The Empty Tomb and the Shroud of Turin

This page is best understood by first reading the introduction on the home page for this site

An open, empty tomb does not fully answer our questions about the resurrection of Jesus. The classical arguments remain. But they are harder to defend if we assume -- or if we infer -- or if we conclude -- that the shroud is genuine. The classic arguments are:

• The body was stolen by some of Jesus followers.

• Jesus followers went to the wrong tomb.

• Jesus was only temporarily buried and Joseph and Nicodemus moved the body to another tomb, something the disciples were unaware of.

• The whole story of the empty tomb is fiction. A modern variation of this hypothesis is that Jesus was not even buried (Crossan, Borg, Spong).

• Jesus did not die on the cross (Swoon Theory) and recovered, which accounts for the post-resurrection appearances.

For Christians, the New Testament is still the best evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. But in this age of science and historical revisionism, the trustworthiness of the New Testament, the Gospels in particular, is constantly being challenged.

The Shroud of Turin, if it is real and if it is treated as an archeological artifact in the same way that the Dead Sea Scrolls and many finds in Israel,  becomes additional data in support of the biblical accounts of what happened.

The argument that the whole story is made up, that Jesus’ followers went to the wrong tomb, or that Jesus wasn’t even buried cannot account for the shroud. What would the shroud be doing in the wrong tomb?

The argument that Jesus’ followers stole his body or that the body was moved is a bit more complicated. We need to consider the customs of religious Jews of Jesus’ era. The best information for this is the rabbinical literature of the second century, specifically the Mishnah. Certain expectations about defilement and respect for the dead come into play making it difficult to imagine that Jesus’ followers stole or moved the body. They would not have left the bloodstained shroud behind. Today in Israel, following terrorist attacks, Zihui Korbanot Ason volunteers scrape up spilled blood from streets and sidewalks so that the dead can be buried in full accordance with Jewish tradition, traditions that have their roots in this era. If Jesus was moved he would have been moved enshrouded. If he was reburied his shroud would have been reburied with him.