Christianity
The Jewish Idea of Resurrection
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, November 15, 2001
Resurrection
Resurrection is supposed to be the basis of Christianity. Dead bodies do not rise again. It is a physical impossibility and contrary to the laws of nature. Despite this, or rather because of it, resurrection is the proof of Christianity. Only God can restore life and so the resurrection of Jesus proves to the Christian that God has promised all who believe will be resurrected. A belief in resurrection necessitates a belief in life after death—that the individual personality somehow lives, even though the body is lifeless. The resurrection therefore offers the hope of eternal life—immortality.
Christian resurrection is the hope that at the end of time, all good people that ever lived will be restored to human life in a perfect world as a reward for their righteousness in their mortal life. It is an alternative to immortality of the soul and reincarnation. The Christian hope of resurrection hangs on the resurrection of Jesus. Even today Christians place their whole faith in the historical fact that Jesus died and came back to life—this life, not a life as a spirit or in heaven—this life on earth.
Today the truth is that most Christians reject bodily resurrection, and think in terms of the immortality of their soul—they think that resurrection simply means they will live on in heaven. Some Christian priests or preachers will still claim that resurrection means resurrection of the body, as it did for most of church history, but they do not go around causing trouble by telling their flocks anything like this, and even if they do, they muddy the water with souls living eternally in heaven or hell.
Now Christian belief is one thing and scientific enquiry is another. Nobody who believes that nature does not follow discernible laws can be scientific. Perhaps if a Christian is an engineer or a chemist, they can waive their belief in the supernatural and carry on with their profession, confident that their belief in God’s miracles does not impinge on scientific practice. But when the believer in miracles is a historian or an archaeologist then there is reason for concern. Frankly, despite their protests of objectivity, no one should accept anything that a Christian historian or archaeologist says about the history of Christianity without taking a large pinch of salt. Anything they say which supports Christian belief must be scrutinized.
Only when they announce discoveries contrary to their beliefs can they be believed! The reason is that one cannot imagine anyone distorting the meaning of a discovery to deny their beliefs, but the opposite is all too likely. Christian scholars might be outraged at the suggestion that they would fiddle their results, but, historically, Christians do not have a record likely to give anyone confidence in their honesty. Indeed, one only has to see the contortions these self-same scholars go through to justify their beliefs as it is, to realise that they can hardly be objective. So when we look at the evidence we have to bear in mind that Christians are not impartial witnesses. For many of them, indeed, it is more Christian to lie when it supports Christian mythology, than to tell the truth. Christians do not expect to get saved by telling the truth.
The resurrection was meant to be a message to mankind, Christians believe. If so, it demands verification. If it really is a revelation by God, he has revealed it in history precisely so that skeptics can investigate it and verify it. Yet many Christians object that history is never certain—it deals not in certainties but in probabilities—and cannot be the basis of faith. Why then did God bother? If faith is to be independent of this historical event, God could have sent the good news in the form of a myth—it had always sufficed for previous religions. Perhaps he did!
Many Christians find the historical account of the resurrection such poor evidence for faith, they would rather it were a myth. With the problem of the historicity of Jesus out of the way, they could stop all this argumentation and begin evangelizing without fear of contradiction! On this basis, it would be a great boon to Christianity if someone proved that Jesus was not historical. This seems to be the aim of the self-styled Jesus Seminar.
Other Christians feel investigation of the resurrection is not pointless. Though historians cannot prove that Jesus rose from the dead, they can show whether or not it is plausible on the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. However when they take this tack, Christians do not approach the question scientifically. The aim of science is to falsify, according to Karl Popper. The same is true in logic. The assertion, expressed positively, as it should be, is: “that Jesus rose from the dead.” The scientific historical approach is therefore to try to prove it is false. Christians, of course, do the opposite—they try to find reasons for it to be true!
Christianity depends so much on the resurrection of Jesus, that it would collapse without it. Needless to say, Christians do not want to find rational explanations for the foundation of Christianity, and even say that only a supernatural explanation could have started their persistent and widespread religion. That shows Christian objectivity. Christians will also say that it is not objective to discard the supernatural explanation at the outset. They are being absurd. In no other field of enquiry is an investigator invited to consider a supernatural explanation at all, let alone at the outset.
