3. The Man who Buried Jesus

~ Chapter 3 ~

The Man Who Buried Jesus

One of the curious features of the Gospels of Mark and Luke is that they contain stories which, if left on their own without explanation, had the potential to create theological confusion or historical skepticism. These may be viewed as the “loose ends” of the traditions. An editorial objective of Matthew was to tie up these loose ends by resolving tensions which were left standing in the earlier Gospels, and providing new solutions to puzzling questions. The existence of this unique explanatory material in Matthew constitutes more evidence that Matthew was the last of the Synoptic Gospels to have been composed. Examples are as follows:

The Problem of Jesus’ Baptism. All of the Synoptic Gospels report that Jesus submitted to the baptism for the remission of sins of John the Baptist. In the primitive stages of the movement’s developing theology this presented no doctrinal tension, for Jesus was not viewed as either sinless or divine by his earliest followers. Nor did Jesus himself, having been raised an observant Jew, harbor any belief that he was sinless or divine. Thus, Jesus submitted to John’s baptism with no theological difficulty, as we see in Mark:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. (Mk 1:9-10)

On the other hand, the Fourth Gospel’s advanced interpretation of Jesus as an eternal heavenly being runs into conflict with the historical event of the baptism. John attempts to finesse the issue by retaining Jesus’ encounter with the Baptist while eliminating any direct reference to Jesus’ baptism by John:

The next day [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but for this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John bore witness, “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him.” (John 1:29-32)

In light of this confusion, Matthew’s treatment of the baptism is of particular interest. Matthew is largely following Mark, but by the time he was composing his Gospel the candid historical account of the baptism in Mark had evidently become a doctrinal liability. Matthew could not ignore Mark’s report that Jesus was baptized by John, but neither could he show the baptism without an attempt to answer the theological problem of a sinless man submitting to a baptism for the remission of sins. Here is Matthew's solution:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so for now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove.” (Matt. 3:13-16)

Matthew resolves the problem by acknowledging Jesus’ baptism, but with an inference that it was unnecessary—Jesus had insisted that it be done for symbolic reasons. The account remains logically elusive in that it is unclear how an unnecessary baptism contributes to the fulfillment of all righteousness. The vagueness of the rationalization that Matthew places on Jesus’ lips is itself an indication of the degree to which the Church was struggling to resolve what had become a thorny conflict between historical fact and evolved doctrine.

The Problem of the Nearby Tomb. Another puzzling element in the movement’s early tradition is how Joseph of Arimathea (alone in the Synoptic Gospels and accompanied by Nicodemus in John) buried Jesus on the spur of the moment in someone else's family tomb. All four Gospels either explicitly or implicitly describe the tomb in which Jesus was laid as a large rock-hewn tomb intended for multiple interments. In first-century Jerusalem, tombs such as these were private property, and costly acquisitions that only wealthy families could afford. They were signs of social status. It would have been highly inappropriate to inter Jesus’ body in someone’s family tomb simply out of convenience. Yet Mark reports the use of a nearby tomb without further comment:

3.1: The Burial of Jesus

Mark 15:46

And [Joseph] bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.

Luke 22:52-53

[Joseph] went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid him in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had ever yet been laid.

Matthew 27:59-60

And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock, and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, and departed.

Luke tries to mitigate the issue by describing it as a tomb where no one had ever yet been laid (Fig. 3.1). The fact that the tomb was unused eliminates the concern that a family’s established resting place had been violated. Nevertheless, this is not the issue of most consequence as far as Christianity is concerned. Although there is no specific reference to time pressure in the Synoptic accounts, we may infer from the sequence of events that the burial needed to be accomplished quickly to accommodate the Passover. Indeed, in John’s Gospel we find an explicit description of the decision to bury Jesus hastily in the nearby tomb because it was available and convenient:

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)

Clearly, the unexpected arrest and prompt execution of Jesus meant there was no time to prepare a proper burial site. Under these circumstances, the use of a nearby tomb would have constituted a practical but temporary solution to the burial problem—the key issue is that a private family tomb selected at random for its convenience could never have been envisioned as a permanent resting place for Jesus by those who laid him there. In order to avoid a conflict with the tomb’s owner, they would have anticipated the need to remove Jesus’ body from the tomb immediately after the Passover (which ended at sundown on Saturday) to arrange for a more appropriate permanent burial. The problem for the Church was that this sequence of events suggests a practical explanation for the absence of Jesus’ body in the tomb that fateful Easter morning.

