The record
Empty Tomb
The Gospels say that on Sunday morning, the body was gone.
He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him!
Mark 15:42 - 16:8 · Matthew 27:57 - 28:15 · Luke 23:50 - 24:12 · John 19:38 - 20:18 · Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 108 · John Granger Cook, Crucifixion and Burial · William Lane Craig, The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus · Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus
They say
The crucifixion is one thing. But the accounts saying his tomb was empty come from Christians.
The scene
Start with Mark, usually regarded as the earliest surviving Gospel.
After Jesus dies, Mark says Joseph of Arimathea takes the body down. He wraps it in linen before laying it in a tomb cut out of rock. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses see where he is laid.
Roman practice didn't rule that out. Crucified bodies were sometimes released for burial.
After the Sabbath, the women return with spices. They find the stone rolled back and enter the tomb. Inside, they see a young man dressed in a white robe. He tells them:
"He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him!"Mark 16:6
All four Gospels preserve an empty-tomb account, although they differ in some of the details surrounding it.
Matthew even preserves the counter-story that the disciples stole the body. The same accusation appears again in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, written around AD 160.
In that explanation, the body is missing because the disciples took it.
A missing body doesn't prove a resurrection.
The problem gets stranger when the missing body is followed by people claiming to have met the dead man.
The point
The claim wasn't only that the tomb was empty. They said they saw him alive.
Sit with this
What happened to them?