"Adela Yarbro Collins argues that “the focus on the tomb in Mark may have been inspired by the importance of the graves of the heroes in the Greco-Roman world.”10 This, however, is unlikely. The heroes’ graves were the object of cult because they were not empty, exactly theopposite of what was the case with the tomb of Jesus in the gospels. But the empty tomb would nevertheless represent a potent symbol to the traditional Greek believer. Although classical and New Testament scholar Hans Dieter Betz, too, is not really accurate when comparing what he calls “disappearing heroes” with the empty tomb (people who became heroes normally did not disappear but died), he also connects the vanished and deified Jesus with men and women who disappeared and became gods according to Pagan beliefs.11 As we have seen, such examples of missing bodies indicating some form of physical immortalization were legion. If he had a Hellenistic audience in mind, Mark really could have certain expectations as to what they would believe. A body missing in some miraculous way represented in itself a powerful topos in the Hellenistic world, an indication that the body could have been physically immortalized. Comparing the various gospels, Eugene Boring, Klaus Berger, and Carsten Colpe point to possible parallels in the physical disappearance and subsequent immortalization of Heracles,12 Romulus,13 and Aristeas.14 As Adela Yarbro Collins argues, “The narrative pattern according to which Jesus died, was buried, and then translated to heaven was a culturally defined way for an author living in the first century to narrate the resurrection of Jesus.”15 As we have already witnessed, Heracles, Achilles, and Memnon all disappeared from their funeral pyres as they were made immortal, while the dead body of Alcmene was miraculously replaced by a large stone.16 The historical incidents of Aristeas of Proconnesus, Cleomedes of Astypalaea, Romulus, and perhaps also King Croesus and his daughters demonstrate how beliefs in physical immortality were still connected with a missing body. The empty tomb really was crucial to this narrative. The absence of a body had for centuries been something indicating physical immortalization. If there were any grave of Jesus, it had to be empty. For if the tomb was not empty, there could be no question of physical continuity, and thus it would be impossible to assume that any resurrection had taken place at all according to Greek assumptions. If we turn to another text roughly contemporary with the Gospel of Mark, we find another empty tomb and perhaps the most comprehensive Greek speculations as to what an empty grave really implied. In Chariton’s romantic novel Callirhoe, the protagonist dies as a young bride on her wedding day. She is buried that same night, and the wedding party turned mourners finds her grave empty the day after. With the body gone, the crowd displays confusion, despair, and some remarkable suggestions as to what may have happened.
All felt helpless, and one of those inside [the tomb] said, “The funeral offerings have been stolen! This is the work of tomb robbers. But where is the corpse?” Many different speculations were offered by the crowd. But Chaereas [the groom turned widower],looking up to heaven, stretched forth his hands and said, “Which of the gods has become my rival and carried off Callirhoe and now keeps her with him, against her will but compelled by a mightier fate? Is this then why she died suddenly, that she might not succumb to disease? In this way did Dionysus once steal Ariadne from Theseus, and Zeus Semele from Actaeon.”17
We should make a particular note of the initial reaction to the absent body in Chariton’s novel. Although it seems clear to all that the opening of the grave and the stealing of the funeral offerings must be the work of grave robbers, no one concludes that they had taken the body, as well. The possibility of someone wanting to steal a dead body is, however, not unheard of, even in this specific genre of romantic novels. In Xenophon of Ephesus’ second-century a.d. Ephesian Tale everyone seems immediately to accept that grave robbers have stolen the corpse of another equally beautiful young girl, along with the grave goods.18But in Chariton’s tale the crowd insists that something else must have happened to the body. And this is where things start to appear strangely familiar. No doubt is expressed as to whether Callirhoe had really been dead when she was buried. No one suggests that the young woman had somehow been buried alive. Instead, since the dead body has vanished the groom Chaereas suspects that some god has taken Callirhoe away to live forever together with him, something that usually would involve the resurrection of the dead body and its being made physically immortal. Indeed, Chaereas believes that Callirhoe had “died suddenly so that she might not succumb to a disease,” apparently because this god, whoever he may be, wanted her body immortalized in no way disfigured or ruined by a prolonged illness. As was the case with the dismembered Pelops whose shoulder blade Demeter had devoured,19 it was not in the gods’ power to fix a body or a body part that had been destroyed beyond a certain point. To ensure that the fair Callirhoe preserved her beauty forever when immortalized, the most expedient thing for the god was to kill her swiftly in a way not ruining her body, for then to have her physically resurrected and immortalized as she was removed from the tomb.
Considered by the groom to have been physically resurrected, Callirhoe has in his eyes become an immortal goddess who now dwells far away from the geography of ordinary mortals, just like Ariadne and Semele whom he also refers to. Convinced that Callirhoe had been made immortal, Chaereas had also been taught from history where to look for her. “You force me to live, because I shall look for you on land and sea, and, if I can, I will even climb up the sky,”20the groom exclaims, thus summing up three of the places where the ancient gods traditionally brought those whom they made physically immortal.
-Dag Øistein Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity
