Why Was it Women Who Found the Tomb Emty

 

Bart Ehrman recently restated his answer to a question he gets asked frequently, "Why did the New Testament story tellers have women finding the empty tomb when women were considered lessors or unreliable?"

He points out first that women were not necessarily considered unreliable sources of information at that time in that part of the world. Later that would have been the case but not necessarily when this story was written. 

We have to remember here that Ehrman believes there was a historical Jesus but he does not believe the story of the tomb or Resurrection. He finds the Resurrection story to be one told, not to win converts, but aimed at believers at the time. Of course, it was written about many years after it was supposed to  have happened. No ancient writer ever claimed to have seen the tomb or Jesus later.

Paul, Ehrman says, must have believed the Resurrection happened but he says nothing about the empty tomb. Maybe that story had not yet been made up or if it was around Paul himself did not believe it.

Ehrman believes that what happened to Jesus was what happened regularly to political dissidents. They were killed and hung for long periods as warnings to the locals not to mess with Roman authorities. Birds fed on the corpses until they were taken down and tossed somewhere. Ehrman says there are no surviving independent information to suggest Jesus would not have been "processed" differently than any other trouble maker.  

The reason women found the empty tomb, Ehrman suggests, is the story put them in the vicinity. The story places disciples leaving the area but women anointing the body. So to keep the tale flowing smoothly it had to be them who entered the tomb.

And, the rest is (not) history.