The First Burial of Jesus
Our earliest testimony to the death and burial of Jesus comes from a letter of Paul to his followers at Corinth in the early 50s CE. He passes on a tradition that he had received, namely “that Christ died…that he was buried…that he was raised on the third day…that he was seen…” (1 Cor 15:3-5). Leaving aside the matter of the nature of these “sightings” of Jesus, including Paul’s own claim in that regard years after the crucifixion, it is significant that Paul writes that Jesus was buried. Burial implies a tomb, of whatever type, and he clearly intends the phrase “raised on the third day” to imply that that tomb was empty. In that regard I have to agree with evangelical apologists that Paul knows an “empty tomb” tradition. I cannot see how his language can make any sense otherwise.
Chronologically Mark would be our next source, assuming one is convinced, as I am, of what scholars call “Markan priority.” Mark relates that a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who was a respected member of the Sanhedrin and thought favorably of Jesus and his movement, obtained permission from the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, to remove Jesus’ body from the cross and to bury him in haste before the Sabbath arrived. Mark writes that Joseph wrapped the corpse in a linen shroud, laid it in a rock-hewn tomb, and blocked the entrance to the tomb with a stone or golal (Mk 15:42-47). He also notes that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses (whom I take to be Jesus’ mother, see The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 77-81) observed this emergency burial and planned, after the Sabbath, to return to the tomb and complete the Jewish rites of burial, which involved washing and anointing the corpse.
Everyone just assumes this tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, but notice–the text says no such thing. The gospel of John, which is an independent witness to Mark, makes it quite clear that this tomb was a temporary one, chosen in an emergency situation, that just happened to be nearby: “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). Obviously it makes no sense at all to think Joseph of Arimathea would have just happend to have his own family tomb nearby. The tomb was chosen because it was close and the Passover Sabbath began at sundown. Things were in a rush and there simply was no time to even decide what to do with Jesus’ body as far an honorable and more permanent burial. Luke agrees with Mark. It is only a theological gloss in Matthew* that has caused everyone to ignore the plain statements of Mark, Luke, and John and assume this emergency and temporay burial was in a tomb that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea.
So what else can we say about this extraordinary act of Joseph of Arimathea and is there anything we know about him?
There is an interesting passage in the Mishnah that mentions that Jews executed as criminals were not buried in their ancestral tombs but that the Sanhedrin had established two burial sites for the temporary placing of corpses. After a year or so, when the flesh was gone, the bones were collected and reburied honorably by the family with proper rites of mourning (Sanhedrin 6:5-6). It is entirely possible that such a tomb, near the place the Romans favored for execution, belonged to the Sanhedrin, assuming this law was in practice in the time of Jesus. If such were the case Joseph of Arimathea, being part of the Sanhedrin, might have made temporary use of such a tomb.
Joseph of Arimathea is only mentioned here at the burial of Jesus in all four gospels. Nothing more is ever said about him in the New Testament. Luke says that Arimathea was a town in Judea (Luke 23:51) but it has not been definitively identified. Most point to a city to the north, the birthplace of Samuel, called in Greek Armathaim or Ramathaim (1 Samuel 1:1, 19). Since its root comes from the Hebrew rama, meaning “height” or “hill,” it is part of the name of any number of cities in Judea. In much later sources Joseph is said to be a relative of Mary, mother of Jesus, usually her paternal uncle.
What happened next in terms of when and how the corpse of Jesus was taken from that temporary tomb is unfortunately a matter about which historians can say little, given the theological nature of our sources, and their relatively late apologetic character. It should not surprise us that the tomb might turn up empty, given that this site near the place of execution was never intended as a permanent place for Jesus’ corpse in the first place, but was used in an emergency fashion until other arrangements could be made.
Mark, our earliest narrative source, reports that the tomb was discovered empty by early Sunday morning by Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Salome were told by a “young man” waiting for them in the empty tomb that Jesus had been taken up (aorist passive of egeiro) and would see them in Galilee. Mark ends abruptly with no sightings, but some New Testament scholars see the reference to Galilee as Mark’s hope for the parousia or appearance of the “son of Man in the clouds of heaven,” which the community in Mark’s day expected to live to see (Mark 14:62; 13:30). John has an entirely independent and alternative tradition that Mary Magdalene went alone to the tomb very early Sunday morning when it was still dark and made the discovery that it was empty. She later lingered at the site, weeping, and encountered Jesus outside the tomb, becoming the first person to claim “I have seen the Master” (John 20:1-18).
One must assume that the corpse was taken and reburied, perhaps as soon as the Sabbath was over just after sundown Saturday night. If one were speculating one might suppose that Joseph of Arimathea, the one who had taken responsibility for the corpse in the first place, would have retrieved the body as soon as Jewish law permitted. He also, as a man of means, would be able to provide a family burial cave for Jesus and his kin. Maybe Jesus’ mother and sister were involved since John’s independent tradition has only Mary Magdalene going to the tomb Sunday morning, not the other two women with her. John has another independent and alternative tradition, tacked onto the end of his gospel, where Peter and a group of the disciples actually return to Galilee and begin fishing again. This tradition, in its original form, apparently had no view that Jesus had been raised from the dead (John 21). Mark has no appearances at all. Matthew has the eleven go to a mountain in Galilee where they “see” Jesus, but apparently in more of a “visionary” form, as the text mentions that some “doubted” it was him (Matthew 28:16-17). Only Luke and John, two of our latest sources, have Jesus appearing to the disciples in Jerusalem in bodily form where they touch him and eat with him, in an obviously apologetic attempt to say he was not a ghost or apparition (Luke 24; John 20). Yet even in these “appearances” Jesus is not always recognized and he seems to materialize suddenly in a room at one point.
Given this collective evidence I think it is historically probable that a permanent family tomb for Jesus and his kin was provided in the Jerusalem area and thus we can properly speak of a “first” and a “second” burial of Jesus, with the empty tomb being the expected result of the first, given all the circumstances.
*In Matthew, Joseph becomes a “rich man” who puts Jesus in “his own new tomb.” This is clearly not history but Matthew’s theological addition to show a fulfillment of prophecy, namely, Isaiah 53:9, where the suffering servant is buried in the tomb of a rich man. Matthew often does this sort of thing, adding to Mark’s narrative, which is his basic source, and historians properly take these glosses as theologically based not as reliable historical information.