Words of Mark shared by the other evangelists are underlined. Words in blue indicate what is common to Luke and Mattew, in red words of John shared by other evangelists.

1. Roman Attitudes toward the Bodies of the Crucified
   • According to Ulpianus (Domitius Ulpianus) and Julius Paulus, at the end of the 2nd century and beginning of the 3rd century, relatives were not usually denied the right to bury someone guilty of capital punishment, unless it was a case of treason or a crime of lese-majesty. There were exceptions, of course, such as the martyrs of Lyons, whose crucified bodies remained on display for six days before being burned, despite the constant prayer of the Christian community (see Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, 5.1.61-62). In the time of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, it would seem that severity was the norm.

     But what about in a Roman province like Judea, and especially on the occasion of procedures extra ordinem, as was the case with Jesus? Usually the disposition of the body of the crucified was the responsibility of the local magistrate. Now, as we saw earlier, Pilate was not an extremely brutal man, and he was not one to punish the family of a criminal unnecessarily. Had he considered Jesus' crime a case of lese-majesty, it is unlikely that he would have permitted his burial by his disciples. According to Mark, he doubts the accusations put forward by the Jewish authorities. Nevertheless, he must have been on his guard against the possibilities of his disciples making him a hero and the demands of a possible case of lese-majesty.

2. Jewish Attitudes toward the Bodies of the Crucified
   • This attitude is based on Deuteronomy 21: 22-23 :

     When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for possession.

     The fact that the Romans could leave a body on the cross for several days was a horror to the Jews. Nevertheless, a distinction must be made between an honourable and a shameful burial. For example, a wicked person could be denied an honorable burial in a piece of ancestral land (1 Kings 13:21-22). This is why King Jehoiakim struck Uriyyahu, a prophet of doom, with the sword and "cast his dead body among the graves of the common people" (Jeremiah 26:23). The account of Judas' death (Mt 27:5-8) shows that the Jews envisioned a common burial place for the despised people, rather than a family grave. The Mishna, Sanhedrin 6:5, tells us that the court of justice had always provided two burial places, one for those beheaded and strangled, and another for those stoned and burned. On the other hand, when the flesh of the dead had decomposed, the bones could be collected and buried in an ancestral burial place.

   • How does this distinction between an honourable and a shameful burial apply when someone is crucified by Gentiles? The Bible and the Mishna recognized the death penalty for offences against God's law, but what about a political situation where Jews, innocent according to Jewish law, were crucified by Gentiles? According to the Babylonian Talmud Sanherin 47a-47b, which mentions a fairly ancient tradition, people crucified under these conditions could not be denied an honourable burial.

   • In the case of Jesus, he was crucified by the Gentiles. Did he deserve an honourable or a shameful burial? According to Mark/Matthew, the Sanhedrin found him guilty of blasphemy, and therefore he should have been stoned or hanged, and "and buried ignominiously and in obscurity" (Jewish Antiquities 4.8.6; #202). On the other hand, during the Roman trial, the charge against him was that he was the king of the Jews, and therefore not subject to Jewish law and a shameful burial? It is therefore in this context that the Gospels must be approached.

3. The Request for Burial According to Mark 15: 42-45 Mark 15: 42-45
   1. Time Indication ((15: 42))
      • "And, it being already evening (opsia)". The word opsia (evening) does not give us a precise indication. A little before, Mark told us that it was 3:00 p.m. before Jesus expired, and we know that the body was to be buried before sunset. If we take into account all the activities that took place after Jesus' death (going to see Pilate who will call for a centurion, buying the linen cloth, wrapping the body and transporting it to the tomb), we find ourselves late in the afternoon, not before 4:30 pm. When we look at all the time references in Mark's time from the "evening" (14: 17) of the last meal to the evening of the burial, it is not the precision that counts, but the sequence.

      • The second indication of time is given to us by "preparation day" (paraskeuē): besides telling us that it is a Friday, he adds the adverb "already" to warn us that there was pressure to be ready for the great Sabbath that began with sunset. Since he cannot assume that his Greco-Roman public knew what "preparation day" meant, he must explain: "that is, the day before the Sabbath"; even the Greco-Roman public could understand the importance of the Sabbath for the Jews.