All four Gospels report that Jesus’ body was not in the tomb when the women arrived Sunday morning. From the accounts in Mark, Luke, and John, we might suppose that it had already been removed and buried elsewhere by those who had placed it there. Furthermore, this scenario had evidently become a matter of discussion by the time Matthew was composed. For Matthew addresses it directly by inserting a new and vital detail into the burial account: Joseph laid Jesus’ body in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock (Fig. 3.1). Here, Matthew echoes John’s reference to the newness of the tomb, also implied in Luke, but adds the vital detail that Joseph actually owned the tomb and had constructed it himself. The identification of Joseph as the tomb’s owner is of enormous consequence, for it nullifies the issue of whether it was appropriate to use that particular tomb. The need for Joseph to have removed Jesus’ body from the tomb immediately after the Passover is eliminated.

The attribution of the tomb’s ownership to Joseph is a small but momentous alteration that bears upon Synoptic chronology and potential solutions to the Synoptic Problem. For theories that propose Luke was last and directly dependent upon Matthew face another challenge here. It is unlikely that Luke, in using Matthew as a source, would have chosen to drop the identification of Joseph as the tomb’s owner, and instead emphasized its unused status. Anything is possible of course, but once again we are left wondering what would have motivated Luke to make such an omission. On the other hand, Matthew’s revision is intended to neutralize accounts in the other three Gospels which, if left unaddressed, had the potential to erode the credibility of the resurrection story.

The Problem of the Man who Buried Jesus. All four Gospels are clear that the twelve disciples were not present during the burial of Jesus. The Synoptics claim that a previously unknown individual, Joseph of Arimathea, had assumed responsibility for the burial. John’s Gospel says that Joseph was assisted by Nicodemus (Jn 19:39). Remarkably, Mark and Luke describe Joseph as a good man, and a respected member of “the council” (the Jewish Sanhedrin) who was “looking for the kingdom of God.” This is a critically important detail, for it suggests that Joseph was either a Pharisee or a Sadducee since these were the two parties represented on the Sanhedrin.

There are several reasons to presume that Joseph was a Pharisee. The Sadducees were a minority party that was politically aligned with the Romans and the High Priest, while the Pharisees were aligned with and protective of the interests of the masses. The Sadducees sought to protect their wealth and influence, and maintain social stability under Roman rule; the Pharisees were those most sympathetic to resistance movements. If Jesus had been perceived as a popular figure at odds with Rome, the Pharisees would have been those most sympathetic to his cause, and most concerned that he received a respectful burial.

This, of course, contradicts the Gospels’ view of the Pharisees as sinister, hypocritical, self-serving enemies of Jesus who were seeking his condemnation through the fabrication of false charges against him. Yet there are good reasons to doubt the Gospels’ portrayal of the Pharisees. The first century historian Flavius Josephus mentions the Pharisees several times, and we get more information about them from his writings than we do from the Gospels. It is important to note that at the time Josephus was writing he was a Roman citizen and pensioner of the Emperor. He maintained an apartment in the Emperor’s home, and was decidedly supportive of Roman interests:

There was a certain sect of men who were Jews, who valued themselves highly upon the exact skill they had in the law of their fathers, and made men believe they were highly favored by God … These are those that are called the sect of the Pharisees, who were in a capacity of greatly opposing kings. A cunning sect they were, and soon elevated to a pitch of open fighting and doing mischief. Accordingly, when all the people of the Jews gave assurance of their good-will to Caesar, and to the king’s government, these very men did not swear.” (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book XVII, 2.4)

Moreover, Josephus indicates that the Pharisees were the spiritual and political leaders of the masses, and were willing to stir them against the ruling authorities:

However, this prosperous state of affairs moved the Jews to envy Hyrcanus; but they that were worst disposed to him were the Pharisees, who are one of the sects of the Jews, as we have informed you already. These have so great a power over the multitude that when they say anything against the king or against the high priest, they are presently believed." (Antiquities, Book XIII, 10.5)

