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Posts Tagged ‘burial’

The Burial of Jesus

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

One of the questions that we should be asking when considering the story of the burial of Jesus is: Does the account of the burial and resurrection of Jesus in the gospels match up with what is known about Jewish laws and traditions at the time?

This post will be my attempt to address this question succinctly. Onwards, skeptics!

Let us first take a look at the law concerning the burial of condemned men in the Mishnah:

They did not bury the condemned in the burial grounds of his ancestors, but there were two graveyards made ready for the use of the court, one for those who were beheaded or strangled, and one for those who were stoned or burned.(6.5e, f)

According to the Mishnah, since Jesus was accused as a blasphemer, he would be buried in the graveyard for the stoned or burned. The Mishnah explains further that only “when the flesh was completely decomposed were the bones gathered and buried in their proper place” (in this case, this would mean the ancestral tomb of Jesus).

It has been clearly shown according to Jewish law that Jesus could not be buried in a private tomb as he had to be placed with the criminals. The problem here is that the gospels clearly say that he was buried in a private tomb (Matthew 27:60, Luke 23:53, John 19:41). So, does this mean that Jesus was not formally buried on Friday night?

Another interesting fact is that Jews were not allowed to bury their dead on the Sabbath or on the first day of any festival (according to the Talmud). Now, as the Mishnah requires prompt burial, Jews get around this by placing the corpse in a temporary grave before the real burial. Jesus supposedly died on the first day of Passover, and Joseph asked for the body right before the Sabbath. Therefore, there was no way that Joseph could have done all the burial rites. The only way to reconcile to gospel story of Jesus being buried in a private tomb would be if it actually refers to a temporary grave.

Now, let’s take a look at the Semahot:

Whosoever finds a corpse in a tomb should not move it from its place, unless he knows that this is a temporary grave.

By law, Joseph would have been required to place Jesus in a temporary grave. The body could not have been in Joseph’s tomb Sunday morning (where the Gospels claim the women visited it). Yes, they found it empty, but by law, by then his body would have to be in the Graveyard of the Stoned and Burned.

The story gets even more interesting when considering the myth of Jesus being raised from the dead on the third day. There is an interesting third-day pattern in the Midrash Rabbah, which is related to the Mishnah. It shows an overall third-day pattern in the current Jewish understanding of the dead.

Bar Kappara: “Until three days [after death] the soul keeps on returning to the grave, thinking that it will go back [into the body]; but when it sees that the facial features have become disfigured, it departs and abandons it [the body].”

The full force of mourning lasts for three days. Why? Because [for that length of time] the shape of the face is recognizable, even as we have learnt in the Mishnah: Evidence [to prove a man's death] is admissible only in respect of the full face, with the nose, and only [by one who has seen the corpse] within three days [after death].

From the Semahot:

One may go out to the cemetery for three days to inspect the dead for a sign of life, without fear that this smacks of heathen practice. For it happened that a man was inspected after three days, and he went on to live twenty-five years; still another went on to have five children and died later. (8.1)

Thus, in Jewish tradition, it was considered possible for a soul to reunite with its body within three days but not after that as sometime on the third day the soul realized the body was rotting, and then departed.

No, the burial story does not match up with what we know about Jewish law and ritual at the time. All I smell so far is a huge stink.

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