There are plenty of competing theories as to what happened to Jesus when he was crucified and then later vacated his tomb. One of the theories is the 'swoon' theory, which postulates that perhaps Jesus was just sorta dead on the cross, and the Romans overlooked the fact that the guy they'd hung on cross all day wasn't really super dead, and that later on, the coolness of the tomb revived Jesus and he went on his merry way.
There's a few issues with this theory. One of them being that even if you accept the first part of the theory, he still had the issue of rolling a way a giant stone and then slipping past the guards posted outside to ensure things were in order. To accept that a guy weakened by hours hanging from a cross managed to do this is a stretch... Having watched all of the James Bond movies, most of them at least twice, even he doesn't escape from such improbably circumstances without help.
Also, the soldiers who were professionals at killing people spent their entire days killing people. They knew what dead people looked and acted like, so it's not likely that they would've failed to notice Jesus' death. They still pierced him with a spear, causing blood and water to pour out, the water being a result of fluid gathering around the heart due to the rapid heartbeat caused by extended shock. So they pierced the fluid sac around the heart. Given that Jesus wasn't rushed to a modern ER after this, it's unlikely he could've survived this, even if he was alive... but even if he did, and you accept the idea of him then escaping from a tomb, are you really ready to then believe that he looked well enough to convince the disciples only days later that he had really risen from the dead and he wasn't just faking it? And remember, they were convinced enough of this that they went to their deaths proclaiming that he was really raised from the dead, and people only go to their deaths for believing something that they really think is true. This wasn't simply a joke to them.
All that to say, it takes a lot of faith to believe that Jesus didn't die on the cross before that tomb was empty on the 3rd day.
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