A Tomb Fit for a Prophet: An Investigation into the Historical Plausibility of the Gospel Burial Accounts

Why was the body of a man crucified by the Romans buried in a rock-hewn tomb? Whereas Jewish scruples about leaving the dead unburied would have been satisfied by burying Jesus in a shallow grave, a survey of Jewish burial practices indicates that instead he was buried in the kind of tomb normally reserved for the elite. Two of the Gospel accounts suggest that Joseph of Arimathea was a follower of Jesus, but this is historically unlikely. Piecing together the evidence from the Gospel narratives, it is proposed that, as a wealthy member of the Jewish ruling council, Joseph could well have been engaged in a programme of building tombs to honour prophets from the past. When faced with the death of a prophet in his own day, he may well have felt constrained to avert any divine retribution by giving Jesus an honourable burial. Memory theory is employed to suggest that distorted recollections of Joseph bribing Pilate to release Jesus’ body can be detected in the accounts of Jesus’ burial found in Matthew and John. This article aims to demonstrate that Jesus receiving an honourable burial in a rock-hewn tomb is historically plausible.