John 20:1-2 – The Resurrection and the History of Jewish Hope

Last week we finished up John 19 with a discussion on what happened to Jesus’ body.

·  We learned that there is virtually universal agreement that Jesus died on a Roman cross.

·  We saw that Jesus’ body was buried in a tomb.

·  Importantly, this fate was one of the historically documented options on the table for the treatment of the body of a crucifixion victim.

o   It was not a trumped up revision.

·  Jesus’ body was buried – dead, tortured, punctured, bloodied and bruised.

This week we begin a series on the resurrection.

·  Over the coming weeks I want to cover it from at least three angles.

·  (1) Apologetically – How can we trust that a dead man became alive again?

·  (2) Harmonizing the four Gospel accounts – How can we account for the apparent contradictions between the four?

·  (3) Contextually – What were the resurrection expectations of the Jews? Did the OT speak of resurrection? Was what happened to Jesus in line with these expectations?

Today we will start with the third angle.

·  We must because it will provide the foundation for all the others.

But before we do anything else, we need to define resurrection.

·  What is resurrection?

·  “Resurrection means bodily life after ‘life after death’, or, if you prefer, bodily life after the state of ‘death’” – Wright.

·  Resurrection is what happens only to people who are “at present dead” – Wright.

·  Resurrection is the physical restoration or recreation of the body in the physical world.

o   It is not and never a metaphor for a spiritual “life after death”.

o   As Wright says, it is “bodily life after ‘life after death’”.

Our text for today:

John 20:1–2 (ESV) — 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Luke 24:4 (ESV) — 4 While they were perplexed about this…[the empty tomb].

John 11:23–24 (ESV) — 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Mary Magdalene thought someone stole Jesus’ body – “they have taken the Lord out of the tomb”.

·  The Gospel of Luke tells us that she (they) “were perplexed about this” – the empty tomb.

·  Martha speaks about a so-called “resurrection on the last day” at Lazarus’ death.

o   Kostenberger suggests this is a creedal response.

·  So apparently, nobody understood what happened to Jesus’ body.

·  It certainly wasn’t the “last day” as anticipated by the Jews.

·  And what makes their responses all the more peculiar is that Jesus had earlier in His ministry shared with his disciples, “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’…he was speaking about the temple of his body” (John 2:19 & 21).

·  Something they took as a metaphor with the actual Temple as the referent.

So what is going on in their minds on that Sunday morning?

·  Why did Mary think the body was taken?

·  Why were they perplexed?

·  Why was the possibility that Jesus resurrected not on their radar?

To get at these questions, we need to get into some Jewish background.

·  We need to find out what Jews believed about the afterlife.

·  And as we do this, we will also accomplish two important tasks.

·  (1) We will see just how unexpected Jesus’ resurrection was – even in Judaism.

·  (2) We will see how the history of hope in Judaism, as it developed, made its way directly to Jesus Christ.

BTW – Virtually all of the information in this lesson is taken from N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God.

·  As well as from various other articles and lectures of his on the subject.

1) INTRODUCTION

To get us started, I want to get our feet wet with a quick contrast and comparison between pagan views and Jewish views of the afterlife.

·  This will give us something to hold on to when we start diving deeper.

Greek Paganism:

Judaism was surrounded by a myriad of pagan views of the afterlife.

·  And during the 400 years before Jesus, the pagan views that were competing with Judaism were predominately Greek.

o   These were also the views that Paul was contending with in his ministry.

·  Greek culture had given a lot of thought to the afterlife.

·  They had developed fairly detailed views about it.

·  The content of their views were informed by some of the most famous people in history – Homer, Socrates, Plato – and all the characters in Greek mythology.

Generally speaking the pagan view of the afterlife was:

·  Dead people existed in the afterlife as “souls, shades or eidola” – Wright.

·  They resided, “Most likely in Hades; possibly in the Isles of the Blessed, or Tartarus…” – Wright.

·  There were concepts of transmigration (reincarnation), appearing to the living, or hanging around their grave.

·  And remarkably, the soul welcomed death; “the soul was well rid of its body” – Wright.

Was resurrection an option?

