Aus is hard to summarize, because arguments drawn from a deep knowledge of ancient languages are very hard to explain to laypersons, and of course he’s not writing for laypersons.  He’s never published a mass market book.  A good writer, and a perceptive man, and Bart seems to been impressed by him when they lunched at that conference for top bible scholars in Germany.  But nobody is or ought to be considered an infallible authority.  There is no such thing in scholarship. 

Let me just type out the relevant part of his three page summary at the end of the book, which schematically lays out of the argument he spends most of the book building up in depth, drawing upon a deep knowledge of all relevant languages, and how they were used in that time period.  (You can quibble with his arguments, but not his qualifications for engaging in textual analysis). 

I should also mention that Aus does not rule out some of the similarities between the two traditions being the result of Jesus himself consciously echoing the earlier tradition, but of course he couldn’t do that once he was dead.  He says the older he’s gotten, the  more he’s realized that Jesus quite probably did think he was going to die in Jerusalem, due to his reading of OT sources, and the execution of John the Baptist.  The problem with literal interpretations of scripture is that the people writing it, even when documenting actual events, were actively trying to make them jibe with their understanding of those events, based on their understanding of past scripture.  There was always a creative aspect to it, and the readers of this material not only understood but desired that.  They didn’t want a dry documentary narrative, but The Word of the Lord.  (Thanks be to God.)

This is from The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, and the Death, Burial, and Translation of Moses in Judaic Tradition, by Roger David Aus, 2008, University Press of America. 

Chapter II. deals with the similarities between the burial of Jesus and the burial of Moses in Judaic tradition.  The well of Num 21:16-20 was thought to be the same one which accompanied the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness.  Rolling along like a round stone, it finally ceased rolling and disappeared at the top of Mt. Pisgah (v 20), precisely on the day of Moses’ death and at the site where he died and was buried (Deut 34:1 and 6).  All four extant targums have ramatha(h) for “Pisgah,” which a Palestinian Jewish Christian employed as the basis for the name Joseph of “Arimathea.”  This is made more probable by the derivation of the terms “respected,” “council / Sanhedrin,” and “kingdom” to describe Joseph of Arimathea in Mark 15:43 from Judaic tradition on the well in Num 21:18, with Pisgah in v 20.  In addition, Pisgah is frequently rendered in the Septuagint by “The Place Hewn Out of Rock,” the same Greek term employed in Mark 15:46 for Joseph of Arimathea’s placing Jesus’ body in a tomb “that had been hewn out of the rock.”

I don’t see how Pilate being told Jesus is dead casts doubt on Jesus being dead.

I also don’t see how Pilate being surprised (and perhaps a mite disappointed) Jesus expired so quickly, rather than a slow agonizing death lasting several days, casts him in a sympathetic light (something Mark, unlike later evangelists, doesn’t seem interested in doing).  

I also am not convinced Mark invented all or most of these details.  I think the Joseph story probably predates his gospel.  Otherwise, hard to see why it’s in all four of them–yes, possible the other three all read Mark, but not everything in Mark made the other gospels.  I think it was a well-known story among Christians before any gospel was written.  

We can’t know what happened to Jesus’ body, but we can know that in at least one instance, the remains of a crucifixion victim were found in a 1st Century Jewish tomb (and that they aren’t Jesus’ remains.)

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Let’s say that by some weird sequence of events, Jesus was interred, for whatever reason.  If you study Roman history, you will find many more anomalous events than that.  You cannot assume that it all went according to the usual routine, because the usual routine was not that a crucified man became the most famous and influential person in all history, and the later Roman emperors bowed down before his image.  

Something had to make Jesus’ followers believe crucifixion was not the end of Jesus.  We don’t have to believe that was a supernatural event, but if he was simply left to rot on the cross, for weeks or months, it’s hard to explain how the disciples were able to convince themselves he was resurrected.  

So somewhere in the highly stylized story of Joseph of Arimathea, probably intentionally drawing on earlier stories from Jewish history and mythology, there might be just the tiniest grain of truth.  About the size of a mustard seed, perhaps?

1) “Pilate, he’s still alive, and grinning!  He says thanks for fixing his back problem!” would cast doubt on Jesus’ death.

2) Releasing the body isn’t about making Pilate sympathetic.  It’s about setting up the resurrection story.  The body has to be somewhere the women can go to tend to it, and find the resting place empty.  Crucifixion was a widely known and feared method of execution in the Roman world.  People knew very well what happened to the corpses of most crucified men.  So whatever really did happen, Mark does need to explain to his readers why Jesus didn’t just rot on the cross for days or weeks.  And nobody would believe the body could be removed from the cross and interred without Pilate’s permission.  Maybe this later developed into the notion of Pilate wanting to be merciful, but he isn’t being merciful in Mark’s gospel–truthfully, he just seems not to care, now that Jesus is dead.  (In point of fact, Pilate could have decided he’d overreacted, that Jesus was just a harmless madman, his followers had run away, there never was any real threat of rebellion, and again, it does seem that at least one Jewish victim of crucifixion was given some kind of burial, perhaps after Pilate’s tenure had ended.)  

3)This is reasonable.  There would have been large gaps in their knowledge of what happened after Jesus was taken, because they themseves had to run and hide.  However, Jesus’ female followers might well have gone looking for his body, since the Romans never took women seriously as a threat to civic order (unless they were Egyptian Queens or like that).  I’ve seen some fairly persuasive arguments that the story of Joseph and the tomb cut out of the rock are drawn from OT passages about the death of Moses.  Guesswork, sure.  What else is there?  Some guesses are a lot more educated than others.  

He might have been a family member of someone with wealth and influence, but Joseph of Arimathea (who again, I don’t believe existed, at least not by that name) is described as a member of the Sanhedrin who has his own family tomb (something very few people could afford back then).  

I assume Roman colonial governors were not immune to cajolery, mingled with bribery (since no colonial governor ever has been).  

Somebody could have considered it a shonda for the goyim (or however the Yiddish translates) that a Jewish holy man, however weird and disruptive, would be left for scavengers in front of the whole city.  A few words in the right ears, a few coins in the right hand.  They take him down a bit early, hand him over.  The disciples aren’t anywhere nearby when it happens.  They are not on speaking terms with whoever did it (who would be even less likely to want to associate with them, after doing their master a mitzvah).  They don’t know how it happened, or who did it (well, Jesus did say never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing–good bet he wasn’t the only Jew who believed that).  By the time they feel safe to get to Jerusalem, all they’ve got is a confusion of conflicting stories from the followers who didn’t leave (mainly women), various rumors, and here comes the telephone game again.  

All they know is that they heard he was buried, and they had visions of him resurrected.  So they imagine what kind of mensch would do such a mitzvah.  And hence Joseph of Arimathea is born.