When every argument has been considered and weiged, the only conclusion acceptable to the historian must be that the opinions of the orthodox, the liberal sympathiser and the critical agnostic alike – and even perhaps of the disciples themselves – are simply interpretations of the one diconcrting fact: namely that the women who set out to pay their last respects to Jesus found to their consternation, not a body, but an empty tomb.
Prof Geza Vermes
From the book “Gagging Jesus: Things Jesus Said We Wish He Hadn't”