Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 38.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've been looking at the historical evidence for the fact of the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb, and we've

reviewed now four lines of evidence in support of the historicity of that fact. First, we

saw that the historicity of the burial narrative of Jesus supports in turn the historicity of the empty tomb.

Secondly, we saw that the empty tomb is multiply attested in extremely early and independent sources,

indeed as many as six independent sources. Thirdly, we explained that the use of the phrase on the first day of the week

in the pre-marking passion account of the empty tomb is indicative of a very early, primitive

tradition that antedates the already very early third day motif

that you find in 1st Corinthians 15.

And then finally number four, we saw that the story is simple and lacks any signs of legendary

embellishment or theological reflection.

We come now to the fifth line of evidence in support of the discovery of the empty tomb,

and that is that the tomb was probably discovered empty by women.

Now in order to appreciate this point, we need to understand two

things about the role of women in first century Jewish society. First, women were not

regarded as reliable witnesses. This attitude toward the testimony of women is evident in the

remark of the first century Jewish historian Josephus in his antiquities of the Jews,

Section 219, where he describes the rules that were supposedly left by Moses, which would

regulate the admission of testimony. And according to Josephus, he says, let not the testimony

of women be admitted because of the levity and the boldness of their

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