…it was simply a response to a question from Stephen.

Who can only boast of other modern languages, not ancient Greek.  Hence my question.  A question that obviously couldn’t have been answered without recourse to the Greek. 

Thanks Robert.

Your response generates some more interesting questions.

…the separate ὅτι-clauses indicate the burial and resurrection should be considered separately.

Paul clearly relies on the image of the Suffering Servant in his explication of the crucifixion, especially in Romans.  Why didn’t he consider Isaiah 53,9 

They made his grave with the wicked
    and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth. (NRSVUE)

and regard the burial as “according to the scriptures”?   

A bit of research reveals that the NRSVUE’s “tomb” is somewhat freighted.   The RSV renders it:

And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death… 

But the larger point is that Paul could have easily pointed to Isaiah 53,9 if he had known the story of Joseph of Arimathea.   And if as Connor says the creed is about witnesses, where’s the women folk, the only witnesses to the Empty Tomb?  The simplest explanation is that these stories just hadn’t been invented yet.  Call me frisky but nothing would surprise me less than to find out Mark invented them.

Then, we naturally inquire, what was Paul talking about when he says Jesus was buried?  (If he talked about it. I have suggested the possibility that the phrase might have been added later to fill out the creed which is of course exactly what scholars are suggesting Paul himself did to the creed he received.)

But assume it is Pauline.  Is it just a euphemism for, Jesus was really dead?  It might help to examine Paul’s view of the Resurrection Body.  (Kudos to Dale Martin whose ** you do not have permission to see this link **  first brought this issue to my attention and helped me clarify my thinking on the subject.  Now I know what I don’t know!)   

Paul’s views of the body are very close to his contemporaries, the Stoics and what came to called Middle-Platonism.  The body is composed of a continuum of ever finer substance.  The sarx, “flesh”, the nous, “soul”, and the pneuma, “spirit”.  Forgive the pedantry but the problem is that in Modern English none of these words mean quite what they did for the ancients. (For Paul even sarx has a metaphysical aspect; “flesh” includes but is not restricted to mere skin and bones and viscera.) 

The main point is though, what happens to the body in the resurrection?  Paul explicates his view in 1 Cor – only the pneuma can become the Resurrection Body.   The issue for scholars is then, what does Paul think happens to the flesh and the mind/soul?  Prof Ehrman’s opinion (I asked him) is that in the resurrection the sarx and the nous are transformed into pneuma. On the other hand, Martin’s view, at least as I interpret him (alas, he is no longer with us to clarify), is that in the resurrection the sarx and the nous drop away and only the pneuma can be transmogrified into the Resurrection Body.

Why does it matter?  Because if Paul believed that in the resurrection Jesus’ sarx and nous dropped away, then he might not have been particularly interested in the disposition of Jesus’ fleshly corpus.  Jesus was buried.  Don’t go looking for it.  That’s not where the action is.  But even if he believed the sarx and the nous became pneuma, he still might not have been too concerned about searching out the spot.   The Jesus who crawled out of a tomb, eats and shows off his stigmata came later in the tradition.   

For Paul, the transmogrified, Resurrected Jesus ascended to the Father and appears in visions.  No tomb required.