If no natural explanation can be found, one might turn to the supernatural in despair, though it is never an explanation but merely an acceptance of defeat in finding a natural explanation. The supernatural can be invoked to explain anything. It therefore explains nothing. If no natural explanation can be found for the resurrection and the beginning of Christianity, perhaps, we shall be obliged to accept the Christian “explanation.” And who performs supernatural acts? Christians have a belief in a powerful evil spirit called Satan, who cannot be easily overcome by the Good God because he too can also carry out supernatural acts, and for most Christians is just as likely to do so as the Good God. Yet no Christian will consider for one second that the Devil has fooled them all with his story about the resurrection of a man, and has contrived that all Christians now worship the Devil homself!
The resurrection seems quite astonishing to us nowadays, which is why it remains to Christians such a remarkable symbol of God’s power. A man quite dead, with crippling wounds, gets up and starts visiting his old friends. If such a thing really happened it must have been through God’s own intervention, and the New Testament tells us it really did happen. People saw it and they could not have been mistaken over such an extraordinary event.
Yet, what people can accept depends on the circumstances. Some of us still feel thrilled when we sit in an aeroplane as it takes off, but it is no longer extraordinary because people expect it. A century ago it would have been extraordinary to have flown like this and people would have been amazed. If, at the time of Jesus, people held a general expectation that God would lift saintly people from death back into life, resurrection would not have seemed quite so extraordinary. Jesus was considered saintly and so, for his followers, his resurrection might not have seemed so peculiar.
The resurrection of Jesus might be shown to be false if it can be shown to be an instance of a general belief. Such a belief can be mythologised and so expressed as if it were true history when it is simply a story. So one has to inquire about the ancient concepts of the afterlife at the time of Jesus and ask whether the resurrection of Jesus was a doctrine that arose from contemporary beliefs.
Jews generally were hoping that God would resurrect the world, and Jesus and his disciples believed this was about to happen. When the disciples thought Jesus had really been resurrected, they were amazed, but they would have been amazed that it had happened “at last” not that it had happened “at all.” In either case, resurrection is remarkable, but when people are primed to expect an event, they are more likely to see it happen. What is at issue is whether the resurrection of Jesus is rooted in history as an objective event or is simply a creation of the subjective faith of the disciples.
Jesus died on the cross, contrary to the messianic hopes engendered by Judaism in his followers. He died in a particularly disgraceful way for ancient people. In Mark, the earliest gospel, Jesus seems to utter in the throes of death a public confession of error or at least a cry of desperation that his whole life’s work has been in vain (Mk 15:34). Yet, believers rallied to the name of Jesus in the city where his death took place. Something must have happened between the crucifixion and this revival to renew the disciples’ courage. The disciples must have become convinced that Jesus had been resurrected, otherwise the birth of the Jerusalem congregation and the Christian church is a mystery.
Jewish Concepts of the Resurrection
The idea of resurrection is not attested in much of the Jewish scriptures. Death and return to the dust were seen as punishment for human sin (Gen 3:19; Ecc 3:20; Ps 90), and Sheol, the equal of the Hades of the Greeks, is under the earth. Sheol is “The Pit” and “Corruption” or “Destruction” (Abaddon). No one can return from Sheol, although the author of 1 Samuel seems to have forgotten it when he has Saul calling up the shade of Samuel. It is conceived of like a prison, like the Babylonian, Erkallu, the underworld city of the dead, with gates and bars to stop the dead from escaping. It is considered an early concept, replaced in the Persian Period by apocalyptic and escatological ideas, but the truth might well be the opposite, that the Greek idea of Hades with some older connotations, partially replaced the Persian originals among some Hellenized Jews. The worst aspect of death for the Israelites became that God and the dead had forgotten each other:
For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?Ps 6:5
Like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more.Ps 88:5
The Jews came to believe that human beings consisted of a body and a soul, the soul being the breath of life breathed into the lifeless body by god. The soul was rather like the Egyptian Ba and Ka combined. When Ezekiel told the Israelites that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” he meant eternal death—the body could die in death while the individual personality could live on, but when the soul died, the personality had gone forever. Ezekiel 37:1-14, obviously written after the Persians, uses the image of resurrection to predict the return of the exiles from Babylon. From Ugaritic lexicography M Dahood found unexpected references to the resurrection in the Psalms, suggesting they are mainly later compositions than biblicists had thought.
