Was Jesus buried in the first place?

WAS JESUS REALLY BURIED?

Jesus was supposedly nailed to the cross when God started attacking the Jews by sending earthquakes etc. Did he fall off the cross? Did he vanish in the calamity? Did some people tell lies that they buried him? As Jews prized burial so much, Jesus failing to be buried would be extremely shameful for those who wanted him promoted as a prophet and Messiah.

The Christians believe that Jesus rose physically - yet changed- from the dead. They say that he was entombed and vanished from the tomb and appeared alive soon after. The tomb was found empty.

Women came to anoint the corpse and found it was nowhere to be seen. In that climate, and considering his violent death he would have been in a terrible state. It is hard to believe they would really come with oils and spices for the body. It could be that it was a decoy so that Jesus's disciples and they could pretend they thought the body was there when in fact it was not.

One way to explain an empty tomb is a fake burial. The evidence is that he might not have been buried. The gospels merely say he was put in the tomb and that was observed but what if he was secretly spirited out before the stone closing the tomb was put in place? They don't give a minute by minute evidence or case for certainty. There is a gap at every vital point.

Christians say that the promise of the resurrection of Jesus is that God will save us completely body and soul for each person is complete when body and soul are together. A person is not the soul or the body but both. There is no mention of the fact that this is their interpretation. Jesus never said that. Anyway if Jesus just revived like a live burial or was just a ghost there is nothing special or spiritual about that. The idea is that Jesus returned to live in his saved and transformed body so it is not like it was before his death.

So bodily resurrection is important to Christians. If the early Christians and their critics thought that there would be an attempt to rule out fraud at the burial of Jesus or the dishonesty of anybody involved. The gospels make no such effort. They give bald statements that mean nothing. The fact that there is no awareness of people saying, "Jesus' was not in his tomb for it was a fraudulent burial" shows that the resurrection tale is pure deception and myth.

It is important to note that despite the Romans sending thousand upon thousands to a terrible death by crucifixion, there is only one example of the remains of such a man. This indicates that burying them was the extreme exception not the rule. And was the man somehow stolen from his cross? We do not know. If he was then stealing bodies was commoner than we think!

Josephus wrote that Jerusalem was razed to the ground in 70 AD: “All the rest of the wall encompassing the city was so completely levelled to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no ground for believing it had ever been inhabited.” If the gospels were written near or after that terrible time, it stands to reason that nobody would have evidence of Jesus' tomb. Lying then was easy at that point.

But, whatever! Was he really buried?

Josephus our historian wrote that sometimes bodies were stolen to give them a dignified burial. It would not have been unknown for the likes of Jesus who died in utter disgrace to be stolen from the cross in case he would be thrown away like thrash. "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." Notably Josephus who supposedly wrote that Jesus was the greatest of men and killed because of the Jews blames the death of Ananus for the misfortunes of Jerusalem. "I should not mistake if I said, that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city: and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs; whereon they saw their High-priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the midst of their city. He was on other accounts also a venerable, and a very just man". He writes as if he knew nothing of the core Christian claim that what happened to Jesus was the start of the end of Jerusalem.

Read all about it in Josephus Jewish War 4.

“It was commonly believed in ancient times that there were two classes of spirits of the dead which were relatively easy to conjure up and were thus most accessible for the purposes of ‘black magic.’ The first class is that of the atafoi, spirits of persons who had not received a regular burial. The second class, relatively more numerous and less immediately attached to a specific locality, is that of the biaioqanatoi [bi-aiothatoi], spirits of persons who had died a violent death.” Kraeling, Carl H. “Was Jesus Accused of Necromancy?” Journal of Biblical Literature 59 (1940): 154-155.

Here is a pagan prayer, "I beseech you, Lord Helios, listen to me [name to be supplied] and grant me the power over this spirit of a man killed violently (toutou tou bioqanatou pneumatoj) from whose tent I hold [a body part]. I have him with me [name of deceased], (ecw auton met’ emou [tou deina] a helper (bohqon) and avenger for whatever business I desire."

