Reasons to Doubt the Burial Stories

 Although the Gospels agree that Jesus was removed from the cross and buried in a stone tomb by Joseph of Arimathea on the same day that Jesus was crucified, there are some good reasons to doubt this is what actually took place:

• Because honorable burial was very important to Jews in the first century, the authors of the Gospels (and early Christian storytellers) would have been strongly tempted to invent the story of Jesus’ honorable burial even if they had no reliable information about what happened to Jesus after he was crucified.
• Jesus was executed as a rebel against Rome (whether justly or not), so it is very unlikely that the Romans would have allowed him to receive an honorable burial.[1]
• It usually took a number of days for a victim of crucifixion to die, not just a few hours as depicted in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ alleged death on the cross.[2] Crucifixion on Friday and burial on Friday by sunset is unlikely.
• The timing of Jesus’ alleged death and burial which has Jesus buried in his tomb just as the sun was setting and the Sabbath began, along with the timing of his alleged resurrection shortly after the end of the Sabbath, suggests this timing was a theologically-driven fiction, allowing Jesus to finish his work on the cross in parallel with God finishing creation of the world on a Friday at sunset, and taking a day of rest on the Sabbath (see Genesis 2:2-3).
• The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial and of the discovery of the empty tomb on Sunday morning by some of his women followers are very inconsistent with each other, indicating that these stories are not based on reliable eyewitness testimony.[3]
• The person who allegedly buried Jesus was “Joseph of Arimathea”, but there are reasons to suspect this person is a fictional character.[4]

END NOTES

1. NT scholar Bart Ehrman came to the conclusion that Jesus was probably not given an honorable burial by Joseph of Arimathea:

I do think there are certain parts of the stories that are almost certainly historically correct:  Jesus was almost certainly crucified by the Romans; and afterwards some of his disciples claimed they saw him alive again (we don’t have good evidence that all the disciples said this; but some of them certainly did at least).

What I don’t think we have good solid evidence for is the burial and empty tomb.   On the burial, it would have been highly unusual, in the opinion of a number of historians, for the Romans to have granted a proper burial for someone they chose to disgrace and humiliate through crucifixion.  More commonly they would simply have left the carcass to rot on the cross, as part of the humiliation, or possibly thrown it into an open pit with other decaying bodies. 

[...]

My guess is that like others (the two killed with Jesus that day, for example, and others crucified during that same Passover season), Jesus was thrown into a common tomb where he experience [sic] corruption like everyone else, so that within days he was no longer even recognizable.   It’s just a guess.   But it’s more historically plausible than the idea that the Romans would allow a decent burial. 

"The Burial of Jesus: A Blast from the Past" (posted March 20, 2017)

Jesus scholars Marcus Borg and John Crossan agree that Romans usually did not allow victims of crucifixion to be given an honorable burial.  They are skeptical about the idea of Pilate giving the body of Jesus to Joseph of Arimathea for an honorable burial:

This is a remarkable departure from customary procedure, since, as mentioned earlier, the body of a crucified individual was not given an honorable burial. 

The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Crossan (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), p.153. 

2.   Often crucified people lingered for days… 

John R. Donahue, “Crucifixion” in Eerdman’s Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), p.299.  

Among the torturous penalties noted in the literature of antiquity, crucifixion was particularly heinous. The act itself damaged no vital organs, nor did it result in excessive bleeding. Hence death came slowly, sometimes after several days…  

Joel B. Green, “Death of Jesus” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p.147.  

3.  

4. Here are some reasons to doubt the historicity of Joseph of Arimathea: 

• There is no historical evidence outside of the Gospels for the existence of Joseph of Arimathea. 
• There is no historical evidence outside of the Gospels for the existence of a place called Arimathea. 
• The name “Arimathea” might well have been a theologically-driven invention: “Ari” in Greek means either “very” or “the best” and “mathea” means either “futile” or “disciple” or it might refer to the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name “Matthew” meaning “gift from God”.  So, this name might have meant “the best disciple” or “the best gift from God” (or “very futile”?). A name meaning “the best disciple” would reinforce the point that Jesus’ twelve disciples abandoned Jesus and failed to make sure he had a decent burial.  A name meaning “the best gift from God” would reinforce the point that Jesus’ death and resurrection was God’s provision of a way for humans to obtain forgiveness and eternal life. A name meaning “very futile” is of less obvious significance, but could indicate that the burial of Jesus was “very futile” because God was determined to exonerate and exalt Jesus by bringing him back to life.  
• The story of Joseph of Arimathea’s burial of Jesus allows for Jesus to have had an honorable burial and explains why Jesus was buried in a stone tomb (since Jesus family could not have afforded such a tomb), a necessary prerequisite for the empty tomb story.