I have been amazed over the years at what one can assume is in the New Testament Gospels and what is actually there. I have been teaching these texts for over 25 years and hardly a year goes by when I don’t see something I had missed, or have something pointed out by my students that I simply had incorrect.

A case in point. Everyone “knows” that according to all four of our N.T. Gospels Joseph of Arimathea, elsewhere unmentioned, goes to Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, and gets permission to remove Jesus’ body from the cross. He takes the corpse and lays it in his own new tomb late Friday night. A group of women, Mary Magdalene and others, follow and see the location of the tomb. Sunday morning when they visit, to complete the Jewish rites of burial, the tomb is empty.

Sounds accurate, according to the Gospels, except that the part in italics, that everyone assumes, is apparently not the case. The tomb into which Jesus is temporarily placed does not belong to Joseph of Arimathea but every book, film, and preacher tells it that way.

Mark is our earliest account. Notice his words carefully:

And he [Joseph of Arimathea] bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb” (Mark 15:46).

This is our core Synoptic account. Mark is the source for both Luke and Matthew. But notice, nothing is said about Joseph putting Jesus in his own family tomb.

John, who offers us an independent tradition, offers a further explanation:

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).

So, as I often tell my students, “thank God for Mark and John.” Mark does not really explain the choice of the tomb but John makes it clear that this initial burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is a temporary and emergency burial of opportunity. That the tomb is new and unused meant that it could be used for a few hours, until the Sabbath and Passover holiday was past. This particular tomb is chosen because it just happened to be near, as John plainly explains. The idea that this tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea makes no sense at all. What are the chances that he would just happen to have his own new family tomb conveniently located near the Place of the Skull, or Golgotha, where the Romans regularly crucified their victims. It is ludicrous even to imagine, but neither Mark nor John say anything of the sort.

Everyone has assumed Jesus is placed in Joseph’s own tomb because of two words added by Matthew in his editing of Mark, namely “he laid it in his own new tomb” (Matthew 27:60). Luke does not have this. And Mark and John are crystal clear as to why this tomb was chosen. This interpolation by Matthew is clearly added for theological reasons, to claim that Jesus’ burial fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 53:9, that the grave of Yahweh’s “Servant” would be “with a rich man.” It has absolutely nothing to do with the historical Jesus.

Taking then what we learn from Mark and John we are in a position to make some clear sense out of our core tradition. Jesus is hastily buried just before the Passover Sabbath. After all, what does one do with a corpse a few hours before the Seder, and how can it best be protected from predators? The new tomb, unused and possibly incomplete, that happened to be nearby, was a perfect temporary solution. The idea was that after the festival the full and proper rites of Jewish burial could be carried out and Jesus could be placed in a second tomb, as a permanent resting place.

In the Talpiot tomb discussion quite a few objectors have made the point that any Jesus tomb should be near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Joseph of Armimathea had his tomb. I have no confidence that this site is the place of the crucifixion in the first place, but even it if was, given what we learn in our core traditions of Mark and John we would expect that Jesus would have been respectfully reburied in another tomb–not in that initial temporary one.

I suppose the best guess would be that Joseph of Arimathea provided the second tomb, as a permanent family place of burial. He had the means and the influence and it makes sense that if he bothered to go to Pilate to get the body he would have seen that it was placed in a proper and permanent place. He seems to be the right person at the right time with the means and intention to carry out this most respectful of rites for a slain leader who he respected and perhaps even believed in.

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