·  “Resurrection in the flesh appeared a startling, distasteful idea, at odds with everything that passed for wisdom among the educated” – Wright.

·  In fact, the flesh and body were something to be shed.

·  Nowhere in paganism is “a sustained claim advanced that resurrection has actually happened to a particular individual” – Wright.

·   And “Lots of things could happen to the dead in the beliefs of pagan antiquity, but resurrection was not among the available options “– Wright.

Judaism:

Curiously, unlike paganism, OT Judaism was less concerned with the afterlife – Wright.

·  “In fact…an interest in ‘life after death’ for its own sake was characteristic of various pagan worldviews (that of Egypt, for instance), not of ancient Israel” – Wright.

o   The Jew, we will see, was much more concerned with Israel, its land, and its people.

·  And, in contrast with the pagan, “death for the Jew was not an improvement or an escape ‘from the prison-house of the body’” – Wright.

o   Indeed, we will see that for the Jew, the longer the life the better.

·  Why the difference?

Was resurrection an option?

·  Interestingly, like the pagan, early Judaism had no overt belief in resurrection.

·  At best, it is something that is “deeply asleep, only to be woken by echoes from later times and texts” – Wright.

·  This is why it is said that the OT itself, “is not particularly concerned with life after death at all, still less with resurrection”  – Wright

So having seen, quite strangely I think, that Judaism’s view of the afterlife was not nearly as robust as its competitors, we need to see how we got from the OT’s “deeply asleep” to Martha’s “resurrection on the last day”.

Essentially, there were two positions on death in Jewish thought.

·  (1) One-stage view of death.

·  (2) Two-stage view of death.

·  These views did not develop linearly in succession.

o   Though I might give this impression.

·  They are intimately related and often existed in tension and relationship with each other.

The one-stage view consisted of the following:

·  Either it was as simple as the fact that “the dead are ‘asleep with the ancestors’” – Wright.

·  The “martyrs go, immediately upon death, into the blissful immortality already enjoyed by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” – Wright.

·  Or, “the dead may be ‘received’ by YHWH into some continuing life” – Wright.

·  As we just mentioned, this continuing life was not nearly as developed as the pagans.

·  On this one-stage view, “death is a one-way street, on which those behind can follow but those ahead cannot turn back” – Wright.

The two-stage view consisted of the following view:

·  “Some at least of the dead can hope for resurrection after any such ‘life after death’” – Wright.

·  The “any such ‘life after death’” refers to the options under the one-stage view.

We will explore each view in more detail.

2) ONE-STAGE VIEW OF DEATH – WHERE IS THE HOPE?

This view is found in numerous texts of the Old Testament.

·  Psalm 6:5 (ESV) — 5 For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?

·  Genesis 3:19 (ESV) — 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

·  Psalm 88:3–7 (ESV) — 3 For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. 4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength, 5 like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. 6 You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep. 7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.

·  Isaiah 38:10 (ESV) — 10 I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years.

·  Ecclesiastes 9:5 (ESV) — 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.

·  Job 3:13 (ESV) — 13 For then I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,

·  Isaiah 14:9–11 (ESV) — 9 Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. 10 All of them will answer and say to you: ‘You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!’ 11 Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps; maggots are laid as a bed beneath you, and worms are your covers.

·  Job 7:7–10 (ESV) — 7 “Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. 8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone. 9 As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up; 10 he returns no more to his house, nor does his place know him anymore.

Wright says of these texts and of the views they express:

·  “Sheol, Abaddon, the Pit, the grave. The dark, deep regions, the land of forgetfulness. These almost interchangeable terms denote a place of gloom and despair, a place where one can no longer enjoy life, and where the presence of YHWH himself is withdrawn. It is a wilderness: a place of dust to which creatures made of dust have returned. Those who have gone there are ‘the dead’; they are ‘shades’, and they are ‘asleep’. As in Homer, there is no suggestion that they are enjoying themselves; it is a dark and gloomy world.”

But, lest we despair, within some of these texts there is a suggestion that some activity is going on.

·  “They might be momentarily aroused from their comatose state by an especially distinguished newcomer, as in Isaiah 14…” – Wright.

o   “All of them will answer and say to you: ‘You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!’” – Isaiah 14:10.

