In AD 30, The Jerusalem Church willed to know where Jesus was buried/laid.1
But, so what? Couldn't it simply be that they couldn't locate Jesus's grave, despite desiring to?2
SECOND: For them, it wasn't hard to know where via the testimony of Jesus' buriers/corpse-handlers. (After all, they were plenty accessible). For example…Stephen Davis (Philosophy & Religion professor at Claremont): “The crucial point here is that the Gospels all claim that the location of Jesus' tomb was known to the women and to the disciples (Mark 15:47; Matt. 27:61; Luke 23:35; John 20:1). This claim is embedded in the story of the burial of Jesus -- which is considered historically credible by the vast majority of scholars…” [Risen Indeed (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993) 74.]
Geza Vermes ([Jewish] Jewish Studies professor at Oxford): “…the fact that the organizer(s) of the burial was/were well known and could have easily been asked for” [The Resurrection (Doubleday, 2008), 143.]THIRD: For them, knowing where via the testimony of AD 30 Jerusalem Jews wasn't elusive (after all, they knew where Jesus was laid).
By AD 40, the Jerusalem Church publicly maintained that “We learned Jesus' grave-location back in AD 30”1
But so what? Couldn't it simply be that…
SECOND: In AD 30, they were also publicly maintaing that other community members (specifically others who were deemed authorities on the subject) learned Jesus's burial location via testimony from the aforementioned witnesses. For example, they maintained that Peter learned the grave-location from the aforementioned Mary Magdalene and her companions. We know they maintained this because it's reported in both Lk (24:12) and Jn (20:2ff), and in general the church's teachings matched Lk's and Jn's. In fact, it was from earlier sources that Lk and Jn inherited their respective reports of this. If that wasn't enough, the most natural candidate source of their information is the Jerusalem church itself.William Lane Craig: “…we’re talking about… when Jesus’ younger brother James was still head of the church in Jerusalem and the apostles were active there.… If James had said that Jesus’ burial place was unknown and his tomb never found, would Mark [and/or Mark's source] have invented his story in opposition to the apostolic testimony?” [Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment, Ed. Copan & Tacelli (IVP, 2000), 173.]
Christians never celebrated/preserved any Jerusalem tomb as the miraculous/sacred site of Jesus's resurrection.1
But so what? Couldn't it simply be that they didn't/wouldn't care to?2
- Maurice Casey (NT prof., Early Chr. at Nottingham): “[Why wouldn't they] celebrate the known site of the event at the centre of their faith, Jesus' Resurrection from the dead.” [Jesus of Nazareth (T&T Clark, 2010), 461.]
- Richard Carrier (Outspoken atheist & Chr.; infidels.org], Classicist): “…this place would certainly have been venerated. It would have been the place believers would most want to see, to touch, in the whole world. Consider the throngs who gather and camp out to see unwashed windows with a vague hint of Christ's face in them even today, and realize that this is a modern world--in the ancient world, such superstitious passions were even more powerful and prevalent.” [_Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story_ 6th ed. (2006): [online]
- A.J.M. Weddernburn (NT prof. at Munich): “Was [the miracle which occurred there] not in itself reason enough to note and remember and cherish the site, regardless of whether it contained Jesus' remains or not?” [Beyond Resurrection (Hendrickson, 1999), 64.]
- J.M.G. Barclay: “…the tomb would not have to contain Jesus' bones for it to be venerated (cf. the Holy Sepulcher) and, indeed, the lack of veneration might support the case that the whereabouts of Jesus' burial was simply unknown.” [The Resurrection in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship, in Resurrection Reconsidered ed. D'Costa (Oxford, 1996), 13-30 (23).]
- J.P. Holding (Christian apologist, researcher): “…we do not hear of tour groups in the 1st century traveling to Mt. Sinai to see where Moses got the covenant; nor do we hear of special visits to the valley where the sun stood still for Joshua, or to Jericho where the Jews' greatest ancient military victory occurred, or to the place where Ahab got his just desserts, or where the patriarchs were buried, or where Elijah raised the widow's son. Such places were certainly known (e.g., Jacob's well) and visited on pilgrimages (highly sacred experiences not intended for common conversation), but the idea that there would be some sort of monument or desire to take the grand tour and visit these places comes of a purely 20th century notion of the sacred attached to the material.” ["The 20 Pound Gorilla" at tektonics.org: online]
Christians never celebrated/preserved any Jerusalem tomb as the location where Jesus was buried.1
But so what? Couldn't it simply be that they didn't/wouldn't care to?2
- Gerd Lüdemann (NT scholar; Early Christian history & literature professor): “…given the significance of tombs of saints in the time of Jesus, it can be presupposed that had Jesus' tomb been known, the early Christians would have venerated it, and traditions about it would have been preserved.” [What really happened to Jesus, Trans. by Bowden (Westminster, 1995), 24.]; Note: 1st century did Jews preserve/venerate the tombs/bones of their buried saints.
- Robert Gundry (NT professor at Westmont): “Tombs as such were not venerated. It was tombs containing remains of the deceased that were venerated.” [Resurrection: Fact or Figment? (IVP, 2000), 111.]
- Richard Swinburne (Philosophy professor at Oxford]): “The obvious traditional explanation of the absence of a cult of the tomb of Jesus is that the very early Christians thought that Jesus was risen, and so no special significance would attach to a tomb. Tombs are only venerated because of what they contain (bones).” [The Resurrection of God Incarnate (Clarendon, 2003), 177.]