Are there Alternative Explanations for the Empty Tomb?

While there are many strong arguments for the existence of God, most (if not all) of these are general and do not support a specific God. It may be possible to show that there was some force or entity external to the universe that set it into motion, but this is nothing more than the God of Deism, an impersonal and largely undefined God. There is a long way yet to go to argue for Christianity.

There are many arguments in favor of Christianity, but the strongest argument is centered on the Resurrection. Paul affirms this in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” If we can be confident that Jesus rose from the dead, this is a solid enough foundation that most (if not all) other challenges will not be enough to topple our confidence in the truth of Christianity.

However, the mere fact that the tomb was empty on Sunday morning is not enough to prove that Jesus rose from the dead. Indeed, there have been numerous alternative theories that we must face before we can assert that the Resurrection is the only plausible explanation.

1. The Conspiracy Theory

According to this theory, the disciples stole Jesus’ body from the tomb in order to fool everyone into thinking He had risen from the dead. Unlike the others, this theory is mentioned explicitly in the New Testament (Matthew 28:13). This would explain the empty tomb as well as the reports of the sightings of Jesus after His death: the disciples did not actually see Jesus but made up all the stories.

There are several problems with this theory:

• There is no explanation of how they got past the guards at the tomb.  
• There was no motive. It’s not as if the disciples gained any popularity, wealth, or political power as a result of proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection. In fact, from a material perspective, their lives became much worse as a result!
• They all refused to recant their claims, even faced with death. No one would die for a lie.

2. The Hallucination Theory

It is obvious from analysis of the Conspiracy Theory that the disciples sincerely believed that Jesus had risen from the dead and could not have made it up. However, many people sincerely believe things that are still false. The Hallucination Theory suggests that the disciples, overcome with grief at the death of their leader, merely imagined that they saw Him.

Problems with this theory include the following:

• Hallucinations are individual events, like dreams. A group of people cannot have the same hallucination at the same time, and yet there are multiple reports in the Gospels of groups of people, even at one point 500 at a single time, seeing Jesus alive.
• The sightings continued over a period of 40 days. Hallucinations generally are isolated events and would not be likely to continue consistently over such a long period of time.
• Since the body would still have been in the tomb in this scenario, it would have been easy for the authorities to show this to be the case and prevent Christianity from ever spreading in the first place.

3. The Swoon Theory

If the disciples weren’t lying or hallucinating, is there any other possible theory that explains the sightings and the empty tomb without accepting that Jesus rose from the dead? In fact, there is. This theory states that Jesus did not completely die on the cross, but was only mistaken as being dead. Once He had lain in the cool, dark tomb for a few days, he was revived and escaped, finding His disciples and proclaiming that He had returned from the dead.

This theory avoids the major problems of the first two, but it actually creates more problems than the other two:

• Anyone who knows the process of crucifixion would rightly doubt that anyone could survive it.
• The Romans were trained killers. It is incredibly unlikely that they could have been mistaken about whether Jesus was dead.
• Lying in a cold, dark tomb without food, water, or medical care hardly seems like the most likely place to recover.
• How would Jesus have single-handedly rolled away the stone and overpowered the guards, especially in His weakened state?
• How would Jesus, considering the state of His body after the crucifixion process, convince His disciples that He was a risen, victorious Savior? Even if He somehow made it this far, it would be very obvious that He was still near death.  

4. The Wrong Tomb

What if the disciples were not lying, didn’t hallucinate, and Jesus was in fact still dead and in the tomb? This is the theory that the disciples were simply mistaken about the tomb in which Jesus was buried. They went to the wrong tomb on Sunday morning, found it empty, and thus began the rumor that Jesus had risen from the dead. At this point desperation is evident, as this theory seems to fall even shorter than the others:

• It doesn’t explain the appearances of Jesus.
• It is nearly impossible that all of the disciples would have been mistaken; surely at least one would have realized the mistake and found the real tomb with Jesus’ body still in it.
• The Roman or Jewish authorities could have easily pointed out the location of the correct tomb and prevented Christianity from ever gaining momentum.

There are additional theories beyond these four, although these are the most commonly heard. I have only dealt briefly with each, so for those who found this interesting, I encourage you to look into the subject further! Books such as The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, The Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Who Moved the Stone? By Frank Morison, and Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace provide much greater detail.

However, I would like to make one more interesting point. The purpose of these theories is to cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus, but not only do they fail to do so, they result in further support of the resurrection. This is because their very existence proves that there was an empty tomb to explain in the first place. Without it, there would have been no need for alternative theories. As a result, it’s completely impossible for anyone to try to argue against the resurrection of Jesus by claiming that the tomb was not empty, and, therefore, the central piece of evidence for the truth of Christianity rests on a solid foundation.