Neglected Evidence For The Empty Tomb

Disputes over the historicity of the empty tomb usually focus on the gospel accounts. But there's a lot of evidence outside the gospels that should get more attention.

Notice the number and variety of contexts in which Christians were interested in Jesus' burial long before the gospels were written: prophecy (Isaiah 53:9), creeds (1 Corinthians 15:4), theology (1 Corinthians 15:36), ceremonies (Romans 6:4), tracking the location (the tradition behind the Holy Sepulchre site). And notice that these contexts involve more than the mere fact that Jesus was buried. If the empty tomb tradition that's so widely attested from the time of the gospels onward isn't the same tradition that was of such early and widespread interest to Christians before the writing of the gospels, then where is that earlier tradition? Did it universally disappear and get universally replaced by what we see in the gospels? Continuity is more likely than discontinuity. For more about these pre-gospel sources, see here.

The letters of Peter also contain some material that tends to be neglected in this context. See here regarding those letters.

Justin Martyr provides some evidence that's typically not discussed. He not only refers to Jewish corroboration of the empty tomb, as Matthew's gospel does, but also cites a first-century Jewish source in the process. And he refers to how the empty tomb was corroborated not only by the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity, but also by pagans. For a discussion of all of this material in Justin, see here.