Evans refers to archaeologist [[Jodi Magness]], who questions Hengel's and Crossan's views, arguing that the Gospel accounts describing Jesus's removal from the cross and burial accord well with archaeological evidence and with Jewish law, which prescribed that the death should be buried (or entombed) immediately.[[#CITEREFMagness2005|Magness (2005)]]. Magness in turn refers frequently to ''Roll Back the stone'' (2003) by archaeologist Byron McCane. McCane also argues that it was customary to depose of the dead immediately, yet concludes that \"Jesus was buried in disgrace in a criminal's tomb.[[#CITEREFMcCane2003|McCane (2003)]], p. 89."},"parts":[{"template":{"target":{"wt":"refn","href":"./Template:Refn"},"params":{"group":{"wt":"note"},"name":{"wt":"\"Evans\""},"1":{"wt":"Evans (2005) refers to Crossan in \"Jewish Burial Traditions and the Resurrection of Jesus,\" arguing that \"The burial of Jesus, according to Jewish tradition, is almost certain for at least two reasons: (1) strong Jewish concerns that the dead — righteous or unrighteous — be properly buried; and (2) desire to avoid defilement of the land.\"
Evans refers to archaeologist [[Jodi Magness]], who questions Hengel's and Crossan's views, arguing that the Gospel accounts describing Jesus's removal from the cross and burial accord well with archaeological evidence and with Jewish law, which prescribed that the death should be buried (or entombed) immediately.{{sfnp|Magness|2005}} Magness in turn refers frequently to ''Roll Back the stone'' (2003) by archaeologist Byron McCane. McCane also argues that it was customary to depose of the dead immediately, yet concludes that \"Jesus was buried in disgrace in a criminal's tomb.{{sfnp|McCane|2003|p=89}}"}},"i":0}}]}"> [note 5] Evans also notes that "politically, too, it seems unlikely that, on the eve of Passover, a holiday that celebrates Israel's liberation from foreign domination, Pilate would have wanted to provoke the Jewish population" by denying Jesus a proper burial. [54]
According to religion professor John Granger Cook, there are historical texts that mention mass graves, but they contain no indication of those bodies being dug up by animals. There is no mention of an open pit or shallow graves in any Roman text. There are a number of historical texts outside the gospels showing the bodies of the crucified dead were buried by family or friends. Cook writes that "those texts show that the narrative of Joseph of Arimethaea's burial of Jesus would be perfectly comprehensible to a Greco-Roman reader of the gospels and historically credible." Cook notes that numerous early critics of Christianity such Celsus, Porphyry, Hierocles, Julian, and Macarius’s anonymous pagan philosopher, accepted the historicity of the burial but rejected the resurrection. [55]
Paul the Apostle includes the burial in his statement of the gospel in verses 3 and 4 [ broken anchor ] of 1 Corinthians 15: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures" (KJV). This appears to be an early pre-Pauline credal statement. [56]
The burial of Christ is specifically mentioned in the Apostles' Creed, where it says that Jesus was "crucified, dead, and buried." The Heidelberg Catechism asks "Why was he buried?" and gives the answer "His burial testified that He had really died." [57]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, "It is the mystery of Holy Saturday, when Christ, lying in the tomb, reveals God's great sabbath rest after the fulfillment of man's salvation, which brings peace to the whole universe" and that "Christ's stay in the tomb constitutes the real link between his passible state before Easter and his glorious and risen state today." [58]
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The Entombment of Christ has been a popular subject in art, being developed in Western Europe in the 10th century. It appears in cycles of the Life of Christ , where it follows the Deposition of Christ or the Lamentation of Christ. Since the Renaissance, it has sometimes been combined or conflated with one of these. [59]
Notable individual works with articles include:
The African-American spiritual "Were You There?" has the line "Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?" [60] while the Christmas carol "We Three Kings" includes the verse:
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
John Wilbur Chapman's hymn "One Day" interprets the burial of Christ by saying "Buried, He carried my sins far away." [61]
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the following troparion is sung on Holy Saturday:
The noble Joseph,
when he had taken down Thy most pure body from the tree,
wrapped it in fine linen and anointed it with spices,
and placed it in a new tomb.
Mary Magdalene was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to His crucifixion and resurrection. She is mentioned by name twelve times in the canonical gospels, more than most of the apostles and more than any other woman in the gospels, other than Jesus's family. Mary's epithet Magdalene may be a toponymic surname, meaning that she came from the town of Magdala, a fishing town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in Roman Judea.
The resurrection of Jesus is the Christian belief that God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion, starting – or restoring – his exalted life as Christ and Lord. According to the New Testament writing, Jesus was firstborn from the dead, ushering in the Kingdom of God. He appeared to his disciples, calling the apostles to the Great Commission of forgiving sin and baptizing repenters, and ascended to Heaven.
