https://benthams.substack.com/p/responding-to-my-critics-on-christianity
1 Introduction
I recently wrote an essay about why I’m not a Christian. In it, I expressed skepticism about the burial of Jesus and the empty tomb. Several commenters have pushed back against my skepticism. For this reason, I thought I’d do a deeper dive into the subject and consider the arguments on both sides in more detail. Thanks especially to Caleb Jackson for raising many of the points that changed my mind.
The first three sections of this article will be specifically about why I changed my mind on the burial. The later sections will be about other objections and things I got wrong.
Why does the burial matter? A core part of the case for Christianity comes from the evidence for the empty tomb. If Jesus’s tomb was found empty, this fact is strong evidence for Christianity. If he rose, his tomb being empty is guaranteed; if not, it’s quite unlikely. However, for the tomb to have been found empty, Jesus would have had to have been buried in a tomb. While one can theoretically think he was thrown in a mass grave that was later found empty, if Jesus was thrown in a mass grave with other criminals, it would have been harder to later verify he wasn’t there.
Additionally, if he was really buried, it would have been easy to verify that his body was still in the tomb, and therefore, that he hadn’t risen. It’s hard to see how early Christianity could have taken off if Jesus remained in a tomb at a known location.
Here, I’ll explore the main arguments on both sides. But first, let me explain the texts from which the burial accounts are drawn. 1 Corinthians 15 contains an early creed dating to just a few years after Jesus’s death on the cross:
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Each of the Gospels describe the burial in more detail. Mark 15 says:
43 Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. 44 Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. 45 When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. 46 So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.
While I won’t quote them all, the same stories can be found in Matthew, Luke, and John. Ordinarily, when facts are included in all four Gospels, historians think they probably happened, unless they’re particularly outlandish. The question, therefore, is whether there’s a good reason to doubt the burial.
2 The best arguments against
Bart Ehrman used to believe in the burial and empty tomb but does no longer. He marshals two main classes of argument in his book How Jesus Became God. The first is based on the text itself: Paul, in the early Corinthian creed, doesn’t mention Joseph of Arimathea. Often the new testament added stories about bad guys turning good—the thieves on the cross both mocked Jesus in Mark, but in Luke, one of them praised him.
I don’t find any of this very convincing. Sure, the New Testament sometimes made up stories of villains turning away from their wickedness and turning to Jesus, but this was relatively rare. Generally when the New Testament does this, we have conflicting accounts between the Gospels, but Joseph’s burial in the tomb is attested in all four Gospels. Additionally, the Gospels progress in the direction of blaming the Jews and Sanhedrin more over time—it’s not super likely, therefore, that they’d make a member of the Sanhedrin one of the good guys.
The fact that Joseph’s name isn’t mentioned in 1 Corinthians seems relatively insignificant! Paul also didn’t mention who Jesus’s mother was—saying merely that he was born to a woman—and merely says he died for ours sins, without mentioning how he died. Creeds like the one in 1 Corinthians were supposed to be short and memorable. There was no need for them to include names and dates.
I originally found Ehrman’s second argument more convincing. Ehrman argues that in the ancient world, when people were crucified, they almost always remained up on the cross and then were thrown into a mass grave. He writes:
Evidence for this comes from a wide range of sources. An ancient inscription found on the tombstone of a man who was murdered by his slave in the city of Caria tells us that the murderer was “hung . . . alive for the wild beasts and birds of prey.” The Roman author Horace says in one of his letters that a slave was claiming to have done nothing wrong, to which his master replied, “You shall not therefore feed the carrion crows on the cross” (Epistle 1.16.46–48). The Roman satirist Juvenal speaks of “the vulture [that] hurries from the dead cattle and dogs and corpses, to bring some of the carrion to her offspring” (Satires 14.77–78). The most famous interpreter of dreams from the ancient world, a Greek Sigmund Freud named Artemidorus, writes that it is auspicious for a poor man in particular to have a dream about being crucified, since “a crucified man is raised high and his substance is sufficient to keep many birds” (Dream Book 2.53). And there is a bit of gallows humor in the Satyricon of Petronius, a onetime advisor to the emperor Nero, about a crucified victim being left for days on the cross (chaps. 11–12).
While the sources each reference people being left up on the cross, none of them indicated it was the universal practice, or discussed how long people were left up on the cross for. Thus, none seem to indicate very clearly that being left on the cross was standard practice. In contrast, we have evidence from a document called the Digesta, summarizing common Roman practices, that burial was standard:
“The bodies of those who are condemned to death should not be refused their relatives; and the Divine Augustus, in the Tenth Book of his Life, said that this rule had been observed. At present, the bodies of those who have been punished are only buried when this has been requested and permission granted; and sometimes it is not permitted, especially where persons have been convicted of high treason. Even the bodies of those who have been sentenced to be burned can be claimed, in order that their bones and ashes, after having been collected, may be buried.”