The idea of resurrection came from Zoroastrianism when the Persians conquered Babylon and planned to set up a temple state in Yehud, introducing escatology to the Jews. Resurrection and apocalyptic ideas offered an ultimate justice to the righteous who otherwise were denied it.
Texts varied over who would rise, whether only the righteous, some of them, or both the righteous and the wicked. The apocalypse of Isaiah 24-27, notably the expression of Isaiah 26:19, has possibly the first scriptural reference to resurrection. Faith in resurrection for the righteous alone is also expressed in some of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books such as 2 Maccabees, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra, but is not mentioned in Jubilees or the Book of Enoch. Daniel 12:1-2 predicts that “many who sleep in the dust of the earth” will rise to everlasting life—the righteous, the rebel Maccabees—while the wicked—the Pagan Greeks and their Jewish supporter—would rise to ”everlasting contempt.” The righteous of Israel will rise, but the wicked Pagan dead will not.
According to the Pharisaic Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10:1:
All Israelites have a share in the world to come… And these are they that have no share in the world to come: he that says there is no resurrection of the dead prescribed in the law, and that the law is not from Heaven, and an Epicurean.
From about 200 BC to 100 AD, belief in the resurrection of the dead rose gradually in the Jewish consciousness, yielding different versions of it, but some Jews did not accept it. Philo in his Legum Allegoria holds that the body “is wicked and a plotter against the soul, and is even a corpse and a dead thing.” The Sadduccees also rejected resurrection—a division of views that Paul exploited in his trial before the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:6). Some Jews even entertained the possibility of resurrection before the eschatological judgement, because John the Baptist was thought to have risen from the dead in Mark 6:14.
Jews debated whether resurrection would be spiritual, or physical with the return of the very body that died, or rather transformation into a glorious angelic form, or first the mortal body which subsequently puts on immortality? All these differences are found in the New Testament.
Jesus’s Idea of Resurrection
Resurrection is first discussed in any detail in the gospels in the debate in the temple where Mark (Mk 12:18) tells us that the interrogators were Sadducees. As the temple authorities, they must have been Sadducees but it is the first time in the gospel that they are mentioned. Jesus had explained that the kingdom of God was at hand. The children of Israel had to be repentant, then the righteous would be resurrected and would rule in God’s kingdom. The Sadducees, who had been Hellenized, did not accept such Persian traditions as angels and resurrection and their delegation posed an extreme instance to Jesus which they thought would refute him. Jesus however was an Essene and believed in traditional Judaism as introduced by Ezra—resurrection, angels, demons and all the basics of Persian religion—and is shown answering them in his terms with ease.
The first answer Jesus gives (Mk 12:25) is likely to be Essene because it draws on the apocryphal book 1 Enoch which the Essenes revered, and Jesus here calls “scripture.” The Essenes believed that God’s kingdom was an everlasting kingdom in which the righteous would have everlasting life. In God’s kingdom, the righteous became immortal, one of the main attractions of Christianity to the gentile Romans, and indeed to people today. Now the creatures which were already immortal were angels and demons. In 1 Enoch God tells the angels, “because they are immortal for all the generations of the world, therefore have I not appointed wives for you.” Immortal beings had no need of procreation.
The Essenes deduced that, in God’s kingdom, the risen righteous would have no wives. And indeed the most pious Essenes, those of the Qumran monastery, who were beginning to build God’s kingdom on earth, took no wives, partly for this reason. They seemed to believe the kingdom was contiguous with life on earth but nevertheless different, because it was perfect, and so marriage was superseded. Despite the kingdom being perfect and the righteous becoming angels, Jesus implied the resurrected body would bear the scars of mortal life (Mk 9:47), and indeed his own did in the story.
Since Essenes regarded 1 Enoch as scripture, there was no need to add the second answer simply to complete Jesus’s declaration that his inquisitors did not know the scriptures. But, since Jesus must have known his first answer would not satisfy a Sadducee—for whom scripture was only the five books of Moses, an answer which would satisfy them was needed. Unfortunately, it is not an answer to the question—it simply tells them from their own holy books that the dead live, supposedly explaining resurrection. However, the additional answer contradicts what went before, casting doubt on one or the other. If the patriarchs are not dead but somehow still live, then they cannot rise from the dead, and Mark 12:25,26 should not speak of such rising.