   2. The Marcan Description of Joseph from Arimathea (15: 43)
      • Little is known about Arimathea, except that it was a non-Galilean city, where Joseph was born or lived. Who is this Joseph who suddenly appears on the scene? No Gospel presents him as a disciple who accompanied Jesus from Galilee. "a respected council member", Mark tells us. The term "council member" is bouleutēs, i.e. member of boulē (council), a synonym for Sanhedrin. So we are looking at a respected member of the Sanhedrin. And to use Mark's words, "all" the members of the Sanhedrin sought testimony to put him to death (14:55). Thus, Joseph was among those who condemned Jesus to death and brought him to Pilate. In Mark he is not a disciple at all, as he will be in Matthew and John.

      • "who was also himself awaiting (prosdechesthai) the kingdom of God", Mark also tells us. The term "himself" indicates the surprise of seeing this dimension in a member of the Sanhedrin. The term "also" adds him to the pious group of all those who were waiting for the kingdom of God. But understanding prosdechesthai is not easy, since it is the only time Mark uses this word in his Gospel? It is known that waiting for the kingdom of God could describe a Jewish attitude as the Jewish prayer of the Qaddish says: "and may he establish his kingdom in your days" (see also Qumran 1QS^b 5:21: "that he may establish the kingdom of his people forever"). To a scribe questioning Jesus, Mark puts in Jesus' mouth: "You are not far from the kingdom of God" (12:34). In short, awaiting the kingdom of God is an attitude that covers both the disciples of Jesus and the pious Jews who were not his disciples. And if Joseph was among those who condemned Jesus, he certainly did so out of pure desire to obey God's law as all those awaited his kingdom. For Mark, Joseph was not a disciple of Jesus.

      • "And requested the body of Jesus". Why would a pious, law-abiding Jew and member of the Sanhedrin want to bury the body of a blasphemous crucified man? There is a reason: God's commandment, expressed in Deuteronomy, not to leave the body of a criminal on the cross after sundown. Of course, Joseph was at risk of contracting ritual impurity from a dead body, but the importance of burying the dead outweighed the danger of impurity (see Mishna, Nazir 7:1), and Joseph could delegate this work to servants.

      • "having taken courage, came in before Pilate ". Why did it take courage for Joseph to go to Pilate? It is possible that, according to Mark's account, Pilate knew that it was out of envy that the Sanhedrin had handed Jesus over, and so Joseph was afraid of arousing his suspicion by bothering him again. But it is more likely that in the context of the crimes of lese-majesty of an alleged king of the Jews, where the utmost rigor was applied, especially in the face of burial by relatives, Joseph was afraid of being associated with his sympathizers and of not respecting Roman law. What worked in his favor was that he was a respected member of the Sanhedrin who had delivered this criminal to him for execution. Mark's portrayal of Joseph is much more plausible than Matthew's and Luke's, for a prefect would never have left the body of a criminal to his followers or to a member of the Sanhedrin who pleaded not guilty.

      • What kind of burial did Jesus receive? The use of a sindōn or linen cloth was not considered an honorable burial. We will see later that it was a quick and unceremonious burial. So someone like Matthew will feel the need to make it more dignified by adding: clean linen cloth.

      • The fact that Joseph was not a disciple is a detail of Mark's account: if it was necessary to hurry to bury Jesus, why was there no cooperation from the women who stood at a distance and watched? The answer is obvious: Women disciples of Jesus could not cooperate with a member of the Sanhedrin who was responsible for Jesus' death and who only wanted to bury the body of a criminal as quickly as possible. This approach is in harmony with other texts of the tradition, such as Acts 13:27-29: "Those who lived in Jerusalem and their rulers... requested Pilate to have him killed; and when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and placed him in a tomb". Thus, according to the Acts of the Apostles, it was the inhabitants of Jerusalem and their rulers who laid Jesus in the tomb. Likewise, John 19:31 tells us that it was the Jews who asked Pilate to remove Jesus' body from the cross; and a variant after 19:38 says: "So they came and took away his body" (19:40). It is possible that the plural only indicates that Joseph was only one of the Jews, not a disciple, a pious member of the Sanhedrin who performed his duty according to the deuteronomic law.

