Case File I: The Empty Tomb

An investigator does not begin with a conclusion. They begin with a question precise enough to be answered, and a clear statement of what would count as an answer.

The question before you: what best explains the reports that the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth was found empty, and that his followers shortly afterwards were convinced they had met him alive?

Notice what that question does not assume. It does not assume the reports are accurate. It does not assume a miracle. It asks what explanation best accounts for a set of reports that undeniably exist and that undeniably changed the behaviour of the people who made them.

Your job in this case file is not to reach the answer you already expected. It is to show your working: what the evidence is, what each explanation would require, and which one covers the most without special pleading.

Four exhibits. For each one, ask what it establishes on its own — not what it suggests when combined with what you already believe.

Exhibit A — the early confession. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul sets out a fixed summary of the death, burial, resurrection and appearances, and says he is passing on what he received (1 Corinthians 15:3–7). Two signals mark it as older than the letter: his own handing-on language, and the formulaic shape, unlike his ordinary prose.

Exhibit B — the crucifixion, corroborated from outside. Tacitus, hostile to the movement, refers to its founder as executed under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.

Exhibit C — the first witnesses. All four accounts name women as the first to find the tomb empty, in a setting where women's testimony carried little formal weight.

Exhibit D — two hostile converts. Paul had been persecuting the movement; James was Jesus's own brother. Both came to believe on the basis of what they took to be encounters with him alive.

An investigator presses testimony rather than accepting or dismissing it wholesale. Three lines of questioning, and what each yields.

Press the women's testimony. Why keep witnesses your intended audience could discount? The answer historians give: because a movement shaping a story purely to persuade would not have started there. Material against the reporter's own interest is hard to explain as invention. What this establishes: the detail was more plausibly preserved than manufactured. What it does not: that what they reported was accurate.

Press the disciples. They were in a position to know whether the claim was invented. Their willingness to accept serious risk establishes sincerity. What it does not establish: truth. A sincere witness can be mistaken, and the objection that people die for false beliefs is correct — but those people believed claims received from others, while these were the source of theirs.

Press Paul. He had every social and personal reason not to join. A conversion that costs the convert everything is not easily explained by wishful thinking. What it does not establish: what actually happened to him.

This is where a case is actually won or lost. State each rival at its strongest, then test it against all four exhibits rather than a convenient subset.

The disciples stole the body and knowingly invented the claim. Accounts for an empty tomb. Willingness to accept serious risk weighs against a deliberate hoax, although sincerity alone does not establish truth.

Someone else moved the body. Accounts for an empty tomb without requiring any deception by the disciples. It does not by itself explain Exhibit D — the reported experiences that convinced opponents of the movement. A combined explanation must be assessed on its own merits, not dismissed as a hoax.

Jesus survived the crucifixion. Accounts for a body no longer in the tomb. Runs against Exhibit B, and asks a scourged and pierced man to escape sealed burial and then convince his followers he had conquered death rather than narrowly escaped it.

The appearances were hallucinations. Accounts for sincere reports. Individual grief experiences are well documented, but this does not readily explain group experiences, nor Exhibit D, nor an empty tomb.

The story grew as legend. Accounts for a developed narrative. Runs directly against Exhibit A: legends need time, and the fixed confession is too early.

Each covers part. The historic Christian claim — that God raised Jesus bodily from the dead — covers all four.

Write out the chain, in this order, in your own words:

1. The agreed facts. What would a sceptical historian grant?
2. The candidate explanations. Stated as their own defenders would state them.
3. The test. Which facts does each explanation leave unaccounted for?
4. The verdict. Which explanation covers the most, and with what confidence?

Now the part that separates an investigation from a performance. State the confidence honestly. This is historical reasoning about a unique event, so it yields the best explanation of the evidence — not a mathematical demonstration. And name the objection that still has force: someone may reply that no amount of ordinary historical evidence could establish an event like this. That is a claim about what could possibly count, made before examining anything, and it is a premise that has to be defended rather than assumed.

A verdict that admits what it has not settled is worth more than one that claims everything. It is also the only kind that survives being read by someone who disagrees with you.

What this case file is training. Not the conclusion — the method: assemble agreed facts, state rivals fairly, test each against the whole evidence set, and state a verdict with its confidence and its remaining objection attached.

Marking the verdict (step 5). Full credit requires all four moves. A student who reaches the right conclusion without stating the rivals fairly has not done the work; a student who states the rivals well and reaches a tentative conclusion has.

Watch for two failure modes. Overclaiming (treating the verdict as proof) and straw-manning (stating a rival in a form nobody holds). Both are more damaging to a real conversation than a cautious conclusion.

Where to go next. Lesson 10 develops the Resurrection argument in full; Lesson 11 handles the hardest objections, including the one named in step 5.