The Digesta also says:
The bodies of persons who have been punished should be given to whoever requests them for the purpose of burial.
While the Digesta was written later, it summarizes which practices were previously common nearer to the time of Jesus. Additionally, as Broussard notes:
The burial of crucified individuals is further supported by the 1968 discovery of the ossuary at Giv’at ha-Mivtar, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, of one Yehohanan, who had been crucified. The remains of an iron spike 11.5 centimeters in length still pierced the right heel bone.
In response to this, John Dominic Crossan writes:
“With all those thousands of people crucified around Jerusalem in the first century alone, we have so far found only a single crucified skeleton, and that, of course, preserved in an ossuary. Was burial, then, the exception rather than the rule, the extraordinary rather than the ordinary?”
However, Dale Allison convincingly rebuts this argument of Crossan. Allison writes:
Yet, as others have observed, the remains of victims who were tied up rather than nailed would show no signs of having been crucified.74 Additionally, the nails used in crucifixion—which some prized as amulets75—were pulled out at the site of execution (cf. Gos. Pet. 6:21), presumably for reuse, and so not entombed with the bodies.76 The only reason we know that the man in the ossuary from Giv’at ha-Mivtar was crucified is that a nail in his right heel bone could not be removed from the wood: it remained stuck in a knot. In the words of Byron McCane,
“If there had not been a knot strategically located in the wood of Yehohanan’s cross, the soldiers would have easily pulled the nail out of the cross. It never would have been buried with Yehohanan, and we would never have known that he had been crucified. It is not surprising, in other words, that we have found the remains of only one crucifixion victim: it is surprising that we have identified even one.”
Lastly, Ehrman’s sources only tell us about general practices. None are specific to Jerusalem during that time. The Jews of the period opposed allowing people to be kept up, as Deuteronomy 21:22-23 says:
“And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but though shalt in any wise bury him that day.”
Thus, given the Jews opposed leaving people up on the cross, the question is simply: would the Romans have listened to them? But we have evidence that they did often honor requests to take a crucified criminal down. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us:
Nay, they proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.
In addition, it seems the Romans had a policy of being generally deferential to Jewish practices. An Edict of Augustus declares:
Since the nation of the Jews and Hyrcanus, their high priest, have been found grateful to the people of the Romans, not only in the present but also in the past, and particularly in the time of my father, Caesar, imperator, it seems good to me and to my advisory council, according to the oaths, by the will of the people of the Romans, that the Jews shall use their own customs in accordance with their ancestral law, just as they used to use them in the time of Hyrcanus, the high priest of their highest god; and that their sacred offerings shall be inviolable and shall be sent to Jerusalem and shall be paid to the financial officials of Jerusalem; and that they shall not give sureties for appearance in court on the Sabbath or on the day of preparation before it after the ninth hour.
If they showed any deference to Jewish customs, they would have followed the highly important customs about burial of the dead. Caleb Jackson informs me that “there are exactly zero sources that mention Romans denying burial in Israel prior to the Jewish War.” The AIs I asked seemed to indicate the same.
Now, there is one source that Ehrman cites which is more relevant to the surrounding period. Philo, writing near the time of Jesus, writes:
“Rulers who conduct their government as they should and do not pretend to honour but do really honour their benefactors make a practice of not punishing any condemned person until those notable celebrations in honour of the birthdays of the illustrious Augustan house are over… I have known cases when on the eve of a holiday of this kind, people who have been crucified have been taken down and their bodies delivered to their kinsfolk, because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them the ordinary rites. For it was meet that the dead also should have the advantage of some kind treatment upon upon the birthday of the emperor and also that the sanctity of the festival should be maintained.
This passage from Philo seems to indicate that the practice described was rare and performed only in exceptional cases. This seems to conflict with the reports in the Digesta. Ultimately, I find it pretty unclear who to believe—Philo or the Digesta. But the more specific evidence seems to indicate a nontrivial degree of deference to Jewish practices. This argument doesn’t seem very decisive either way; there is, therefore, no especially strong reason to think the Romans would have refused to give Jesus a proper burial.
Many other arguments are made for the burial being fictitious. Dale Allison convincingly rebuts them in his chapter on the subject.
One such argument: Acts 13:29 says of the people of Jerusalem “And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain.” This seems to describe the people burying Jesus, not Joseph of Arimathea. This is, however, unconvincing.
First, Acts was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke. The author of Luke wrote clearly of the burial by Joseph. Thus, it seems that the author of Luke and Acts was simply engaged in a bit of loose talk.