   3. Pilate's Reaction to Joseph's Request (15: 44-45)
      • This unit is absent from Matthew and Luke, which has led some biblical scholars to suggest that it was not part of the original Mark text that Matthew and Luke had before them, and that it was added after the fact by an editor for apologetic purposes: to add proof that Jesus did indeed die. Let us first examine the style and vocabulary of this unit.
        • "But, Pilate" is a common expression in Mark to turn the attention to someone already introduced, as he will do three verses later: "But, Mary" (v. 47).
        • "was amazed" is a verb that Mark used earlier: "But Jesus answered nothing further, so that Pilate was amazed" (15:5).
        • "already" is quite Marcan (8 times in his Gospel)
        • "having called over (proskaleisthai) the centurion (kentyriōn), he questioned (eperōtan) him": Mark is the one who uses the most proskaleisthai (Mt=6; Mc=9; Lc=4), eperōtan (Mt=8; Mc=25; Lc=17), and he is the only one to use kentyriōn,
        • "he granted (dōreisthai) the corpse (ptōma) to Joseph". The verb dōreisthai appears only here in the Gospels, but it is appropriate to express a gesture of mercy; and ptōma was used earlier by Mark in the scene of John the Baptist's burial (6:29).

        In short, in this unit the number of Marcan features surpasses those that might seem foreign.

      • An argument brought into the discussion of the authenticity of this unit concerns its plausibility, beginning with the likelihood that Pilate wanted to verify the death of a criminal. According to Mark, Jesus was crucified at 9:00 a.m. and therefore spent six hours on the cross. Testimonies from antiquity indicate that the agony could last quite a long time, even until the next day (see Seneca, Epistle 101:10-13). Everything depended on the state of health of the condemned man, the severity of the torture that preceded the crucifixion (e.g., flogging), and the way in which they were crucified (nails, support). In the case of Jesus, he would have died earlier than the others (see John 19: 32-33). Therefore, there is nothing strange in Pilate's reaction when he was surprised at the speed of death and wanted to verify that this was indeed the case.

      • How then can we explain that Matthew and Luke, without consulting each other, eliminated this unit? It would not be a unique case, for this is what they did with the episode of the naked man running away (Mk 14:51-54), an episode they probably found too scandalous to copy in their Gospel. So why eliminate the scene of Pilate's verification of Jesus' death? It is possible that Matthew and Luke, independently, found this scene, where Jesus' death is doubted and needs to be verified, to be totally useless. Surely this option is better than the addition of vv. 44-45 by an obscure writer.

4. The Request for Burial according to Matthew Matthew 27: 57-58

   Matthew's shorter account is totally dependent on that of Mark.

   1. Time Indication (27: 57a)

      Matthew rewrites Mark's somewhat lame sentence (two indications of time, plus an explanation of the last one) by spreading these indications over three days, first here on Friday (it being already evening), then on Saturday (the next day, that is, after the Preparation, 27:62), and finally on Sunday (then, after the Sabbath day, 28:1).

   2. The Matthean Description of Joseph from Arimathea (27: 57b)
      • "Joseph, who had also himself been a disciple of Jesus". How can we explain that, for Mark, Joseph was not a disciple of Jesus, and that, for Matthew, he is? It is very likely that Joseph, after the resurrection of Jesus, became a disciple. In this perspective, Mark would have respected the fact that he was not a disciple at the time of burial, but rather waiting to become one, hence the expression: "was awaiting the kingdom of God". Matthew, for his part, likes to see things after Easter and anticipates Joseph's Christian career. This has the effect of including him in the following of the disciples on Golgotha, after the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee and watched from a distance, presenting him as another way of following him. At the same time (and this contrasts him with the other male disciples who fled) he, at least, stayed until the end.

      • "a rich man from Arimathea". The fact that he is rich seems to be linked to his having his own new tomb, an ownership that by the time Matthew wrote had become a Christian tradition about the place where Jesus had been buried. One might ask: how can Matthew present Joseph as a model of Christian discipleship when he is rich? Did Jesus not say, "It will be difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (19:23)? Perhaps he wants to give a counter-example to the rich young man whom Jesus invited to follow him and who went away sad (19:22). What is certain is that we do not find in Matthew all the texts of Luke that challenge the rich people ("Woe to you rich people", Lk 6:24; the parable of the foolish rich man, Lk 12:16-21; the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, Lk 1:1-13) and following Jesus does not imply leaving everything, but only certain specific things (net, boat, father: Mt 4:20,22). We can imagine that there were rich people in Matthew's community for whom Joseph could serve as a model.

