Was Jesus Buried in a Tomb?
The Christian proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection rests upon two evidential claims: Jesus’ followers encountered the risen Jesus after his death; and Jesus’ tomb was found empty.
Dale Allison takes up the question of the tomb in Chapter 5 & 6 of his The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History. The empty tomb matter itself divides into two parts: (A) was Jesus buried in a tomb? and (B) was the tomb found empty? Here I consider the first question.
Was Jesus buried in a tomb?
Mark 15 provides the oldest and least embellished gospel account of Jesus’ burial:
43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus….46 Then Joseph bought a linen cloth and, taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
Is Mark’s account reliable as history? There are several points to consider.
#1 The Entombment story has only one known source
When assessing the truth of an assertion, historians seek corroboration from multiple, independent sources. While the Four Gospels all tell the tomb burial story, Matthew and Luke are known to be derivative of Mark. And John’s burial/empty tomb story appears to be influenced by Luke and Matthew.1 Mark Goodacre also convincingly argues that John’s gospel is a reimagining based on Mark. Thus the Gospel traditions are not independent of each other.
Further the creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 - generally considered the earliest extant account of Jesus' death and resurrection - refers to a burial but not to a tomb. Indeed Paul never mentions the empty tomb in any of his letters. Thus we have only one independent attestation of an empty tomb.
#2 Techniques of Ancient Biography
The Gospels are widely seen as falling under the genre of bios, or ancient biography - a genre shared by such authors as Plutarch and Livy. These writers were historians but not in the modern sense of the word. Their history writing involved improvising facts, speeches, and ideas in service of the author’s underlying themes. For example, Plutarch is the most important biographer of antiquity, penning lives of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Pericles and over fifty others. But Plutarch’s Parallel Lives had no trouble setting biographies of legendary characters like Theseus and Romulus alongside those of historical people like Cicero. Plutarch’s Life of Alexander provides an important account of Alexander the Great but:
As is explained in the opening paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with history so much as the influence of character, good or bad, on the lives and destinies of men …. He sought to provide rounded portraits, likening his craft to that of a painter; indeed, he went to tremendous lengths (often leading to tenuous comparisons) to draw parallels between physical appearance and moral character.
This is the way of ancient biography: factual scruples can take a backseat to deeper themes.
Further we see this very tendency at work in the early Christian storytelling. Matthew’s account of the crucifixion has a legendary mass resurrection of many people rising from the dead and wandering Jerusalem (Mt. 27:51-53):
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
You rarely hear about this mass resurrection in modern tellings of the crucifixion because almost no one believes it happened. If it did happen it would be the most incredible event in human history, and yet no one (including the other gospel writers or contemporary historians like Josephus) bothered to mention it. For a full discussion of the Holy People rising legend see Dale Allison’s The Resurrection of Jesus, Chapter 7.
#3 Mark as a Source
And what of Mark? Mark is the earliest and least embellished of the Gospels and generally seen as the most historically reliable. But Mark also employs literary themes - most notably the Messianic Secret.
As I’ve noted previously regarding Mark the gospel was written anonymously around 70 AD - around 40 years after the burial events he narrated. So what we have in Mark’s gospel is a decades-later account written by an anonymous author with unknown sources.
There are also indications that Mark’s passion narrative also includes legendary material - most notably the Barabbas episode. Commentators note that Pilate’s “custom” of releasing a prisoner at Passover has no historical attestation outside of the gospel, and the story appears rather implausible:
Pilate was known for “his venality, his violence, his thefts, his assaults, his abusive behaviour, his frequent executions of untried prisoners, and his endless savage ferocity” (Philo of Alexandria). Pilate was not in the habit of gentle mercies toward his subjects.
Pilate’s job was to keep the peace in Judea and he would almost certainly not release a murderous insurrectionist such as Barabbas. Indeed, suppressing such people was the core of his charge from Rome.