Second, it could be that Joseph was with other people when he buried Jesus in a tomb. Dale Allison writes:
Even were one to attribute Acts 13:29 to pre-Lukan tradition, it remains that the verse depicts not Romans but Jews laying Jesus to rest. This agrees with Mark. Further, the plurals in Acts (“they took him down…and they laid him in a tomb”) line up with the plural of Mk 16:6 (“the place where they laid him”; cf. also Jn 19:31). Assuming, then, that the Second Gospel presents Joseph as more or less a sympathetic character, the hypothesized rival tradition in Acts would differ only on the issue of motive, and that is scarcely enough to negate the historical core of Mk 15:42-46.
Third, this could be an embellishment by the author of Luke, who was dissatisfied with the idea that the Sanhedrin showed favor to Jesus.
The final argument that moves me the most: I think it’s doubtful there was an empty tomb. This is primarily for a rather straightforward reason: most tombs aren’t empty. While one with a high credence in Christianity should think the tomb was probably empty, if one thinks Christianity is independently unlikely, they should also think the tomb was probably empty. Consequently, they should doubt the burial.
Still, while this argument has some force, it’s not overwhelmingly decisive. The burial narrative could be accurate while the empty tomb true. Additionally, the evidence against the empty tomb is also not at all overwhelming. One could easily go either way. Thus, the burial is still not terribly unlikely.
3 The best arguments for
Probably the best evidence for the burial comes from the creed in 1 Corinthians. This creed dates to just a few years after Jesus’s death on the cross. It’s unlikely they’d have made up the burial just a few years after it allegedly occurred—when people could have easily investigated the matter for themselves.
Similarly, it’s extremely unlikely that Paul would have used the term “was buried” to denote being thrown in a mass grave. Dale Allison notes:
According to the old confession in 1 Cor. 15:4, Jesus “died” and “was buried” (ἐτάφη).88 The first meaning of the verb, θάπτω, is “honor with funeral rites, especially by burial” (LSJ, s.v.). Nowhere in Jewish sources, furthermore, does the formula, “died…and was buried,” refer to anything other than interment in the ground, a cave, or a tomb. So the language of the pre-Pauline formula cannot have been used of a body left to rot on a cross. Nor would the unceremonious dumping of a cadaver onto a pile for scavengers have suggested ἐτbάφη. Such a fate would not have been burial but its denial. The retort that Paul wrote “was buried,” not “buried in a tomb,” is specious. Just as “was cremated” implies, for us, “was cremated into ashes,” so “was buried” entailed, in Paul’s world, interment of some sort.
Jerusalem was a fairly small place—less than one square mile—so whether Jesus was buried or not would have been public knowledge.
Several other features—noted by Allison—point in the direction of Jesus having been buried. First of all, the account in Mark is pretty early. It shows no signs of literary embellishments. In light of multiple early attestations combined with minimal embellishment, the claim looks relatively believable. Allison once again:
Mark’s laconic account contains neither fantastic elements nor explicit Christian motifs. Günther Bornkamm judged it to be “concise, unemotional and without any bias.”111 Ludgar Schenke agreed: “the story is matter-of-fact and without obvious theological ‘tendency.’”112 More than this, if we set aside Aus’ suggestions, it does not appear to be an example of what Crossan has called “prophecy historicized.” The only element in Mark’s adaptation that we might plausibly trace to scripture is burial before sundown.113 This could, one might urge, come straight out of Deut. 21:22-23 (cf. Josh. 8:29; 10:17-18). Yet because Jews in reality tried to fulfill the Mosaic prescription, we can just as easily suppose that the historical actors obediently followed the pentateuchal text. For the rest, and as already observed, it is perhaps surprising, given early Christian interest in Isaiah 53, that Mark’s story of Joseph fails to accommodate 53:9: “they made his grave with the wicked.”
Second, we have no accounts of anyone disputing the burial, even among early opponents of Christianity. While this is by no means decisive, it’s far more expected under the assumption Jesus was buried than on the assumption he was not.
Third, there’s broad agreement among scholars that very few of those present in the Markan passion narrative are made up. Only one other person, plus Joseph of Arimathea, are in serious doubt. In light of this, it’s pretty unlikely Joseph was simply made up out of whole cloth. If he was, there could still have been a burial, just one embellished with extra details.
Fourth, rock tombs, of the sort described, were common in Jerusalem, but mostly had by the wealthy. Thus, it’s logical that Joseph would have one—as described.
I remain a bit uncertain about the burial. I don’t think there are knockdown arguments either way. But overall, our best evidence seems to point in the direction of it being accurate. The most decisive line of evidence comes, in my view, from 1 Corinthians early proclamation, combined with multiple attestation from sources lacking much embellishment. In light of this, it’s decently likely Jesus was buried in a tomb. Whether he remained there is, of course, another story.