   3. Joseph and Pilate (27: 58)

      Matthew gives us an abridged version of Mark's account. But this time the request to Pilate comes from a disciple of Jesus. How is it possible that Pilate could grant such a request, given what we saw earlier about Roman practices? We have to follow the logic of Matthew's account. First of all, Matthew's Pilate is not the same as Mark's, a cynical man who, even if he guesses that Jesus is innocent, satisfies the crowd by condemning Jesus and freeing Barabbas. In Matthew, Pilate's wife warned him that Jesus was a righteous man, and the prefect washed his hands, claiming to be innocent of Jesus' blood. In this context, why would Pilate not express his conviction that Jesus was unjustly treated by allowing non-political disciples to recover his body? Second, since Joseph was a rich and influential man, it was better not to offend the people. Hence the following: "Then Pilate ordered (it) to be given up (apodidonai)". The word apodidonai translates well the reality: after passing from hand to hand, Jesus is finally handed over to those who love him.

5. The Request for Burial according to Luke 23: 50-52

   Like Matthew, Luke is dependent on Mark's account. But he omits the two indications of time: first of all evening (opsia), a word totally absent from his Gospel, and then the reference to the day of preparation which he prefers to insert after burial (23:54: "It was Preparation days, and the Sabbath was dawning") to implicitly demonstrate Joseph's success in upholding the Jewish law. For Luke, Joseph is part of that long line of pious and religious people that began with Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna.

   1. The Lucan Description of Joseph from Arimathea
      • Luke offers us a much longer presentation of Joseph where we find his vocabulary: "and behold" (kai idou), "male" (anēr: husband, man), "by name" (onomati), "being (hyparchōn) a member of the council". Before affirming that Joseph was awaiting the kingdom of God, he wishes to describe his great qualities, emphasizing his moral traits: good and just, placing him in the line of Zechariah and Elizabeth, as well as the prophet Simeon, but without making him a disciple of Jesus, like Matthew. How, then, could he have participated in the condemnation of Jesus by the Sanhedrin? Answer: "he was not in agreement (sygkatatithesthai) with their decision and course of action". Luke here echoes certain passages from the Old Testament: "You will not agree (sygkatatithesthai) with the unjust to bear an unjust testimony" (Exodus 23:1); "You will not agree with these peoples and their gods" (Exodus 23:32).

        On Arimathea, Luke specifies that it is a city of the Jews, therefore a city of Judea; this fact once again nuances the general hostility of the Jews. Thus, after mentioning these women from Galilee, Joseph's introduction of a city of Judea creates a pair in the burial account.

   2. Joseph and Pilate (23: 52)
      • "This man (houtos), having come before (proserchesthai) Pilate". This phrase of Luke's is also found as it is in Matthew. To explain this fact, it is not necessary to assume that these two evangelists had access to a common source. First of all, houtos (this one) is a common way of providing a topic after simplifying Mark's aside on Joseph. Then, proserchesthai (to come forward) allows them to avoid Mark's tautology with two consecutive prepostions (eis-ēlthen pros, litt: to come in forward) by using a verb they both use frequently: Mt=51; Mk=5; Lk=10.

      • Luke does not explicitly mention that Pilate went at Joseph's request. It is implicit in the verse that follows: "He (Joseph) brought him down" (23:53).

6. Asking for Burial according to John 19: 38a

   In the previous section, we saw that the Jews made two requests to Pilate: break the legs of the crucified, and then take away their bodies. The first request seems to be implicitly granted, since the soldiers come to break the legs of the crucified. But we were told nothing about the second request. Here it comes back to the forefront with Joseph. The listener of the Gospel, who knows that Joseph is a disciple of Jesus, may see this as a form of competition with the Jews who originally claimed the body of Jesus. But it is difficult to understand the meaning John gives to Pilate's gesture of granting the body to Joseph. It is possible, however, that at the pre-evangelical stage of the story, Joseph was not a disciple, but the spokesman for the Jews who made the two requests to Pilate, and both requests were granted to him. And it was only later, when Joseph was distinguished from the hostile Jews, that the second request was rewritten with Joseph's new face, using the same language.