According to Josephus, a primary conflict between the Pharisees and Sadducees was that the Pharisees embraced an oral tradition in addition to the Torah, while the Sadducees held a more conservative view wherein nothing but the written law was valid. In addition, the Pharisees appealed to the multitudes, while the Sadducees were the party of the rich:

What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the law of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers; and concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side." (Antiquities, Book XIII, 10.6)

Josephus wrote Jewish Antiquities in about 90 CE, or roughly contemporaneous with the production of Matthew. From his writings we find that the Pharisees had a long history of resisting both Caesar and Herod. When the Gospels are read with this perspective in mind, their denigration of the Pharisees makes perfect sense. For by painting the Pharisees as the vile, hypocritical arch-enemies of Jesus, the Gospel writers were placing Jesus and the Romans on the same side against a common enemy. The historical reality is that the Pharisees would have been among Jesus’ most ardent supporters. The Talmudic scholar Hyam Maccoby has even argued that Jesus was most likely a Pharisee himself.[1] In any event, seen in this light, the Fourth Gospel’s assertion that Nicodemus the Pharisee (Jn 3:1) assisted in the honorable burial of Jesus has a ring of remarkable authenticity. Since John maintains that Nicodemus and Joseph both attended to the burial of Jesus, it is reasonable to presume that Joseph of Arimathea was a Pharisee as well.

Thus, in Mark, Luke, and John we find threads of a historical tradition that one or two Pharisees assumed responsibility for the burial of Jesus. This is significant in that it runs contrary to Gospel accounts which allege that Jesus’ primary conflict was with the Pharisees. The fact that this story survived in Mark, Luke, and John is fortunate. Indeed, it would not have survived if Matthew had had his way, for in order to preclude any possibility of interpreting Joseph as a Pharisee, Matthew erases the reference to Joseph’s council membership. In its place he redefines Joseph as having been nothing more than a rich disciple of Jesus (Fig. 3.2):

3.2: Joseph of Arimathea

Mark 15:42-23

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Luke 22:50-52

50 Now there was a man named Joseph from the Jewish town of Arimathea. He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man 51 who had not consented to their purpose and deed, and he was looking for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Matthew 27:57-58

57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

This is another small but crucial revision by Matthew. At this point we begin to touch upon a dark side of Christian expression that evolved during the last third of the first century. During this period the fledgling Church would increasingly blame the Jews and absolve the Romans for the death of Jesus in an attempt to reduce evidence of ideological conflict between Rome and the historical Jesus movement. Matthew reflects the most advanced stage of this unfortunate development, presenting some of the most inflammatory anti-Semitic rhetoric in the New Testament. The scene in which Matthew portrays an incensed mob of angry Jews as clamoring for the death of Jesus is particularly disturbing:
So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children." (Matt. 27:24-25)

This language has been used throughout the Christian era to justify violence against the Jews, and it appears only in the Gospel of Matthew. Given Matthew's evident desire to amplify Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus, it would not do to have a member of the Jewish ruling council described as a good, righteous, and respected man who was looking for the kingdom of God. It would be contrary to Matthew’s thesis to portray a member of the Sanhedrin, especially a Pharisee, as assuming responsibility for the honorable burial of Jesus. Thus, Matthew simply erases the identity of Joseph that exists in Mark and Luke, and transforms him into a “rich disciple” who was not affiliated with the Sanhedrin.

This alteration is further evidence that Matthew was the last and most ideologically evolved of the Synoptic Gospels. For it is difficult to imagine that the authors of Mark and Luke, had either of them used Matthew as a source, would have taken the counterproductive step to recast a disciple of Jesus as a member of the Jewish council. This is clearly a change that Matthew made to the earlier traditions. That Matthew was motivated to alter the identity of Joseph of Arimathea is a key to the interpretation of the entire Gospel, as it reveals the extent to which he was willing to mask the truth for ideological reasons.

The Allegation of the Stolen Body. Another peculiar feature of Matthew is that it addresses accusations that the resurrection was a hoax perpetrated by the disciples. As background, in Mark and Luke, Jesus' body is laid in a tomb and a stone rolled in front of the entrance to close it. On the morning of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and other women go to the tomb to find the stone rolled back and the body of Jesus gone. No one witnessed Jesus come back to life as in the story of Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:41); no one saw Jesus emerge from the tomb as in the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:44). Jesus’ body was simply not there when they arrived at the already opened tomb.