·  So, the dead were “not completely non-existent…” – Wright.

·  “But their normal condition was to be asleep” – Wright.

BTW – It is likely that Jesus’ disciples and loyal family thought that He was received as a “distinguished newcomer” in Sheol.

All of this seems a long way from what the Jews’ believed in the first century.

·  And indeed it is.

·  But, there was a latent hope present in this one-stage view of death.

·  It is very hard for us to see, but for the Jew it was there.

·  And this seed of hope grew and expanded as history drew closer to Jesus.

THE ROOT OF ISRAEL’S HOPE:

What was their hope?

·  If they did not find their hope in the afterlife, where did they find it?

Just because they had no great hope for afterlife did not mean that, “they were without a living and vibrant hope. At the heart of that hope was the knowledge that YHWH, the God of Israel, was the creator of the world; that he was faithful to the covenant with Israel, and beyond that with the whole world; and that, as such, he would be true to his word both to Israel and to the whole creation” – Wright.

Their hope was a national hope.

·  “The hope of the nation was thus first and foremost that the people, the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, would multiply and flourish.”

·  “Children, and then grand-children, are God’s great blessing, and to live long enough to see them is one of the finest things to hope for” – Wright.

Wright gets at it as follows:

·  “To the devout Israelite, the continuance of the family line was not simply a matter of keeping a name alive. It was part of the way in which God’s promises, for Israel and perhaps even for the whole world, would be fulfilled. Hence the importance, particularly in the post-exilic period when the nation was gathering itself together again, of those genealogies which seem so bafflingly unreligious to late modernity, and of the prophetic insistence on the ‘holy seed’” – Wright.

This hope is something we cannot begin to fully understand.

·  In some ways, it is just to “collective” and not “individual” enough for us.

·  For the Jew, “The nation and land of the present world were far more important than what happened to an individual beyond the grave” – Wright.

·  I can’t begin to grasp this.

·  But, joyfully, this gloomy hope began to give rise to something more optimistic.

Some OT examples of this:

·  2 Samuel 14:14 (ESV) — 14 We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.

·  Psalm 49:14–15 (ESV) — 14 Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell. 15 But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah

·  Psalm 73:23–26 (ESV) — 23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Importantly, “Where we find a glimmer of hope like this, it is based not on anything in the human make-up (e.g. an ‘immortal soul’), but on YHWH and him alone” – Wright.

·  The Jew saw all power over creation (the dust), and all prerogatives for action with YHWH.

·  He was the God of history and any hope that existed was to found in His actions.

·  The developing hope was to be found in the “But God” and not in creation itself.

And this “But God” hope is foundational to the view of resurrection – the two-stage view – that we will explore momentarily.

·  In fact, this hope (which has never left Judaism) began to grow and manifest itself in ways we might find more comfortable.

·  As we suggested at the beginning, this hope was making its way toward Christ.

THE ROOT OF HOPE BEGAN TO BLOSSOM:

So as this hope in the action of God on Israel’s behalf grew, the idea of resurrection began to blossom.

·  “This explicit link of life with the land and death with exile, coupled with the promise of restoration the other side of exile, is one of the forgotten roots of the fully developed hope of ancient Israel. The dead might be asleep; they might be almost nothing at all; but hope lived on within the covenant and promise of YHWH” –Wright.

·  And these “roots of the fully developed hope” easily accommodated a developing view of bodily resurrection.

In fact, allusions to a bodily resurrection found their home in the language of “return” and “restoration”.

·  Restoration – the restoration of Israel as a nation.

·  Return – the return of the people to their promised land.

·  Ezekiel 37:12 (ESV) — 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.

·  Texts like this, clearly exilic texts, “could well have been read within post-biblical Judaism” as having undertones of a bodily resurrection – Wright.

·  And, as we will see, they were begun to be read this way.

·  But never in place of their exilic content, but on top of it.

Wright puts it like this:

·  “The point of the resurrection, within the Jewish worldview, was (as we shall see) that it would be in line with, though going significantly beyond, the great liberating acts of God on behalf of Israel in the past.”

God brought them out of exile from Egypt and brought them into the promise land.