If the second part of the answer is genuine tradition, it seems that the Essenes actually did not believe in death, certainly of the righteous, at all! The scriptures refer to the righteous dead as “sleeping” and so, it seems, the Essenes thought of them. Resurrection from the “dead” was possible because, for God, the righteous never died but slept and resurrection became simply an awakening into everlasting life. They certainly were not alive and in heaven, because only Enoch himself dwelt with God. In Mark 12:25, the word correctly translated “arise” is “anistemi” but, in Mark 12:26, it is “egeiro,” which means “wake up!” The distinction is crucial because it illustrates that the adventure of Jesus took place in a culture which did not believe that people, or at least righteous people, were dead, but merely in a profound sleep from which they would be aroused at the escaton. The discussion of the first and second deaths in Revelation confirms this.
Jesus also seemed to believe in an intermediate state between death and the final judgement, wherein the righteous poor would enjoy bliss in the presence of the patriarch Abraham, while the wicked would suffer the torments of hellfire, a fate echoed in 1 Enoch. It seems the Essenes must have believed the souls of the dead remained as sleeping spirits until the general resurrection on the third day of the kingdom when they were resurrected into perfect and uncorruptible bodies, but the wicked were then condemned. Josephus says the Essenes did believe in an immortal soul which was overjoyed to be freed from the prison of a corruptible body, presumably at the general resurrection.
The Essenes had the idea of two deaths. The first one was not death but sleep, but the second death occurred after the judgement, for the wicked. The righteous had no second death but lived forever. These ideas are echoed in Revelation. Revelation describes a state of rest, under the heavenly altar(!) only for martyrs (Rev 6:9-11). There follows a first resurrection for these martyrs who would reign with Christ during the millennium (Rev 20:4-5). Finally, all the rest of the dead, good and evil, would rise to be judged (Rev 20:11-15) by their recorded works set down in the Book of Life, a direct use of the Zoroastrian conception of judgement. Matthew confirms that Jesus also believed in the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. Luke expressed the same belief in the mouth of Paul in Acts 24:15. The righteous and the wicked appear at judgement together and the righteous judge the wicked for the sins they committed (Mt 12:41-42).
Paul and Luke interpret the general resurrection as starting with that of Jesus. Paul sees Jesus’s resurrection as the initiation of the general resurrection, and proof that those who believe him will follow (1 Cor 15:20-23; Col 1:18). Luke takes Jesus’s resurrection simply as evidence that the day of God’s judgement was assured (Acts 17:31). Paul thought resurrection was preparation for an eternal glorious life (1 Cor 15:43), and so only Christians could be resurrected (1 Cor 15:23-24), and he cannot have expected the wicked to rise for judgement. Paul’s references to ”those who sleep” (1 Cor 15:18; 1 Thes 4:13) might have meant that death was only sleep for the righteous (John 11:11-14; Mark 5:39).
Jesus Prophesies His Resurrection
Mark has Jesus making three prophecies of his suffering but only in one place does he imply it is scriptural:
It is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought.Mk 9:12
Luke, is more explicit:
It is written that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day.Lk 24:46
The Apostle Paul made the same claim, that the scriptures said Christ would be raised on the third day.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures.1 Cor 15:4
In John, Peter and another disciple, assumed to be John himself, run to the empty tomb after hearing from Mary Magdalene that the body of Jesus was gone. After Peter had looked then the other also looked in:
…and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.Jn 20:6-10
The apostles’ incredulity at the resurrection appear elsewhere in the New Testament (Lk 24:11,38; Jn 20:24-25; Mt 28:17).
The disciples did not understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead for the simplest of reasons. No extant scriptures say the Messiah would rise from the dead! Despite New Testament claims, there are no explicit prophecies of a resurrected Messiah in the scriptures. The scriptures have nothing in them about a Messiah who would rise from the dead on the third day. There is nothing in the scriptures about a risen Messiah at all! The hints about it are in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Christian apologists quote Psalms 16:10, that Luke makes both Peter and Paul cite in Acts as proof of Jesus’s resurrection:
“Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance”… He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.Peter, Acts 2:25-31
Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, “Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption: But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.Paul, Acts 13:35-37
Psalms 16 is either Essene (or their predecessors, the Hasids, the Holy Ones) or it is one of their biblical proof texts. The Hebrew of parts of the psalm is obscure but it is post-Persian and means more in the light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It refers to the saints (the Hasids) who are in the earth but who will be raised up to lofty heights, and the pseudonymous author, David, is confident that as one of the Holy Ones he too will be saved from corruption and a soul lost from the sight of God in the Pit but will enjoy eternal life with God. It does not exactly support the idea that the Messiah would be resurrected but that the Holy Ones would be, and the Messiah is one of them.