Matthew claims that a common accusation was that the disciples had come at night and stolen Jesus’ body in order to fabricate the resurrection story, although there is no hint of this anywhere else in the New Testament. To rebut this accusation, Matthew introduces this encounter which occurs the day after Jesus died:

Next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, 'After three days I will rise again.' Therefore order the sepulchre to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away, and tell the people, 'He has risen from the dead,' and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, 'You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the sepulchre secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard. (Matt 27:62-66)

Here Matthew spotlights the stolen body theory, describing it in exceptional detail. It is an accusation to which he clearly wants to draw the reader’s attention. After establishing that the allegation was being made, he adds the account of the sealed and guarded tomb to refute it. Yet, having introduced this story, he has created another complication. For now he cannot follow the accounts of the other three Gospels on the morning of the first day of the week. Since the stone was sealed, a supernatural force is required to break it. Since the guards are watching, they must see the tomb actually open:

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightening, and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” (Matt. 28:1-6)

Note that, though they are watching as the stone is rolled back, Jesus still does not emerge from the tomb. His body is already gone before the tomb is opened, just as it is when the women arrive at the tomb in the other Gospels. The fact that the resurrected Jesus does not emerge from the tomb is a telling omission. Matthew embellishes the story enough to defeat the stolen body theory, while retaining the essence of earlier Gospel accounts which say that the body of Jesus was gone by the time the women arrived.

Remarkably, Matthew is not finished at this point. The reader has already been told that the authorities feared the perpetration of a hoax, that Pilate had accordingly ordered the tomb to be sealed and guarded, and that a miraculously timed earthquake was required to open it. The story as presented thus far establishes that the stolen body theory was circulating, and that under these circumstances there was no possibility that the disciples could have stolen it. This could have concluded this portion of the narrative. Yet Matthew does not relent:

. . . some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, 'His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.' And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. (Matt. 28:11-15)

None of the Matthean material related to the stolen body theory appears in Mark or Luke. This is an extraordinary narrative expansion that is entirely out of character for Matthew. As we have seen, Matthew usually edits for brevity and precision. While he often adds sayings of Jesus that do not appear in Mark or Luke, he rarely expands narrative.

Moreover, his extensive ruminations on the stolen body theory are oddly disconcerting for one fundamental reason—the accusation makes no sense to begin with. It is unlikely that a group of Jesus’ closest followers, having just experienced the shock of his abrupt arrest and public crucifixion, would immediately conspire to remove his body, and on the strength of nothing more than the fact that his body was no longer where it had been placed, proclaim that a miraculous resurrection had occurred. Few would imagine that the disciples would have been devious enough to attempt such a charade, or dim-witted enough to suppose anyone would believe it. The accusation would not have made any more sense to first century readers than it does to us today. The fact that no other NT book mentions it is further cause for skepticism. Therefore, Matthew’s underlying premise that the stolen body theory was perceived as a serious challenge to the resurrection account is doubtful.

Why then does Matthew amplify the story to such an extraordinary degree? We can only guess based upon what it accomplishes. But what it accomplishes is significant—the sealing of the tomb on Saturday, the Passover, works to inhibit both the stolen body theory and the idea that someone returned immediately after the Passover to complete the task of burying Jesus. Matthew treats the former with great fanfare and remains silent on the latter. Yet he was acutely aware of the problem, for he reinvented Joseph as a rich disciple who owned the tomb to countermand it. In light of this, the extensive focus on the stolen body theory appears to be a straw man designed to divert attention from the real possibility that someone had already attended to the proper burial of Jesus before the women arrived.

The Problem of Betrayal by an Apostle. Another element in the Gospel tradition that had become a liability in Matthew’s eyes is the betrayal by Judas. The problem—how could an apostle chosen by Jesus, who had known and traveled with him, be so unimpressed with him as to betray him? The Synoptics offer differing explanations.

