Paul and Jesus

All of this disassembly, sorting, and sifting might suggest historians are just picking and choosing at random whatever suits them to support a preconceived theory, but there is definitely a method to this critical historical investigation. Historians of any period have a similar challenge in evaluating the reliability of multiple sources. What is required is that one be explicit and clear about one’s methods with careful arguments as to why this or that bit of evidence is given whatever weight. What is needed is a synthesis of our best evidence, incorporating the essential clues that Paul provides for probing a series of related questions:

Why was Jesus’ tomb found empty?

What happened to the body of Jesus?

How did his earliest followers understand his resurrection?

A RUSHED BURIAL AND AN EMPTY TOMB

Jesus died in the year A.D. 30 in the late afternoon, just hours before the Jewish Passover meal was to begin in the evening.⁶ Mark says it was “the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath” (Mark 15:42). The rush was to remove the bodies of Jesus and the two others crucified that day from their crosses before sundown, when these holy days would begin, since both Jewish law and custom forbade the corpses of executed criminals to be left hanging past sunset, much less through a holiday (Deuteronomy 21:22–23). Josephus, the contemporary Jewish historian, explicitly mentions this practice, asserting that the Jews “took down those who were condemned and crucified and buried them before the going down of the sun.”⁷

This rush to bury provides us with our first insight into why Jesus’ tomb was found empty. Mark tells us that Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Sanhedrin, the governing council of the Jews, obtained permission directly from the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to remove Jesus’ body from the cross and take charge of his burial (Mark 15:42–46). Apparently Joseph had sympathies toward Jesus and his followers since he shows up suddenly in Mark’s story and voluntarily exercises his influence to facilitate Jesus’ burial. Given the impending festival that began at sunset, there was no time for full and proper Jewish rites of burial that would involve washing the body and anointing it with oil and spices. The women of Jesus’ family, who had followed him from Galilee, had plans to carry out these duties but had to defer them until after the Passover and the Sabbath (Mark 16:1). There is no indication that they were in communication with Joseph of Arimathea at the time he took Jesus’ body or through the Passover holiday. The followers of Jesus had mostly fled in fear and were in hiding (John 20:19). One gets the idea that the women watched from a distance, surely a bit frightened themselves, but wanting to know where the body was taken (Mark 15:47; Luke 23:55). The burial was in the hands of Joseph, but they hoped he would allow them, as Jewish custom prescribed, to carry out the traditional rites of burial and mourning.

Mark says that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped Jesus in a linen shroud and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb, blocking the entrance with a sealing stone. There are hundreds of these hewn-out cave tombs of this type in the Jerusalem area, some of which have been excavated, so what Mark describes is quite familiar to us. They typically have a small squared entrance that can be blocked up with a stone cut to fit. They are of various sizes but are intended for family burials. Mark says nothing about where this tomb was or how or why it was chosen. It is the gospel of John that provides a key missing detail:

Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. (John 19:41–42)

People assume that the tomb into which Joseph of Arimathea placed the body of Jesus belonged to him but here we see that such was not the case.⁸ It was a newly hewn tomb with no one buried inside that just happened to be close by. Jesus’ body was laid inside, but only temporarily. He was not really buried there, since full and formal burial involved the preparation rites and mourning rituals carried out by the family over a seven-day period (Mark 16:1; John 20:1). That is why the women show up early Sunday morning at the tomb, expecting to initiate the burial process with Joseph’s cooperation.

Jesus’ corpse would have been badly mutilated with bruises, wounds, and dried blood. Preparing it for proper burial would require quite a bit of time and effort. The body could not be left exposed over the holidays, and the empty unused tomb with its blocking stone would provide protection from predators. Joseph’s actions were practical temporary emergency measures.