   1. The Johannine Description of Joseph from Arimathea

      The Gospel of John represents a later stage in the tradition where the burial of the tomb was read again in the light of Joseph's Christian career. But how can we reconcile the fact that, according to tradition, he was a member of the Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus. John adopts an approach which has similarities with Matthew and Luke: on the one hand, like Matthew, the fact that he was a member of the Sanhedrin is obliterated and replaced by the fact that he was a disciple of Jesus, and on the other hand, like Luke, he is distinguished from his co-religionists by the fact that he was a disciple hidden by "fear of the Jews". Joseph will be joined in the next verse by Nicodemus, who also disagrees with his Jewish confreres (see Jn 7:50-52). The mention of "fear of the Jews" may shed light on Mark's text which speaks of the courage it took for him to go to Pilate.

   2. Joseph and Pilate

      We have already pointed out that Joseph's request is a duplicate of the Jews' previous request. John tells us that Pilate allowed it, without clarifying whether Pilate knew that he was a hidden disciple. This is in accordance with the portrait of Pilate that he painted for us, still undecided, unable to opt clearly for the truth.

7. The Request for Burial according to GPet, and the Growth of the Joseph Legends
   • We have seen that, according to Christian tradition, Joseph would have become a disciple of Jesus. With the apocryphal Gospel of Peter in the second century, he became the model of the disciple of Jesus, a friend of the Lord even before his trial (2:3), who probably travelled with him, since he saw all the good he did. There is no indication that he was a member of the Sanhedrin, or even that he was a Jew, except by name.

   • This Gospel distances itself from the canonical Gospels by tracing Joseph's visit to Pilate before the crucifixion, and by showing us Pilate's inability to bestow the body of Jesus without Herod's blessing, a gross ignorance of the political realities of the 1st century. And Herod addresses Pilate as if he were an observant Jew, informing him of the beauty of the Jewish law concerning burial before the Sabbath. This is when we learn that it is Friday, the day before the day of unleavened bread or the Passover.

   • It is not directly said that the body of Jesus was given to Joseph. We learn that at the end of the darkness the Jews rejoiced and gave the body to Joseph to be buried. This is consistent with the ancient tradition that the body of Jesus was first given to the Jews, of which Joseph was a part. But later on, Joseph having become a disciple, the step of handing over to Joseph had to be added.

   • The Gospel of Peter represents the beginning of a legend about Joseph that will be very flourishing. The Acts of Pilate (or Gospel of Nicodemus) will put Joseph in prison for burying Jesus, and in his defense before the Jews, will recount the apparitions of Jesus in his prison, and later bring the chief priests to Arimathea to see the resurrected Simon and his sons. It is in the Middle Ages that the legend will take on a fantastic dimension, when Joseph brings the Holy Grail containing the blood of Jesus to England and will become part of the legends of King Arthur. He even brought the infant Jesus with him to England in a story where he is a merchant, uncle of Jesus. This is how Great Britain could have the status of a church founded in apostolic times, just like Spain, with James, the brother of John, and France, with Mary Magdalene, Lazarus and Martha.

Although the commentary focused on a small unit, the analysis that follows encompasses the entire burial scene.

1. Internal Structure of the Burial Accounts
   • The stories are built around a main figure and then secondary figures. In Mark/Matthew these secondary figures include the two Mary's who are observing (Mark) or sitting opposite the sepulchre (Matthew). In a longer account, the women in Luke follow Joseph to the tomb and then return to prepare spices and perfumes. In John, there are no women, but Nicodemus who initiates the burial with a mixture of myrrh and aloe. In the Gospel of Peter, the secondary figures are represented by the Jews and the Jewish authorities who allow the burial and seal the tomb.

   • The balance between the main and secondary figures depends on the theological interest of the evangelist. For Joseph's role is simply to conclude the crucifixion. But the presence of the secondary figures allows for other functions. In the Synoptics, the women prepare Easter and the discovery of the empty tomb. In John, the presence of Nicodemus makes it possible to paint the burial as a moment of triumph in a Gospel where the crucifixion represents a victorious exaltation. The Gospel of Peter, with its usual anti-Semitism, continues to present the Jews' hostility towards the Son of God even after his death.

