The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Both Jewish and Roman sources and traditions admit an empty tomb.
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel.
Here's the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He had been bodily raised from the dead and appeared to them.
On that Sunday morning the first thing that impressed the people who approached the tomb was the unusual position of the one and a half to two ton stone that had been lodged in front of the doorway.
I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'
The whole earth is the tomb of heroic men and their story is not given only on stone over their clay but abides everywhere without visible symbol woven into the stuff of other mens lives.
Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection.
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.
Reading the epitaphs, our only salvation lies in resurrecting the dead and burying the living.