·  So God could also bring the Jew out of the exile of death and into a new life after “life after death”.

·  The connection is not a hard one to see.

·  And the Jewish two-stage view of death is where this connection begins to take off.

John 19:31-42 – What Happened to Jesus Body?

Last week we explored the theological and spiritual significance of the cross.

·  Specifically, we learned about the atonement.

·  What it was and why it was necessary.

·  And why Jesus had to die, and the perils of the human condition that required a divine remedy.

Today we will deal with the last two sections of John 19.

·  These sections answer the question “What happened to Jesus’ body?” – Kostenberger.

·  The first section, one that shows us a dead Jesus on a Roman cross, is rarely contested (Richard Carrier is an exception).

·  The second section, however, is seen by many Christian critics as fantasy.

o   The beginning of the resurrection fairy tale.

·  We will deal with each separately.

1) JESUS IS DEAD

John 19:31–37 (ESV) — 31 Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. 32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. 35 He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. 36 For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” 37 And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”

John begins our text by telling us that, “it was the day of Preparation” (vs. 31).

·  In other words, it was Friday, the day before the Sabbath.

·  It was called the “day of Preparation” because Friday, especially on feast weeks, was literally the “day everything had to be prepared for the Sabbath” – BDAG.

·  And given the fact that this was the Sabbath of Passover week, preparations would have been even more significant.

And because the Jews considered sundown on the day of Preparation to mark the beginning of the Sabbath, they were eager to remove the bodies.

·  Why?

·  It would defile the land to leave corpses up on the Sabbath.

·  Most believe this sentiment is related to Deut. 21:23 – “his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God…”

John MacArthur notes the following about the Jews’ purity concerns:

·  “They were zealous to observe the minutiae of the law while at the same time killing the One who both authored and fulfilled it; they were scrupulously concerned that the land not be defiled, but were unconcerned about their own defilement from murdering the Son of God” – John MacArthur.

The Jews were eager to remove the bodies, but all three crucifixion victims would have to be dead to do so.

·  A potential problem, then, was that it usually could take days for a crucifixion victim to die.

·  And a further problem was that, even after death, the Romans liked to leave the corpses hanging in order to intimidate.

·  Remember, the bodies would be within range of dogs and would be picked over by vultures.

·  So between the visual gruesomeness and foul odor, the scene served as a powerful deterrent.

So the Jews “asked Pilate” to speed up the process by breaking the victims’ legs (vs. 31).

·  Fortunately, “Romans accommodated Jewish wishes particularly during the crowded festivals” – IVPBBCNT.

·  In fact, Josephus claims that Jews “always buried crucifixion victims before sunset” – IVPBBCNT.

The soldiers found that the two thieves were still alive (vs. 32).

·  So they broke their legs (vs. 32).

·  This practice of breaking the legs of a crucifixion victim is called crurifragium.

·  “The victims’ legs (and sometimes other bones) would be smashed with an iron mallet” – Kostenberger.

o   We can be fairly certain that the Jews wanted Jesus’ legs to be smashed as well.

o   No doubt, to further humiliate Him and diminish His claims.

·  This practice would often lead to death by suffocation.

·  And no doubt the pain and additional blood loss made it all even worse.

But in Jesus’ case, the soldiers found Him “already dead” (vs. 33).

·  This confirms much of what we said earlier:

o   He was nailed to the stake, not tied.

o   He was flogged twice.

o   He was severely tortured in the 2^nd flogging.

·  It is for these reasons, and certainly the will of God, that Jesus’ death was so quick.

John tells us, however, that the soldiers did, “pierce his side with a spear” (vs. 34).

·  This was apparently done to confirm that Jesus was dead.

·  From medical tests on cadavers, it has indeed been shown that, “where a chest has been severely injured but without penetration, hemorrhagic fluid, up to two litres of it, gathers between the pleura lining the rib cage and the lining of the lung. This separates, the clearer serum at the top, the deep red layer at the bottom. If the chest cavity were then pierced at the bottom, both layers would flow out” – D.A. Carson.

The “beloved disciple”, the writer of the Gospel of John, then tells us that he was an eyewitness to these events.