The secure scriptural citation of resurrection on the third day is in Hosea 6:2 when Hosea (meaning Saviour) urges the people of Judah to return to God because, despite his anger and having injured them for their sins, he would bind their wounds, revive them after two days and raise them up on the third:
After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.Hosea 6:2
All Jews who were righteous would benefit from this—His Holy Ones or Righteous Ones being raised up into God’s presence (kingdom) on the third day. The fact that Peter and Paul were quoting Psalms 16 which is another expression of the same sentiment, shows that they might have been Essenes or trained by them.
If the personal resurrection of Jesus really did catch the apostles by surprise, one has to wonder why. According to the gospels, Jesus told them about it enough times:
And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.Mk 8:31
Jesus even repeated the statement to his apostles twice more in Mark (Mk 9:31; 10:33). The story preferred by the clergy is that the apostles were too stupid to understand that Jesus was saying he would die and rise again, yet the suggestion that John the Baptist had risen from the dead troubled no one (Mk 6:16).
The first time they were told, according to Mark, Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him, so he apparently understood exactly what he meant, but, in Mark 9:31, the disciples are depicted as not understanding. Matthew says they did understand because on that occasion they were “exceedingly sorry.” You cannot be sorry about what you cannot understand. What was difficult to understand in a prophecy of resurrection from the dead? It is quite possible not to believe such nonsense, but the idea is quite understandable. Indeed the last warning of it was as explicit as it is possible to be, even down to detail, according to Mark:
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the gentiles: And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again.Mk 10:33-34
Can anyone believe that the disciples remained uncomprehending? If Jesus had really prophecied with precision all these things, it is impossible to think that the disciples were not anxious to find out if the last and most amazing prophecy would come true. Yet, they had to be sought out and told of the empty tomb and rejected the women’s news as “idle” talk (Lk 24:11). The women were telling them exactly what Jesus had said would happen, and they thought their words were just idle talk! At the tomb, the angels said to the women:
He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.Lk 24:6-8
The women remembered immediately that Jesus had said that he would rise from the dead, but the apostles whom Jesus apparently trained personally could not remember much at all. On the road to Emmaus on resurrection day, Cleopas, speaking of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, showed he expected a resurrection on the third day:
But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.Lk 24:21
The redemption spoken of by Cleopas was the deliverance of Israel from Roman rule. It had not happened, but perhaps he still expected a general resurrection on the third day. Nor was that happening. The story is meant to show Jesus as the “first fruits of the resurrection,” but even then there was no general resurrection, as the only prophecy of it stated.
Even the enemies of Jesus understood that he had predicted his resurrection. After Jesus had been put into the tomb, they came to Pilate to ask that precautions be taken to prevent a staged fulfillment of the prediction:
Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.Mt 27:62-64
So the women remembered that Jesus had predicted his resurrection, the disciples at Emmaus remembered it, and the enemies of Jesus remembered it. Everyone who had been associated with Jesus knew that he was supposed to be resurrected except the apostles. Everyone remembered except Jesus’s own apostles! That’s hard to believe. Jesus had handpicked a bunch of dimwits who could not understand plain language.
The Burial
In Mark 15:42—47, Joseph of Arimathea, who Mark implies is a member of the Sanhedrin, asked Pilate’s permission to take Jesus from the cross. He had to do it boldly and Pilate was astonished that Jesus was already dead. Pilate asked the centurion to confirm it, which he did, and permission was given. Normally crucifixion was a slow death. That was why it was used for the most heinous crimes. It was possible for a crucified man to take five days to die. The gospels have Jesus dying after only six hours. Joseph and Nicodemus (in John’s gospel), both behaving as if they had an interest in the body, wrapped it in linen and put it in a new tomb cut out of rock in a private garden. The tomb was sealed by a large rock pushed against the entrance.
