appearances of the Risen One. The dating on the “third day” can only come from events that took place at the tomb.
We should also note that anyone inventing a story from beginning to end would have been very unlikely to make women the witnesses to an empty tomb. In the Judaism of that time women were not proper witnesses, as is abundantly clear from the resurrection traditions. According to Luke the apostles considered the women’s report of the empty tomb “an idle tale”; they did not believe them (Luke 24:11). The following is also very revealing in this context: the attestation of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 speaks only of men, naming Cephas, James, the Twelve, and more than five hundred “brothers.” There were most certainly women among those five hundred, but they are not mentioned. Why? Because they were not regarded as qualified witnesses. Likewise unnamed in 1 Corinthians 15 is Mary Magdalene, although Matthew, John, and the “canonical ending” of Mark make it known that she had a vision of the Risen One at the tomb.13 Luke says nothing about her vision; instead, in his account Peter runs to the tomb to seek proof of the women’s testimony (Luke 24:12). All this shows how little value was placed on women’s witness in the milieu of the time. From that point of view it is improbable that the early church would have invented a tomb story as a sign of Jesus’ resurrection in which women appeared as the witnesses.
Finally, we should observe that there was polemic opposition to the story of the empty tomb. Significantly, that polemic never disputes the fact of the empty tomb as such; it is only reinterpreted: the disciples stole Jesus’ body or a gardener had transferred it to another tomb.14 All this presupposes an empty tomb. This supports the historical basis of the tomb story and speaks against the assertion sometimes heard that Jesus was tossed into a mass grave or that his tomb was unknown.
So, until there be proof to the contrary, we should posit an empty tomb that became a sign15 and a signal for the disciples remaining in Jerusalem. Reports would then have been transmitted to and from Galilee. The coincidence of visionary experiences and the empty tomb led the disciples to a single interpretation of the Easter event, summarized in the statement “God has raised Jesus from the dead.” The news of the empty tomb must at first have strengthened the apocalyptic expectations of the Galileans, because the spontaneous opening of graves was part of the general resurrection of the dead. At the same time, however, this news strengthened their resolve to return to the capital.
It has probably become clear long since that this chapter is attempting to make the elevated eschatological expectations of the disciples after Easter the key to the sequence of Easter events. I do believe that without the end-time atmosphere I have described we can neither correctly order nor understand the sequence of events following immediately on the death of Jesus. Here is another example.
The Election of Matthias
In Acts 1:15-26 Luke writes that the first order of business within the community was the choice of Matthias to join the group of the Twelve, which was incomplete as a result of Judas’s betrayal. We have no reason to question the very ancient tradition on which Luke relies for his account of this election. What is crucial to note is that there was never another such election afterward. It might have seemed like a good thing to augment the Twelve each time one of its members died and so continue the group as such. But that simply did not occur. Why? The information that the Twelve gradually came to play less and less of a role as a leadership group for the earliest community may not suffice as an explanation. Why did they so rapidly cease to play that role? Apparently because it was not their proper work. The original function of the Twelve within the earliest community was eschatological and can be read in Matthew 19:28: “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
During Jesus’ lifetime the Twelve were an institutionalized sign of Jesus’ focus on the whole of Israel. He made them the official witnesses of his message and the personal symbol of the claims of the reign of God on the whole people of the twelve tribes. That was already a clearly eschatological function, one whose symbolic language was irrevocably linked to the number twelve. If the eschatological-symbolic function of the Twelve with respect to Israel continued after the death of Jesus—and the appearances of the Risen One must certainly have suggested that—then the group of the Twelve had to be augmented and made complete again precisely because of the approaching end-time events. Only in the number twelve was the sign visible, and only in the full power of the sign could the Twelve be witnesses for the Son of Man to Israel at the immediately approaching last judgment.
This offers the simplest explanation for why the group of the Twelve, though quickly restored to its full complement after Jesus’ death, was not further augmented in later years: the first and only election took place in that particular historical phase of the earliest community when the disciples’ expectations of the end had reached their highest degree of intensity. Again it proves to be a valid principle to regard the movements and activities within the earliest community entirely from the point of view of their highly expectant consciousness of the end time.