Robert said
I don’t think a burial would have required a special requester (maybe so during the siege of Jerusalem). It could in some circumstances just be a family member or friend.
I started out by trying to make the same point as your third paragraph here. Perhaps a rather low probability of interaction between real witness accounts and the early Christian claims, whatever they might be.
But, even if we assume such interaction, if the early Christian claims in Jerusalem were merely mentioning burial, as for example Paul does, this would not necessarily spark any controversy or counter-claims of ‘fake news’. Paul’s mention of burial could be as ignominious as the one Crossan describes.
The real question needs to be the likelihood of the survival of real witness accounts of the post-crucifixion fate of Jesus’ body with a pre-Markan account of a more dignified burial and empty tomb circulating widely enough in Jerusalem to raise objections by surviving conflicting eye-witness accounts. And then, as you say, one still needs to wonder whether or not those objections based on surviving eye-witness accounts and raised against the developed Christian account would themselves have survived the impending destruction of Jerusalem and be preserved for us now to this day. Thus their absence is not a very strong argument.
On the first point: Do we have evidence of this (it not being special), or is this a surmise? A real question, not an argumentative one.
On the second point: I completely agree that the Pauline burial tradition is minimally consistent with a mass pit – which is why I earlier strained to put ‘properly defined’ in a comment, but neglected to above. Your point that the Markan tradition is different than the Pauline one (unless one reads Paul through a Markan lens) is well said.
On the third: Agree. Completely.
That’s a fine counterpoint, Robert (kind of a stodgy dated translation, though, and isn’t the name actually ‘Turnus’?)
He’s still alive. He’s begging for himself, which is a lowly thing in this warrior tradition. He wants either to be spared (when he showed no mercy to Palllas), or else return his body to his family for burial. But Aeneas is shown having pity on other fallen opponents, respecting them–not stripping one young foe of his armor. Here, he’s driven by rage (and disgust at the craven hypocrisy of his defeated foe), and we are not supposed to admire him for this, but at the same time the SOB asked for it (Hector was, of course, guiltless of treachery, since he thought he was fighting Achilles himself).
(Interestingly, there are similar themes found in stories all over the world–in the Mahabarata, and the Irish National epic, the Tain bo Cuailnge. It’s always about how war brings out the best and the worst in men, and how even heroes may be ignoble at times.)
Virgil is rewriting Homer’s story to a great extent–coming up with a Roman version (that almost nobody thinks is as good as the original), and he has to vary things up a bit, or it’s too derivative. But needless to say, Jesus didn’t ask for mercy–or to have his body treated decently. All we learn from this is that the concept of treating the bodies of defeated foes decently was a concern in Roman culture, but not an overriding concern. It would vary, from case to case.
And if we had anybody at all from ancient times saying that Jesus’ body was left to rot–but we don’t. Nobody.
Robert said
I think the second Hebrew text I quoted in Post #169 is probably just speaking of requests by family members. I’m sure Cook gives others If I get a chance I’ll take a look.
On the second point, perhaps in times of war, but otherwise I don’t think we would always be speaking of mass graves. A body thrown in a ravine, perhaps covered by rocks, or buried in a shallow grave and subsequently carried away by scavenger dogs would not necessitate a mass grave. Prior to the first Jewish war against Rome, I would not necessarily expect to find mass graves.
First paragraph: OK, thank you. I will look forward to your future insights from reading Cook. Pending your review, would the minimalist version of my thought work, in your mind? Namely: We do not have examples of successful body requests except in the case of special requestors.
Second paragraph: Got it. Agree.
Robert said
Yes, Turnus, not Turmus. It’s those damned vertical lines again or maybe I was thinking of Tumnus of Narnia?If you want to speak about Virgil in any depth, I will need to consult with my son, whose Latin is much better than mine. He’s majoring in Classics.
I read a similarly stodgy translation in my teens, and haven’t bothered since, so no thanks. And in any event, why is Turnus treated the way he is by Aeneas? Because he himself shows disrespect to the body of Pallas, taking his belt, and stepping on the corpse. So it’s the same message, right? Show respect to the dead, even your enemies, or you will be cursed in some way.
So thanks for bringing that up. 🙂
All of which emphasizes the deep importance of how the dead are treated–Aeneas would have granted Turnus’ request, had he respected Pallas in death–but of course, these are the privileged dead. The high-ranking dead. Not the ordinary men who fight for pay, or the poor folk slaughtered and raped when cities fall.
So how was Jesus regarded? As a dangerous enemy? Unlikely. As a rebel? There was no rebellion. As a high-ranking Jew? It’s debatable to what extent Pilate respected any Jew, but he would draw a distinction between Jews who had influence and those who had none.
Somebody would have had to ask for the body, and that would have had to be somebody with influence. I don’t think there was any great impetus to disgrace the body, beyond the crucifixion itself. Pointless. Nobody cared. But his family were not there to ask, and they were poor people of no rank anyway. His disciples had run away, and they were poor people of no rank. Mary Magdalene may have been well-off, but hard to imagine her going there to ask, and the Romans generally have light regard for women (unlike Jesus).
