Entombment of Jesus

The burial of Jesus refers to the burial of the body of Jesus after crucifixion, described in the New Testament. According to the canonical gospel accounts, he was placed in a tomb by a man named Joseph of Arimathea.

The earliest reference is in a letter of Paul. Writing to the Corinthians around the year 54 CE, he refers to the account he had received of the death and resurrection of Jesus ("and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures").

The next generation of writings are the four canonical gospels, written between 66 and 95CE, all of which conclude with an extended narrative of Jesus' arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. All four state that, on the evening of the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body, and, after Pilate granted his request, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it in a tomb.

There are significant differences between the four accounts, recording the evolution of the tradition from the earliest gospel (that of Mark) to the last (the Gospel of John). Modern scholarship tends to see the gospel accounts as contradictory, and finds the Mark portrayal more probable.

In the earliest of the gospels, the Gospel of Mark, written around 70CE, Joseph of Arimathea is a member of the Jewish Council – the Sanhedrin which had condemned Jesus – who wishes to ensure that the corpse is buried in accordance with Jewish law, according to which dead bodies could not be left exposed overnight. He puts the body in a new shroud and lays it in a tomb carved into the rock. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing later in the century, described how the Jews regarded this law as so important that even the bodies of crucified criminals would be taken down and buried before sunset. In this account, Joseph does only the bare minimum needed for observance of the law, wrapping the body in a cloth, with no mention of washing or anointing it. This may explain why Mark has a story prior to the Crucifixion, in which a woman pours perfume over Jesus (Mark 14:3-9): Jesus is thereby prepared for burial even before his death.

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