The tomb was empty; Jesus gone. So what had happened to the body?Grave robbers would have stolen ornaments, possibly cloth and definitely any thick oils and perfumes from a corpse which would have been scraped off for resale? Would they have carried the body away? - Absolutely not!
"Perhaps the Romans or Pharisees took the body", some say. These were the very people who wanted Jesus demonstrably dead and buried. The hypothesis is feeble.
"Perhaps the disciples, then". - People will devote their lives to a cause and may die for it even if that cause is false. What is psychologically impossible is for people to go out, without hope of wealth or earthly power, and DIE for a lie in which most or all have colluded.
You would be marginally better off suggesting that the body was removed by aliens.
Of course..... I do not suppose that the very many people at the time who claim to have met the living, corporeal Jesus were actually right. Were they?
A real puzzler and tantalisingly close to demonstrating, circumstantially at least, that Jesus DID rise from the dead.
However close to this point we get - it is not the real point. Christianity has gone all over the world because 'born again' believers experience Him today! They have encountered the reality.