Joseph of Arimathea is a Biblical figure who assumed responsibility for the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion. Three of the four canonical Gospels identify him as a member of the Sanhedrin, while the Gospel of Matthew identifies him as a rich disciple of Jesus. The historical location of Arimathea is uncertain, although it has been identified with several towns. A number of stories about him developed during the Middle Ages.
The Passion is the short final period before the death of Jesus, described in the four canonical gospels. It is commemorated in Christianity every year during Holy Week.
The Gospel of Peter, or the Gospel according to Peter, is an ancient text concerning Jesus Christ, only partially known today. Originally written in Koine Greek, it is considered a non-canonical gospel and was rejected as apocryphal by the Church's synods of Carthage and Rome, which contributed to the establishment of the New Testament canon. It was the first of the non-canonical gospels to be rediscovered, preserved in the dry sands of Egypt.
The Christological argument for the existence of God, which exists in several forms, holds that if certain claims about Jesus are valid, one should accept that God exists. There are three main threads: the argument from the wisdom of Jesus, the argument from the claims of Jesus as son of God and the argument from the resurrection.
The empty tomb is the Christian tradition that the tomb of Jesus was found empty after his crucifixion. The canonical gospels each describe the visit of women to Jesus' tomb. Although Jesus' body had been laid out in the tomb after crucifixion and death, the tomb is found to be empty, the body gone, and the women are told by angels that he has risen.
The historicity of Jesus is the question of whether Jesus historically existed. The question of historicity was generally settled in scholarship in the early 20th century. Today scholars agree that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth did exist in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea and the subsequent Herodian tetrarchy in the 1st century CE, upon whose life and teachings Christianity was later constructed, but a distinction is made by scholars between 'the Jesus of history' and 'the Christ of faith'.
The term "historical Jesus" refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to what are traditionally religious interpretations. It also considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events being supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: Jesus was baptized and Jesus was crucified.
Dale C. Allison Jr. is a writer and historian whose areas of expertise include the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew, Second Temple Jewish literature, and the history of the interpretation and reception of the Bible. Allison is the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was previously the Erret M. Grable Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (1997-2013). From 2001-2014, he was an editor for the multi-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception.
The swoon hypothesis is any of a number of ideas that aim to explain the resurrection of Jesus, proposing that Jesus did not die on the cross, but merely fell unconscious ("swooned"), and was later revived in the tomb. According to the proponents of the swoon hypothesis, the appearances of the risen Jesus to his disciples following his resurrection from the dead were merely perceived to be resurrection appearances by his followers; proponents of the swoon hypothesis believe that Jesus allegedly fell unconscious ("swooned") on the cross, survived the crucifixion, and then regained enough strength to appear before them while he was still alive.
The stolen body hypothesis posits that the body of Jesus Christ was stolen from his burial place. It theorises that his tomb was found empty not because he was resurrected, but because the body had been hidden somewhere else by the apostles or unknown persons. Both the stolen body hypothesis and the debate over it presume the basic historicity of the gospel accounts of the tomb discovery. The stolen body hypothesis finds the idea that the body was not in the tomb plausible – such a claim could be checked if early Christians made it – but considers it more likely that early Christians had been misled into believing the resurrection by the theft of Jesus's body.
Matthew 27 is the 27th chapter in the Gospel of Matthew, part of the New Testament in the Christian Bible. This chapter contains Matthew's record of the day of the trial, crucifixion and burial of Jesus. Scottish theologian William Robertson Nicoll notes that "the record of this single day is very nearly one-ninth of the whole book".
Mark 15 is the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. This chapter records the narrative of Jesus' passion, including his trial before Pontius Pilate and then his crucifixion, death and entombment. Jesus' trial before Pilate and his crucifixion, death, and burial are also recorded in Matthew 27, Luke 23, and John 18:28–19:42.
Matthew 27:60 is the sixtieth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse describes the Entombment of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea after the crucifixion.
Matthew 27:57 is the fifty-seventh verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse begins a discussion of the burial of Jesus and introduces Joseph of Arimathea.
In Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition the Myrrhbearers are the individuals mentioned in the New Testament who were directly involved in the burial or who discovered the empty tomb following the resurrection of Jesus. The term traditionally refers to the women who came with myrrh to the tomb of Christ early in the morning to find it empty. Also included are Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who took the body of Jesus down from the cross, anointed it with myrrh and aloes, wrapped it in clean linen, and placed it in a new tomb. In Western Christianity, the women at the tomb, the Three Marys or other variants are the terms normally used.
The crucifixion of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judaea, most likely in AD 30 or AD 33. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, later attested to by other ancient sources, and is broadly accepted as one of the events most likely to have occurred during his life. There is no consensus among historians on the details.
Christian sources such as the New Testament books in the Christian Bible, include detailed accounts about Jesus, but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the biblical accounts of Jesus. The only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate.
Scholars have given various interpretations of the elements of the Gospel stories.