Mark’s cleaned-up portrayal of Pilate may have political motives. Mark’s Pilate is a relatively benign ruler who did not want to crucify Jesus but was forced to by the chief priests and the Jewish crowds. Mark, writing at the time of the Jewish-Roman War, seeks to put the blame for Jesus’ crucifixion on the Jews rather than the Romans - whose marauding successors were laying waste to Judea at the time of Mark’s writing - and whose disfavor early Christians could not afford.
The name Barabbas means “son of the Father” which suggests a literary motif of Markan irony. Barabbas was a murderer and insurrectionist (literally “riser”). So the Jews chose Barabbas, the so-called “son of the father,” who killed and led a failed uprising. The Jews condemned Jesus, the real son of the Father, who was killed, but accomplished the real Rising.
There are some ancient stories of prisoner releases - e.g. Livy tells us of temporary release of prisoners in order to induce the gods to change the weather. But these hardly parallel the “custom” Mark alleges.
In total the the Barabbas story of Mark 15 appears less than likely. It's inconsistent with Pilate’s known character, it’s nearly unfathomable that he would release an insurrectionist, the custom has no extra-biblical evidence, and the biblical account seems to have literary and political motives. Mark appears capable of a telling a legendary story.
#4 Standard burial practices
Now for the burial itself. A typical practice in Roman crucifixions was to deny a burial and leave dead bodies on crosses where they were eaten by scavengers.2 But Jewish law mandated burial - see Deuteronomy 21:22-23, and at least in some cases the Romans allowed burial of the executed.3 Both Philo (in Alexandria) and Josephus (in Judea) write of the burial of some crucified criminals in the first century.
In cases of burying the executed, the standard practice in Roman Judea was for a servant of the Sanhedrin to to bury the deceased in the ground in a criminal’s graveyard in accordance with the Mishnah:
After the executed transgressor is taken down he is buried, and they would not bury him in his ancestral burial plot. Rather, two graveyards were established for the burial of those executed by the court
This ground burial was similar to the burial practices for everyone, not just criminals. As per Jodi Magness:
The poorer classes of Jewish society — the majority of the population — buried their dead in simple, individual trench graves dug into the ground, similar to the way we bury our dead today. This involved digging a rectangular trench in the ground, placing the deceased (wrapped in a shroud) at the bottom, and filling the trench back in with earth.
While the lower classes were buried in the ground, the the tomb burial described in the Mark is consistent with upper class burials of the period; Magness: “Because rock-cut tombs had to be cut by hand out of bedrock, only the upper classes … could afford them.” Matthew’s Gospel specifies that Joseph of Arimathea was a “rich man” who would ostensibly be capable of performing such a burial. It has also been discovered that one 1st century crucifixion victim (Yehohannan) was buried in a tomb in Jerusalem. Thus, the tomb burial of crucifixion victims was possible!
To recap: Romans typically left crucified bodies on crosses for scavengers. But they sometimes allowed burial in accord with Jewish law. Jewish custom called for burial in a criminal graveyard. And most Jews in general were buried in the trench graves in the ground. But in at least one case a crucified person was buried in a tomb.
#5 Joseph of Arimathea
Mark renders Joseph “a respected member of the council” - commonly taken to mean the Sanhedrin, a powerful tribunal of judges seated in Jerusalem. It was this “council” that condemned Jesus to death according to Mark 14. This association of a member of the council with the burial appears plausible, given the Mishnah (quoted above) notes that the court made arrangements for burials of the executed.
We know surprisingly little about Joseph of Arimathea. Why was he the one to manage the burial? Why a tomb burial? Where is Arimathea (which is otherwise unknown to history)? Mark does not address these matters. Matthew and John, perhaps embarrassed by Mark’s sparseness supply the idea that Joseph was a (secret) disciple of Jesus. Dale Allison opines that Joseph’s discipleship is a late legendary addition because the narratives betray a distance between Joseph and the women who watch the burial. If he were an active disciple the women would be interacting with him, participating in the burial.
