Soon after Jesus was crucified in AD 30, the Jerusalem church (headed by the apostles) came to publicly maintain that, “Mary et. al. discovered that Jesus’s tomb was empty”[?] [Full page.]
After all …
The relevance being called attention to here is this: the AD 30 church’s belief was grounded in and reflective of eyewitness testimony[?] The event was directly perceived.
No, they weren’t saying that in AD 30…
So? If the AD 30 church was saying that, plausibly...
…Their belief is not grounded in eyewitness testimony[?]
They inferred it from Mary’s wrong-tomb blunder[?]
They just perpetuated a lie by…[?]
…the Jerusalem church itself[]
…Mary and the women[?]
…someone else[?])
The AD 30-70 Jerusalem church—led by Jesus’s apostles—was well-disposed to know immediately (or learn briefly after hearing it) whether these women as reported actually discovered Jesus’s tomb empty.
A full page on this will discusses these evidences:
In general, they’d willed to know true Gospel history.
They’d find the lie inherently worth investigating, since…
…it'd be inherently suspicious.
…it'd be costly to agree with.
* …it'd be easy to check on.
This is relevant the Jerusalem church came to publicly maintain that, “Mary et. al. were the discoverers of Jesus’s tomb being empty.” (E.g. even as early as AD 30)
By c. A.D. 70, the official position of the Markan community, or source behind the Gospel of Mark, was that “yes, Mary did discover Jesus's tomb empty.”1 This is relevant because Mark's church's beliefs on this issue were most likely formed in normal ways that inspire confidence.
But, so what? Couldn't it simply be that…
A Christian liar would recoil at the thought of spinning a lie like this.
See full article to assess 6 arguments, namely:
This is relevant the report came to exist in c. AD 30-35, when few Christians existed [e.g. 500-5,000].1 So if no Christian in the community is disposed to want to spin a lie like this, then its appearance as a lie would have been unlikely indeed. (By contrast, if the women simply did witness Jesus’s tomb empty, they’d likely say so; it would naturally appear on honest lips.)2
But so what?
• Craig Evans: “It's hard to see why relatively unknown women would feature so prominently in such an important story if what we have here is fiction… [moreover it] stands in tension with resurrection expectations and supporting apologetics… [Jewish Burial Traditions and the Resurrection of Jesus: [Online at craigaevans.com/Burial_Traditions.pdf]
So for example, in focusing in on how Christians would dislike others believing it (given the stigma of depending on women):
• Claudia Setzer: “Women's presence and testimony as witnesses to the empty tomb… after death seems an early and firmly entrenched piece of the tradition. Equally early and entrenched is the embarrassment around that fact. … Their discomfort hints at how firmly entrenched the tradition of women's involvement must have been, since the authors do not feel free to eliminate it.” [“Excellent Women: Female Witness to the Resurrection” Journal of Biblical Literature 116/2 (1997): 259, 268.]
The earliest Christians did not believe that Mary witnessed Jesus's tomb empty. [Full page].
After all…
If this is true, it is relevant because, given that Mary did witness Jesus's tomb empty, the earliest Christians would have learned it from her directly or indirectly (such that they would say she witnessed it).”
Mary blunderingly thought the empty tomb she visited was Jesus's, when in fact is was another tomb entirely. [Full page.]
After all,…
This is relevant because in this situation, Mary did not actually witness Jesus's tomb empty, but some other empty tomb entirely.
Mary would not choose to re-visit the tomb of Jesus. [Full page.] This is relevant because in the absence of choosing to do this, she would not have been a witness discovering Jesus's tomb to be empty.