These traditions show why Christians had to lie that Jesus was buried. If he was not the resurrection would have been seen as the appearance of a ghost. It seems they had to make do with risking him being seen as a ghost for violently dying. The violent death and then resurrection was needed to appeal to people who like stories of good triumphing over evil. The traditions show why the body of an alleged miracle man might be stolen for magical rites. The possibility remains that the traditions were the trigger and catalyst for the tales of Jesus' return from the dead which over time was turned more into a resurrection story than a ghost story.

The first Christian writer Paul said that Jesus was buried "etaphe". It comes from Greek word for "taphos," which means "burial." The words do not mean tomb. Tomb is "mnema" The word for sepulcure is like it: "mnemeion". Why couldn't Paul write entombed especially if Jesus unusually was entombed!

Romans 14:9 has Paul writing: “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living.” He seems to make a distinction between rose and revived. It is as if he thinks Jesus came around as if he had recovered from the crucifixion and rose refers to him getting transformed into a glorified being. This would diverge from the gospel template and certainly makes us wonder how reliable that template with the tomb being a considerable part of it was.

He wrote that Jesus was buried in an epistle which sought to help those believers who were falling away thinking resurrection was nonsense. Some say they did not question Jesus' resurrection but to argue, "The dead will not rise for that is too silly. But I believe Jesus rose" would not be worth answering. Nobody would be crazy enough to argue that. It would be either people can rise or nobody rises. Paul took their problem very seriously and went as far as to argue that the faith is useless if Jesus did not rise.

In that light it is significant that Paul tells us nothing about the burial. He is more interested in the apparitions of Jesus which raises problems for most apparitions even in the eyes of religion are to be ignored or debunked.

It makes sense to suppose that the burial did not come from a historical record or event but was read back into Jesus' life because of Old Testament texts which said somebody got buried. However it would not be surprising in the light of attempts to show that Jesus was the New Moses that God buried Jesus in secret as with Moses.

1 Corinthians 15:4 gets Jesus was buried from Isaiah 53:9 which was supposed to prefigure the life of Jesus. The next bit says that Jesus was brought back to the land of the living on the third day as the scriptures say. That could read as if Paul is saying the information came from the Old Testament prophecies. We must remember that even the gospels give no evidence as to Jesus rising on the third day. If he rose he could have risen as soon as the stone was rolled back. The third day thing comes from Hosea 6:2 which is not speaking of a man rising at all. Even if Paul was speaking of a historic burial, he has proven himself to be a liar so his evidence is annulled.

CONCLUSION

Jesus may have been stolen from the cross not the tomb. He may have been hidden on the way to the tomb. He may have been interred and then sneaked out after getting witnesses to think they seen him being put inside it for good. The fact that there is no evidence that Jesus was legitimately moved and something went wrong so there is no record is telling. The gospels give no evidence that Jesus was buried, they only assume it. They do not even say if anybody was willing to testify. Saying Joseph buried Jesus is not evidence when the source cannot say if he would testify to that or did so. Saying somebody was buried when you were not there is not evidence for all books contain remarks that are more the musings of the writer than a statement striving for accuracy. This exposes the Christian claim that the tomb was empty indicating Jesus rose as incorrect.

FURTHER READING

Christianity for the Tough-Minded, Ed John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship Inc, Minneapolis, 1973
Conspiracies and the Cross, Timothy Paul Jones, Front Line, A Strang Company, Florida, 2008
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
He Walked Among Us, Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, Alpha, Cumbria, 2000
Jesus: The Evidence, Ian Wilson, Pan, London, 1985
The First Easter, What Really Happened? HJ Richards, Collins/Fount Glasgow, 1980
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1982
The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten amd Elmar R Gruber, Element, Dorset, 1995
The Jesus Event, Martin R Tripole SJ, Alba House, New York, 1980
The Jesus Inquest, Charles Foster, Monarch Books, Oxford, 2006
The Passover Plot, Hugh Schonfield, Element, Dorset, 1996
The Resurrection Factor, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1993
The Resurrection of Jesus, Pinchas Lapide, SPCK, London, 1984
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
The Second Messiah, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, Arrow, London, 1998
The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1973
The Womb and the Tomb, Hugh Montifiore, Fount – HarperCollins, London, 1992
Verdict on the Empty Tomb, Val Grieve Falcon, London, 1976
Who Moved the Stone? Frank Morison, OM Publishing, Cumbria, 1997