Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Another phenomenon points in the same direction and can substantiate what has been said thus far. We have seen that the appearances before the Twelve began in Galilee. On that basis we would have to assume that the original community assembled in Galilee and remained there. A number of scholars have, in fact, posited an original Galilean community in addition to the one in Jerusalem, but that has remained simply a postulate; thus far it has been impossible to offer historical proof of an initial community on the Sea of Galilee.

We are, however, faced with the fact that Peter, the Twelve (without Judas Iscariot, of course), and other disciples were in Jerusalem, at the latest on Pentecost. There, and not in Galilee, the first community gathered, and at first it was firmly tied to Jerusalem. Peter and the other disciples did not remain in Galilee. How can we explain their return to the capital city, which was still so dangerous for them?

A primary reason must have been the centering of the end-time events in the holy city, which was a matter of course in Jewish thought. It was from Zion that the conclusive gift of salvation would emanate, and from Jerusalem judgment and resurrection would take their beginning. It must therefore have been almost a necessity for the disciples in Galilee, when they saw the general resurrection of the dead beginning in their visions of the Risen One, to wait for those events in Jerusalem and nowhere else. So, at the latest in time for the feast of Pentecost, they returned with the other pilgrim caravans to the capital city, gathered together, and awaited the progress of the end-time events.

The Empty Tomb

Indeed, there may have been another reason for this return, in addition to the impulse given by the appearances of the Risen One: in all probability not all the disciples had fled to Galilee. Individuals among Jesus’ followers and sympathizers had stayed in the capital city, especially those who were less threatened or whose families were resident in Jerusalem. We have firm evidence that a group of women remained in the city; these included Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:1; cf. Acts 1:14). On the morning of the first day of the week these women went to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body. They probably wanted to make up for what Joseph of Arimathea had been unable to do because of lack of time.¹¹ But they sought in vain for Jesus’ corpse; they found the tomb empty.

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.