·  “He who saw it has borne witness” (vs. 35).

·  This statement is a “bioi” (ancient biography) claim.

·  The author witnessed the events.

·  His testimony is not second hand.

·  And this is significant because he is testifying (so that we might believe) not only to the fact that Jesus died on the cross,

·  But that the unfolding of events on the cross, “took place that Scripture might be fulfilled” (vs. 36).

The fulfillments, like the “Righteous Sufferer” from Psalm 69, are typology fulfillments.

·  A typology is, “Key patterns of activity ascribed to God [that] recur in striking, discernible patterns such that the believer can only affirm the same hand of God at work in both events” – Beale/Carson.

·  We will contend with typologies more when we get to the resurrection.

And the Scriptures that were fulfilled were:

(1) Psalm 34:20 (ESV) — 20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. – AND – Numbers 9:12 (ESV) — 12 They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break any of its bones; according to all the statute for the Passover they shall keep it.

·  The Psalmist is David and he is referring to how YHWH cares for the righteous.

·  Numbers is literally referring to the Passover lamb.

BTW – From John the Baptist (“Behold the lamb of God…”) to Paul, Jesus was seen as the Passover lamb.

·  1 Corinthians 5:7 (ESV) — 7b For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

(2) Zechariah 12:10 (ESV) — 10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.

·  Referring, at the time, to the either a killing or a figurative “piercing” with sorrow of YHWH.

Summary:

There can be no doubt that these professional executioners succeeded in killing Jesus.

·  The evidence is even clear that they confirmed Jesus’ death.

·  This was done to accommodate the request of the Jews.

·  Something, we know from Josephus, was done routinely.

In fact, Mark 15:44-45 tells us that Pilate would not let Joseph have Jesus’ body until His death was confirmed by the executioners.

·  Mark 15:44–45 (ESV) — 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. 45 And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

So Jesus was dead.

·  He was not passed out.

·  He was not in a coma.

·  It was not another who died in His place.

·  And Jesus submitted to all of this of His “own accord”.

·  John 10:18 (ESV) — 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

Even the Jesus Seminar’s Crossan accepts this historic event as factual.

·  "Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for one hundred years after his crucifixion, we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus" – John Dominic Crossan.

BTW – One side note on the crucifixions deeper meaning in John’s Gospel.

·  “It is the means by which he returns to the Father. That is, John overcomes the scandal of the cross by interpreting it in terms of Jesus’ exaltation. This reading is encouraged by the fact that in those places where the reference to the “lifting up” of Jesus is clearest—3:14; 8:28; 12:32–34—John has developed the larger theme of the Son’s journey from and return to God. In this way the cross is interpreted by the journey motif as the means by which the Son of man left the world below to return to the world above” – DJG.

·  John clearly saw the cross as the glorification of Christ, not His humiliation.

2) JESUS IS BURIED

John 19:38–42 (ESV) — 38 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. 39 Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. 40 So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. 42 So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

What happened to Jesus’ body?

·  We know from various historical sources that at least three things were done with the body of a crucifixion victim.

(1) “The body could be left on the cross to rot, and for the animals—especially vultures and ravens—to eat” – LBD.

·  “In a comedy of Plautus, one slave laments: “I know the cross will be my sepulcher: that is where my forbears are, my father, grandfathers, great grandfathers, and great, great grandfathers” (Miles Gloriosus, 372; text in Cook, “Burial,” 206). This indicates that the slave would not be buried” – LBD.

·  “An inscription from Caria details that, after a slave murdered his master, he was: “hung while yet living for the wild animals and birds” (text in Cook, “Crucifixion and Burial,” 206)” – LBD.

·  “Ancient writers often referred to crucifixion victims as food for ravens or vultures (Petronius, Satyricon 58.2; Juvenal, Sat. 14.77–78)” – LBD.

(2) “The corpse could be taken from the cross and abused—dragged through the streets—and then thrown into a mass grave for criminals (Cook, “Envisioning Crucifixion,” 280)” – LBD.

·  In fact, “had the Romans had their way, the corpses would not have been buried at all” – IVPBBCNT.

·  This is the fate ascribed to Jesus by most of Christianities skeptics and antagonists.

o   Including John Dominic Crossan.