Much is made of the command in Deuteronomy 21:23 that a hanged man should not be allowed to hang on a tree overnight. Joseph seems to be making sure that Jesus does not. But what of the so called criminals who were hanging with him? According to John 19:32-33 they had their legs broken to bring on a quick death so that they did not have to hang on the cross overnight. Would the Romans, for whom crucifixion was meant to be an exemplary punishment which is why it was public and devized to be slow, be willing to allow terrorists to hang only for twelve hours, whether they were Jews or not? Usually they would be left to rot unless the corpse were claimed by relatives, and we can guess that is what Pilate would have preferred. Sources like Josephus suggest that, for the Jews, the Romans were accommodating, but facing an ogre like Pilate after an uprising, the courage Joseph has to gather denotes an uncertain response.
In John, Joseph of Arimathea is described as a disciple of Jesus—he is apparently a Nazarene. Arimathea never existed. Ramathea from Ramah is probably meant. It was the birthplace of Samuel, the prophet who was a priest because he anointed the kings David and Saul and also a king because previously he had ruled Israel as a Judge. Samuel was also a Nazirite dedicated by his mother before his birth to God, and like Isaac was a child of God’s promise. He wore the priestly ephod of white linen. In short, he was the epitome of the ideal Essene.
Doubtless the significance of the mysterious word Arimathea of Mark is that Joseph was in fact an Essene, and we might have inferred it from Mark who wrote he “waited for the kingdom of God.” Luke virtually confirms this by adding that he was “a good man and just,” “just” being the same word as “righteous,” the word used by the Essenes of themselves. Jesus’s brother, James who became leader of the Nazarenes after the crucifixion was called, James the Just. Incidentally Joseph in Greek is Joses, and a Joses was one of Mary’s sons and therefore a brother of Jesus (unless Joses is a variation of Jesus and so Joses means Jesus himself). Though it was a common name it offers the possibility that Joseph of Arimathea was one of Jesus’s brothers, and that is why he was claiming the body. In Roman law the corpse of a crucified criminal belonged to the next of kin.
Could an Essene be a member of the Sanhedrin? An alternative translation would be simply an honourable man respected in the community. Indeed Matthew takes him to be a rich man (to fulfil Isaiah 53:9), which an Essene could not be. Either Essenes were represented on the Sanhedrin (which seems unlikely) or Joseph was an Essene of some status in the community but not a member of the Sanhedrin. Possibly the council mentioned did not mean the Sanhedrin but the Essenes’ “council of the community.”
In the Copper Scroll there is a reference to the “Tomb of Zadok” and the “Garden of Zadok” next to it. They are under the southern corner of Solomon’s Portico on the east side of the temple and, like the Garden of Gethsemane, beneath the Mount of Olives. It is the only reference to a garden near the Mount of Olives outside the gospels. The Garden of Zadok was the Garden of Gethsemane. The name Zadok might imply it was owned by the Essenes and so its association with Joseph of Arimathea is understandable.
When Herod was reconstructing Jerusalem and the temple, there was a concern that the newly built town should not be desecrated by the dead and many tombs were built just beyond the walls notably in the Qidron valley where even then there were tombs. Jewish tombs already present in Jesus’s time are still there, cut out of the rock. Among the prominent ones are the tomb of the Bene Hezir, the family tomb of a dynasty of Hasmonean priests and dated last century BC. It has distinctly Hellenistic influences. Another is the tomb of the kings, a large mausoleum outside the walls of Jerusalem built by the Adiabene, a Parthian royal family from the upper Tigris who had converted to Judaism. It was built about 20 BC. The pillar of Absalom, is a monument associated with the tomb of Jehoshaphat, also in the Qidron valley not far from the mausoleum of the sons of Hezir. Very many less imposing tombs must have existed and evidently Jesus was laid in one—in the Essenes’ garden of rest.
This valley of tombs, the valley of Jehoshaphat of Joel’s prophecy, was surely the site of the defeat of the legionaries in the battle with the Nazarenes for Jerusalem—possible the battle described in code as the Gadarene swine and the Gerasene demoniac. The demoniac came out of the tombs. The Nazarenes engaged the Jerusalem garrison there to fulfil the prophecies of Joel and Zechariah which might have been explicit in the War Scroll but have been lost, and because it offered practical advantages, the Nazarenes and the multitudes accompanying them being able to hurl rocks from high vantage points behind the tombs. The captain of the Jerusalem garrison would not have wished to move far from the city, fearing that in his absence it would be taken by fifth columnists infiltrating as pilgrims or even by the citizens of Jerusalem themselves in an uprising.
Further Reading
- More on Jesus crucified
- More on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and some more, and more on Jesus is Risen, and belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ
- More on secular Christianity
