OK. So I’m talking to a bunch of atheists, and as a result I gotta admit, right off the bat, that many of you don’t think Jesus even existed. I’m not gonna argue that.
My personal opinion? I think the Gospels probably came from a kernel of stuff that happened that got exaggerated by passionate followers and changed through several copies. I think some of it probably happened, and a lot of it probably didn’t. The fantastical stuff didn’t, and some of the mundane stuff likely did. I know some of y’all hate me for saying that. Write me your angry notes in the comment section, and then feel free to read the rest of this.
Now, Joseph of Arimathea — unlike a lot of stuff in the four Gospels (including seeing the risen Christ — Mark’s Gospel, famously, ends at 16:8 without anyone having seen Jesus, prompting a horrified scribe to pen down verses 9-16) is in all four Gospels (five, if you count the Gospel of Nicodemus), and in all the Gospels he is doing the same thing.
Burying Jesus.
Full disclosure here. It is possible that Joseph of Arimathea never existed — indeed, some scholars argue that he is a device to show that the disciples went to the right tomb — to show that Jesus wasn’t buried randomly.
I’m not disputing that. But I noticed, as a Christian, that even if you think Joseph of Arimathea is real (as your Christian friends might) there are a bunch of really weird things here in the Bible story.
Let’s go with the first thing. Most Christians say Jesus really was dead before being taken down from the cross. Maybe he was; that’s no skin off my nose. Although, as a brief note, the lore that someone can’t survive a crucifixion is simply false. As Josephus wrote in an account:
I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.
I mean…it happens. Christians insist it’s impossible, but if you have a good enough physician (Luke was a physician, by the way) on your side, and you get them down quickly enough, you can bring them back to health. I don’t know for sure whether Jesus was dead on the cross, and there are arguments that he never existed.
But, even as a Christian, the haste signified in the passage below bothered me:
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. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. (Mark 15:42-45, NIV)
Isn’t that weird? Like, if it was so goddamn important to admit that Jesus was dead, why would Mark — who has the shortest Gospel, and doesn’t even seem to originally include any of the disciples SEEING Jesus — say that Pilate was surprised that he was dead? It must have been a very memorable event. If this happened, Pilate was genuinely shocked.
Which begs the question…was Jesus really dead?
John has a different account:
Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. (John 19:31-34, NIV)
Also weird. Besides untangling the question of who did and didn’t know Jesus was dead and when, between the two accounts, it seems that Pilate and the soldiers and the Jewish leaders all expected him to be alive.
And Joseph of Arimathea, went quickly, as soon as Jesus appeared dead, and asked for the body. And this seemed to happen so publicly and undeniably that extremely biased writers included it in their accounts of the incident.
Here’s the other thing about Joseph of Arimathea:
Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. (Luke 23: 50-51, NIV)
What is the Council? The Jewish council, AKA, the Sanhedrin, who supposedly sentenced Jesus to death.
He was an insider. He would have known how much they wanted Jesus dead. I had always heard apologists say that the guards wouldn’t have allowed the body to be stolen, because if it was they knew they would die. But they didn’t. Why?
While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day. (Matthew 28: 11-15, NIV)
They didn’t die. They got paid. And who would be able to anticipate that? What follower of Jesus would have enough of an inside track on the thinking of those condemning Jesus to death that he knew that if the guards told a larger-than-life story about Jesus rising from the dead, those people would pay top dollar to shut them up?
Joseph of Arimathea, according to the Gospel accounts.
And Joseph of Arimathea was apparently a wealthy man himself:
As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. (Matthew 27:57, NIV)
So Joseph of Arimathea, angry at their decision to kill Jesus, and protesting against his death, could have paid the guards out of his own pocket, as well. I mean, he already paid a lot of money for the burial. So yeah…the guards may have gotten paid from both ends, and known from Joseph of Arimathea that if they told the right story, they’d make more hush money instead of dying.
But how would Joseph get into the tomb?
Here is where things really start getting fishy.
Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. (Matthew 27:59-60, NIV)
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. (Mark 15:46, NIV)
Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. (Luke 23:52-53, NIV)
At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (John 19:41-42, NIV)
Wait up. So…in this account….Joseph places Jesus in “his own new tomb”? This tomb…is suspiciously new. Like…it could have a tunnel built in it. It could have a back entrance, possibly. Etc. There’s nothing that says it was ever inspected. It’s almost as if Joseph of Arimathea made this tomb for this purpose. He certainly was awfully eager to get Jesus in there.
And HE wrapped Jesus up — after everyone was shocked that Jesus had died so quickly. A man unhappy with this man being condemned to death. And wrapping the body…did he wrap the whole body? Who was overseeing this process? Couldn’t they have been bandaging Jesus up? I mean, Pilate didn’t even know Jesus was dead — how carefully was he overseeing the burial process.
My point…it was Joseph’s tomb, supposedly. He could have done anything with it, to it, on it, in it that he wanted. And he seemed to care an awful lot that he was.
But why didn’t anyone suspect Joseph? Doesn’t it seem obvious?
Well…
Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. (John 19:38, NIV)
Wow. So if that’s remotely true, that would explain how he was able to get away with it all. How he was able to get the body, put it in his tomb, close it up, etc. He was a prominent council member, simply asking for the body for safekeeping.
It also means he could have gotten away with a lot…and no one would have suspected a thing.
Now, I’m not saying anything did or didn’t happen. But…even if you do read the Bible story for what it’s worth…it seems like something fishy was going on. Especially since they would admit all of that in light of all the bias.
And you never hear about Joseph of Arimathea again. Nowhere in the Bible. That’s it. He didn’t have to “die for a lie.” He doesn’t even seem as if he was remotely challenged. His reaction to the supposed resurrection of Christ isn’t even recorded. He just kinda fades into the shadows…like a puppeteer, out of sight.
Anyways, when I was a Christian, he really bothered me. And increasingly, even though I had been indoctrinated for 28 years to believe the resurrection was FAR more probable than it actually was…even I had to admit that the Joseph of Arimathea variable made it far more likely that something much less supernatural was going on.
Thanks for reading.
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