Can you shed more light into this?
In part three of the Resurrection Appearances series, I've compiled three theologians who reject the historicity of the empty tomb stories in the New Testament: Wolfhart Pannenberg, Raymond E. Brown, and Karl Barth. All three theologians believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, and also believe that if the dead body or skeleton of Jesus were to be discovered in Jerusalem, it would provide irrefutable evidence that the resurrection of Jesus did not happen. However, these three theologians do not believe that the empty tomb stories reported in the New Testament was a historical event. In fact, they all believe that Christians
should not believe in an empty tomb, because Christians believe in a living Jesus not the empty tomb, and any fundamentalist statement that says our faith depends on belief in the empty tomb should be
ridiculed as an "empty faith" and a "misplaced faith".
First, Paul's resurrection accounts (cf. 1 Cor 15:4) say nothing about the empty tomb, so either Paul did not know about the empty tomb or it was not important to him.
Second, Paul's witness to the resurrection is the oldest tradition in the New Testament, even older than the Gospels that report the empty tomb, and makes no references to the empty tomb.
Third, the oldest witnesses to the risen Jesus are isolated accounts of resurrection appearances that describe the risen Jesus appearing and disappearing as a single event, such as in Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus; and they did not separate the appearing (c.f. empty tomb) and disappearing (c.f. the ascension) by a
forty day period.
Fourth, the empty tomb is a specifically a concern for the earliest Jerusalem Christians, because their resurrection stories may be falsified by the discovery of the dead body of Jesus. When the early Christians first shared the resurrection appearances, they were confronted with questions concerning the location of the body of Jesus, and conflicting answers were given (John 20:13-18; Matthew 28:13-15), and the empty tomb story finally developed to answer these questions.
Fifth, the empty tomb story further developed in the oral tradition, were include in the earliest Gospel (Mark 16:1-8), because it was an effective narrative device for codifying the independent resurrection appearances.
Sixth, the empty tomb stories contain contradictions that make a historical reconstruction impossible, (Mark 16:1-8; Matthew 28:1-10; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-18;
Gospel of Peter 35-43.), and these indicate that the empty tomb stories were still developing in the later gospels, further confirms the legendary nature of the empty tomb stories, and its origin as a narrative and apologetic vehicle for explaining the resurrection appearances.
Seventh, any demand that the empty tomb must be believed, is a modern fundamentalist statement that is open to ridicule, as an "empty faith", because Christians do not believe in an empty tomb, but in a living Jesus Christ. However, even if the empty tomb proves to be legendary in nature, it remains indispensable to the Church's Easter faith, because it is the traditional narrative used by the Church tradition to proclaim the resurrection appearances of Jesus.
The Resurrection Appearances: 3. Faith in the Empty Tomb is an Empty Faith | The PostBarthian