Could this thinly sketched character Joseph contain literary embellishment like Barabbas? We know that legends often later add names to previously anonymous figures (e.g. the Church’s later naming of the wisemen who visited Jesus’ nativity). One could speculate that Joseph of Arimathea and Mary Magdalene form a parallelism to Jesus’s parents, Joseph and Mary. Joseph of Arimathea puts Jesus in the tomb (womb), and Mary Magdalene’s discovery brings him out. But this seems too strained given that Mark never mentions Joseph, the father of Jesus. Though only thinly attested, Joseph of Arimathea presents no obvious sign of being an invention.
The Alternative Scenario
With all this information in place, we can sketch out an “alternative scenario” and weigh it against the traditional account of Jesus’ entombment. The alternative scenario might go like this: When Jesus died, a member of the Sanhedrin (plausibly named Joseph of Arimathea) petitioned Pilate for his body. In keeping with the Mishnah, Joseph had Jesus buried in a trench grave in a graveyard for the executed. Subsequently, followers of Jesus had encounters with the post-mortem Jesus. These encounters led to the church’s declaration that Jesus had risen from the dead. Indeed this is what we find in the earliest Christian declaration of 1 Corinthians 15:
3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve….
Notice that there is no empty tomb in this proclamation. This makes sense if Jesus was simply buried in the ground and the earliest Christians had no empty tomb narrative. A ground burial further explains why Paul in all his letters (date 50s-60s AD) never mentions an empty tomb - a detail he would have included in his many disquisitions about the resurrection of Jesus if he had known of it.
Armed with knowledge of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, early Christians could confidently declare that his burial place was empty; he was risen! Just as he had predicted. Mary Magdalene was likely one of the witnesses of the risen Jesus, and stories circulated about her experience. We see diversity and conflict in the traditions about Mary in the gospels themselves. Mark has her discover an empty tomb; Matthew adds that there was an earthquake and an angel descending and that Mary met Jesus; Luke has her meeting two men in “dazzling white” and reporting to the disciples who dismiss her “idle tale”; John has her asking a gardener for Jesus’ body before realizing the supposed gardener was Jesus himself. All of this is consonant with a rich culture of storytelling developing over 40-60 years between Jesus’ death and the writing of the gospels. As the Barabbas episode and Holy Ones’ Resurrection shows, not all gospel stories should be taken as pure history.
The skeptical scenario then posits that storytelling over decades could turn a conceptualized empty burial plot into an empty tomb and ultimately into Mark’s tomb discovery narrative. Mark’s gospel concludes with the line that the women at the empty tomb “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,” which may have been Mark’s explanation for why this empty tomb story was just coming to light in 70 AD.4
This alternative scenario explains the gap between Paul’s account and the gospels. It also seems to fit better with the baseline historical practice of criminal burial.
The Traditional Account has responses in it arsenal. As for the reason for tomb burial, Allison argues that because Jesus died in the afternoon leading into the Sabbath, there was no time to dig a trench grave, and thus Joseph quickly moved the body to his family tomb. This is possible but speculative. Surely the Sanhedrin had managed Friday executions before and could bury the dead without polluting their own family tombs? Regarding Paul’s silence on the empty tomb, the traditionalist can say that Paul was not particularly interested in historical details - he never discusses the virgin birth or Jesus’ miracles either. Still Jesus’ resurrection was the heart of Paul’s message and he does reference crucifixion and resurrection numerous times.
What the Traditional Account has in its favor is a direct explanation for the empty tomb narrative: it happened. The alternative scenario has to speculate about how the legend grew or was manufactured. Though given what we know about gospel legends, ancient biography practices, and the Barabbas story, such legend growth is well within the realm of possibility.
The Easter narrative deserves a discussion unto itself. For now, my conclusion is that both the Traditional Account and the Alternative Scenario of Jesus' burial are historically tenable, and neither is certain. As Allison notes, the historian’s estimation of the burial will likely rise or fall with one’s general views about the reliability of the gospels.5
Dale Allison. The Resurrection of Jesus, 97, fn 20. Ibid. 117, fn 5.
Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 161.
The Resurrection of Jesus, 104.
Michael Goulder, “Baseless Fabric".” In The Resurrection of Jesus, 125, fn 46.
The Resurrection of Jesus, 113.