·  And especially by those that reject any possibility of the resurrection.

(3) “Some condemned persons were handed over to family for burial” – LBD.

·  “The Ulpian Digest of Roman law states that corpses of condemned criminals are not to be withheld from family members (Cook, “Envisioning Crucifixion,” 279)” – LBD.

·  “Philo observed that in Alexandria, he had known of cases where the bodies of crucified persons were given to their relatives, especially on holiday evenings (Philo, Flacc. 83)” – LBD.

·  “Josephus (J.W. 4.317) writes: “Jews show concern for burials so that they even take down those crucified and bury them before sunset” (text in Cook, “Crucifixion and Burial,” 212)” – LBD.

·  “The discovery of the bones of a crucified man in a tomb near Jerusalem demonstrates that crucified victims were sometimes buried. The Romans may have allowed Jews to bury condemned criminals because of the Jewish sensitivity about burial” – LBD.

The third historically attested option is of course the claim of the Gospels.

·  Some of the more “covert” disciples of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, obtained Jesus’ body, prepared it for burial, and laid it in a rock-cut tomb.

·  Archaeology has verified that “ancient rock-cut tombs of the period surround the walls of Jerusalem on three sides” – NBD.

·  And throughout the OT, we have examples of bodies being buried in caves or rock-cut tombs.

o   “Ge 23:19-20; 25:9-10; 50:13; Jdg 8:32; 16:31; 1Sa 25:1 “at his home” probably refers to the family tomb, but could mean more literally under the floor of the house or yard; 2Sa 2:32; 17:23” – DBT.

Joseph’s involvement is also another typological fulfillment of Scripture.

·  Isaiah 53:9 (ESV) — 9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

John points out that this, like the earlier request of the Jews to speed up the deaths, was both known and approved by Pilate – Joseph “asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission” (vs. 38).

·  This importantly gives multiple attestations to the burial of Jesus’ body by both His disciples and His executioner.

·  The Romans knew what happened to the body of Jesus.

John tells us that Jesus’ dead body was prepared for burial in traditional Jewish fashion.

·  “So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews” (vs. 40).

·  According to Jesus, this preparation for burial started before Jesus was even crucified.

o   Mark 14:8 (ESV) — 8 She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.

The burial of the dead for the Jew at this time was a two stage process.

·  The burial itself was stage 1.

·  Then, typically, they would have come back a year later and collected the bones and put them in an ossuary.

·  When Jesus was laid in the tomb, this second step surely crossed their minds.

Summary:

It is interesting to note that this practice differs significantly from the way the Romans, Greeks or Egyptians treated their dead heroes.

·  The Greeks and Romans usually burned their dead heroes.

·  The Egyptians embalmed and mummified theirs.

·  In either case, the body was destroyed or its insides completely removed.

Jesus’ body, on the other hand, was buried:

·  Dead

·  Brutally tortured and traumatized

o   Punctured side, arms and feet, flogged, severely beaten chest, etc.

·  Wrapped in a burial shroud

·  And with full approval of Pilate

All hope is gone?

The scene is pregnant with possibilities.

·  But there is nothing unusual or non-historical about it at all.

·  Jesus, a man hated by many and revered by few, was executed.

·  He died for trumped up reasons.

·  The system was manipulated by a politically savvy Jewish leadership.

·  Pilate submitted to their conniving due to his politically tenuous circumstances.

o   Power, greed and political maneuverings – nothing new there.

·  Most of His followers had dispersed.

·  Only the women, a few fearful, little known disciples, and the “beloved disciple” hung around.

·  And the death they witnessed, one witnessed by thousands, was at best, the brutal murder of a great rabbi, prophet and martyr.

The most optimistic hope of Jesus’ followers’ was likely this:

·  In a year, His bones would be collected.

·  And He would be resurrected at the end times with the rest of the righteous and be vindicated.

·  Daniel 12:2 (ESV) — 2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

·  The wicked Gentile rulers would be judged and things would be put right.

·  Jesus’ resurrection 3 days later was not, I repeat, not on the radar at all – N.T. Wright.

·  We will explore this more next week.