So it comes down to a Jewish man of rank, with money, with influence, the right connections. Who would have probably done so on the quiet, not wanting his name to get bandied about, and therefore the disciples never found out who he was. (He did not let his left hand know what his right hand was doing). It leaked out that he was going to be buried, but the name of the benefactor was lost to history, and they gave him a new name, a new identity, and gradually made him into one of them.
Let’s say such a man asked Pilate–or whoever was acting in Pilate’s place, after he left the city–for the body of Jesus.
Why would such a request be denied? Nobody is taking revenge on Jesus here–it’s not personal. Just procedure. But to any Jew, leaving a fellow Jew to rot–and in this case, a fellow Jew he might feel was wrongly convicted, wrongly executed, condemned to an ignominious death his words and actions had not merited–is offensive. Even more than to a pagan, this is a disgrace, a shonda for the goyim. They have mocked not only Jesus but all Jews with that legend over the cross (assuming that was there, and Bart does assume that).
So yes. An approach at the right moment, with the right words, from the right person, with the right amount of money–I have no doubt at all that would have been accepted. Because it was not some inflexible rule that the crucified rotted on the cross, or went into a shallow pit to be eaten by scavengers. That was the argument and that argument simply does not hold water.
It’s possible. And it’s the only story we have. And we accept many other stories that we know have been embellished. Why not this one? What’s the problem with it? I had no problem with him being eaten by dogs. I just don’t think that’s what happened.
Robert said
If you’re arguing that the Joseph of Arimathea story is possible, there’s no argument. I have never said this story could not be true or even that it most likely is not true. If you’re arguing that it must have most likely happened in this way, you’ve yet to produce a strong argument. It all boils down to the fact that Mark’s gospel and those that are dependent on him (or at least later) have this story, while no other early or clearly independent stories exist.
I’m arguing that the story of Joseph of Arimathea is a fanciful adaptation of what really happened, which early Christians had only scattered fragments of.
Nobody has come close to proving Jesus rotted on the cross, and as to ‘high treason’–surely those three friends of Josephus were far more guilty of that than a nonviolent street preacher, who knocked over a few tables, and talked about things he thought would happen in the future. There was no treason, even allowing for the fact that Jesus wasn’t a citizen.
Philo describes Pilate as wantonly cruel–and also corrupt. Granted Philo isn’t an objective source–as if there are any. But clearly Pilate could arbitrarily decide whether the body was left up on the cross. Or he could delegate that. And either way, a corrupt official can be bribed. A burial can be private, hushed up. A body hanging on a cross in full sight is something everyone would know about. That’s the reason you leave it hanging on a cross in full sight. So if that’s what happened, why is there no suggestion of that, anywhere?
So there is no basis for assuming anything, other than this–everybody believed Jesus was buried. Produce an argument to the contrary. You can’t. There is none.
What more can we say? You’ll think of something, I’m sure. 🙂
Robert, excellent, thank you.
Robert said
Cook gives this example. At least the reference to Augustus is probably speaking of upper class citizens of Rome so not necessarily applicable to the poor or slaves, and not necessarily speaking about crucifixion:
“The jurist Ulpian describes, in the early third century, in book nine of his Duties of the Proconsul, the legal situation he knows of that governs the disposal of executed bodies:
Corpora eorum qui capite damnantur cognatis ipsorum neganda non sunt: et id se observasse etiam divus Augustus libro decimo de vita sua scribit. Hodie autem eorum, in quos animadvertitur, corpora non aliter sepeliuntur, quam si fuerit petitum et permissum, et nonnumquam non permittitur, maxime maiestatis causa damnatorum. Eorum quoque corpora, qui exurendi damnantur, peti possunt, scilicet ut ossa et cineres collecta sepulturae tradi possint.
The corpses of those who were sentenced to die are not to be withheld from their relatives: the divine Augustus writes in the tenth book of his autobiography that he had observed this rule. Today, however, the corpses of executed people are buried as if permission had been asked for and granted, with some exceptions, especially when the charge was high treason. Even the bodies of those condemned to be burned at the stake can be claimed, obviously so that bones and ashes can be collected and buried.
Obviously I cannot read the Latin. How do you interpret (in English) the two commas after “granted” here?
Today, however, the corpses of executed people are buried as if permission had been asked for and granted, with some exceptions, especially when the charge was high treason.
Should it read:
a) executed should be buried…especially traitors; or
b) executed should be buried…except…especially traitors.
The more natural seems to me b) – that traitors don’t get buried – but I know only what Latin comes through in English, French, Spanish, and Looney Tunes.
NB – Cook’s book is available via ebook from its publisher (huge win for me). If you want a link to purchase, lmk. And, he acknowledges that the frequency of burial vs nonburial is indeterminable from our vantage point. So, we’re in the grey. Good call Godspell and Robert.
godspell said
A body hanging on a cross in full sight is something everyone would know about. That’s the reason you leave it hanging on a cross in full sight. So if that’s what happened, why is there no suggestion of that, anywhere?
The issue of silence (lack of alternate accounts, lack of objections to burial story) is treated in the following comments:
190
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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