The Gospel of Mark indicates that Judas decided to betray Jesus simply for money (Mark 14:10-11). Mark begs the fundamental question of his state of mind, and the account cries out for further explanation. Luke addresses the issue, saying that Satan entered into Judas, whereupon he then betrayed Jesus for money (Luke 22:3-5). By placing the blame on Satan, Judas is absolved of direct responsibility—the betrayal was preordained in the cosmic struggle between good and evil, and Judas was a simple pawn in the hands of greater powers. Yet this explanation is problematic as well. For if Satan can simply enter into an apostle of Jesus at will and pervert him to the dark side, what chance does the average believer have of withstanding such a force? After the betrayal, Judas is seen no more in Mark or Luke, and the problem of the betrayal remains inadequately resolved.

Matthew gave more thought to the issue and addressed it as follows:

When Judas, his betrayer, saw that [Jesus] was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went out and hanged himself. (Matt. 27:3-5)

By introducing the story of the repentant Judas, Matthew casts new light on the issue. According to Matthew, Judas did not anticipate that Jesus would be condemned to death—it was all a tragic mistake which overwhelmed Judas with such grief that he committed suicide. If Judas did not anticipate or intend to cause the condemnation of Jesus, it diminishes the heinous nature of his betrayal.

In Mark, the betrayal is a wanton and willful act of a renegade apostle; in Luke, Judas is a hapless tool of Satanic forces. But in Matthew, the betrayal is transformed into the sad miscalculation of a confused apostle. Of the three, Matthew’s story of a repentant Judas presents the least difficulty in explaining why the betrayal occurred.

Matthew: The Last of the Synoptics

In Matthew we find an attempt to explain Jesus’ baptism by John, an assertion that Joseph owned the tomb Jesus was buried in, an elimination of the earlier report that Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin, an extraordinary diversion into the stolen body theory, and an attempt to rationalize the betrayal by Judas. Matthew exhibits a consistent propensity to alter and/or expand upon elements of the Gospel story as presented by Mark and Luke that had become doctrinally problematic. The fact that all of this material exists only in Matthew lends additional weight to Matthean posteriority. Matthew’s unique formal responses to doctrinal and historical criticism are products of incremental reflection upon the Jesus story that occurred after the composition of Mark and Luke.

To summarize the discussion, a variety of features of the Synoptic Gospels collectively point to a late composition date of Matthew:

The attribution of the Gospel of Matthew to one of the original twelve apostles suggests its late composition date. Once this practice was established it would not be possible for second generation writers to publish Gospels with equal authority under non-apostolic names.

Matthew contains more evolved forms of key traditions such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, the Great Sermon, and the Great Commission.

A statistical inventory of various traditions indicates that Matthew has a higher concentration of many different types of material as compared to Luke, while Luke often contains a subset of the material in Matthew. This distribution of material suggests Matthew was produced at a later stage of the Church’s development.

Matthew shows a variety of corrections in his sources, including factual corrections, reinterpretations of Jesus’ character, and other corrections of a theological or ideological nature that do not exist in Mark, and some of which do not exist in Luke either. It is improbable that all of this material would have been removed by Luke had he used Matthew as a source.

Matthew aggressively explains and neutralizes controversial aspects of earlier Gospel traditions that had evidently become flashpoints for debate and cause for skepticism. None of Matthew’s exposition on these issues appears in earlier Gospels.

There is ample evidence to establish Matthew as the last of the Synoptics. Matthew frequently offers more sophisticated reflection, building upon materials in Mark and Luke. He also tends to alter or embellish his sources when it suits his ideological agenda. Elements as diverse as Matthew’s liturgically developed form of the Lord’s Prayer, or his rationale for Jesus’ baptism by John, or his consideration of the tomb’s ownership have no connection with one another. Yet the appearance of unrelated elements such as these indicate that a sufficient period of time had elapsed between Luke and Matthew to allow more mature forms of the traditions to have evolved.

It follows that if there was in fact any direct literary dependence between Matthew and Luke, it would have been that of Matthew’s dependence upon Luke. Luke could not have known the Gospel of Matthew for the simple reason that it had not yet been composed. This finding eliminates all proposed solutions to the Synoptic Problem that argue for Luke’s use of Matthew. Yet if the converse is true—that Matthew did indeed use Luke as a literary source—we would expect to find direct evidence of his awareness of Luke. This evidence does indeed exist. It becomes obvious once we recognize Matthean posteriority as a legitimate solution to the Synoptic Problem.

[1] Maccoby, The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, pp.29-44