2. External Relation to the Crucifixion and Resurrection Accounts
   • Some biblical scholars have tried to dissociate the accounts of the appearance of the risen Jesus from the passion narratives. But no data supports this point: when Jesus announces his coming sufferings, he also announces his resurrection; the oldest creed, 1 Cor 15:3-5, proclaims death and resurrection together. Nevertheless, we may ask ourselves: what is the relationship between the accounts of Jesus' burial and the accounts of the resurrection, and how long has this relationship been going on? For apart from the Gospel-Acts, one would look in vain in the rest of the New Testament for data on the place of Jesus' burial and on the actors involved. This leads many to wonder whether there was first a tradition of women standing in front of the empty tomb at Passover, and it was this tradition that at the same time created the account of the women at the burial, for it had to be assumed that they must have followed the corpse in order to know exactly where it had been put. But this does not explain the story about Joseph of Arimathea. One possible solution is to say that the story around Joseph of Arimathea is an integral part of the passion narrative, and it is only the presence of the women at the burial that was added after the fact, based on the stories around the empty tomb. This would explain why there are no women at the burial in John. We will come back to this later.

     Let us now try to understand how each evangelist integrated the story of the burial into the passion narrative.

     1. In Mark the account of the burial is a junction between the death of Jesus and the account of the empty tomb that will follow, and Joseph is the link with what has just happened and the women pointing to what will happen.

     2. Luke follows Mark, but gives a greater role to the women, and especially he draws a parallel between 23: 47-49 (reactions of the centurion, crowds, acquaintances and women) and 50-56a (Joseph and the women) where there are women observing what happens at the end of each unit.

     3. Matthew, by adding to the story of the burial (27:57-61) the episode of the tomb guards (27:62-66) and then the three episodes of the resurrection (28:1-10.11-15.16-20) creates a sequence of five episodes that ends his Gospel and parallels the five episodes of the infancy narrative (1:18-25; 2:1-12.13-15.16-18.19-23). It is a structure that points to the resurrection narrative.

     4. Conversely, John's story is oriented towards what happened earlier, and if we go back to the structure we identified earlier, it constitutes episode 6 of that structure and refers to the beginning of the crucifixion story. We will see Nicodemus' role later as a positive act of praise.

3. PreGospel Burial Tradition
   1. Time Indication

      All the canonical Gospels tell that the burial took place on the day of paraskeuē (preparation day). This fact comes from an older tradition than the Gospel of Mark for the following reasons:

      1. paraskeuē is the translation of the Hebrew ’ereb (vigil, evening) and reflects a Semitic stage of the tradition.
      2. Mark makes two clarifications to the word, "it being already evening" and "the day before Sabbath"; he would not have created of his own accord a word that he is subsequently obliged to explain.
      3. John, independently of Mark, uses the term three times, first at the time of Jesus' condemnation (19:14), then twice at the burial (19:31,42); if he had created this term, he would not have the ambiguity he has in the Gospel, referring to the preparation of the Passover, but also to the preparation of the Sabbath.

   2. Description of Joseph from Arimathea

      The evangelists must introduce Joseph, for he has played no part in the story of Jesus so far. He appears as a respected member of the council of the Sanhedrin. Although he participated in the condemnation of Jesus, he considers it his duty to keep the law and to bury this crucified criminal before sundown. Mark was unable to create this character after presenting the entire Sanhedrin involved in the condemnation of Jesus to death. In John, Joseph is associated with those Jews who condemned Jesus and are now asking Pilate to remove the bodies from the cross. Joseph's particular afterthought request results from the evolution of tradition after the resurrection when Joseph became a disciple.

   3. Rapid and Minimum Burial by Joseph

      The little that is told about the burial of Jesus gives the impression of an expeditious action, without frills. Joseph wraps the body in a piece of cloth and places it in a nearby tomb. There is no mention of any washing of the body or anointing before burial. It was only afterwards, as tradition evolved, that Joseph was ennobled, the cloth became a clean linen cloth, the body was washed (GPet), the tomb was new, and even belonged to Joseph himself. In the oldest tradition, there is no reason for Joseph to honor the remains of a convicted criminal.

   We were able to determine that the story about Joseph was a pre-evangelical tradition (we will determine in the next section whether the story about the women was an ancient tradition). What is historical about this? Almost certainly, it can be said that :

   • Jesus was buried
   • the Jews wanted the burial to take place before the approaching Sabbath.
   In all likelihood, it can be said that:
   • The burial was carried out by Joseph of Arimathea (Christians hostile to the Jewish authorities would not have invented this religious figure of the Sanhedrin).
   • Joseph was from Arimathea, a town that's hard to identify, that couldn't have been invented out of thin air