Are there no archaeological searches for the body of the Christ?
The most recent thing that comes to my mind is the ossuary that was discovered just outside the walls of Jerusalem. An ossuary is a polite name in Latin for a 'bone box', and it was a way of burial in the ancient world in which people guarded their dead and buried them slightly, not in earth maybe, but in a pot of some kind, until the flesh had gone from the bones. Then they were left just with the bones, and they would put the bones into a small pot. It didn't need such a large pot as a full body would. And these pots made of stone, these little boxes, so to speak, in which the bones were put, are therefore called ossuaries.
This one turned up, and it was the ossuary, so the inscription said, of 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus'. Of course, the archaeologists have disputed this hotly. Andre Lemairé of France, a well-known Aramaic epigraphist expert, declared the inscription to be genuine, and says this was James, the brother of Jesus. More recently some of the Israeli scholars have contended that, no, the inscription on the front had been tampered with and was not original. The most recent thing I've read on it is a scholar who likewise is a profound expert in these matters. After his tests of the micro bits of dust in the letters and so forth, he argues very strongly that the inscription is genuine and belongs to the first century, so it was the brother of Jesus.
As far as I'm aware, there is no record, of course, of the body of the Christ. From my position as a Christian, I would say they will never find it, anyway, because the biblical account is that, on the third day, he left the tomb.
Amongst all the other evidence, look at the way the Christian women treated the sepulchre.
These women came, of course, on the first day of the week to further embalm the body. They were obviously not expecting him to rise from the dead, in spite of what Jesus had told the apostles. But they were going to embalm the body as best they could to preserve it, to turn his grave into a shrine where they might come and pray. When Mary Magdalene came, she found the sepulchre with the stone rolled away, and the tomb empty. She went and called John and Peter who ran to the sepulchre and eventually went inside. They saw that the body wasn't there, but what caught their eye were the grave clothes. The rags that had gone round the body were still lying out there. The rags that had gone round the head and round the jaw to keep the jaw from opening were still there, rolled round as they had been wound round the head, but on that ledge upon which the head rested apart from the other part of the body. It was the evidence of the grave clothes that first brought them the conviction that Jesus had risen, for he must have come through the grave clothes, unless he was an utter fraud and had risen up and took off the grave clothes, and then folded them up to make it look as if they hadn't been disturbed. It was that evidence that first convicted John and Peter that Christ must have risen (John 20:1–10).
They went home, Mary didn't. She couldn't face life without Jesus, and she asked the angels, 'If you've taken him away, tell me where you've put him.' And then she heard a voice behind her. She thought it was the gardener and said, 'Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've put him and I will take him.'
He said one word: 'Mary.' And in that instant she realized it was the Lord. Then she went to cling to him.
He said, 'Mary, stop clinging to me. I've not yet ascended, but go and tell my brothers that I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' At that she ran to tell the other disciples (see John 20:11–18).
Why I find that evidence so compelling is precisely what the women did. That the men worked it out, like in a detective novel, that the body must have come through the clothes, and then went home to breakfast, was one thing. What stopped the Christian women from turning the grave of Jesus into a shrine? Contrary to the instincts of most women, and particularly Middle Eastern women, so much so did they abandon it that, for some century and more, the place of the tomb remained undiscovered and lost. How do we account for the behaviour of the Christian women then, in thus abandoning the grave? And the answer must be, of course, that you don't make a shrine to the memory of someone who is still living! They found in Christ what Christ said to Mary about this new relationship: 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' And since then, Christians will tell you the same thing about this personal relationship that the living Christ creates between God and those who trust the Saviour.
