So to sum up, no credible scholar thinks Jesus was arrested at the temple courtyard.  And if somebody coming from a straight theistic background ‘suspected’ something no scholar has argued for, what would your reaction be?  You would be ripped to pieces in a scholarly journal if you argued this on the basis of a suspicion.  It’s not an argument at all.  What evidence do you have the temple courtyard had security guards on duty?  You are just making **** up here.  Which is precisely what you’re not supposed to be doing, as a supposed rationalist skeptic.  Which makes me suspect you’re nothing of the kind.  

I remember what he said in that section of the book, and I know Bart believes Jesus stayed on the cross, and there was no tomb (I don’t necessarily think there was a tomb either).  Bart certainly did not say Jesus was arrested at the courtyard.  As I recall, he believes Jesus was arrested later because someone informed on him (possibly Judas).  He leans towards Jesus actually believing he’d be King of the Jews.  I dissent, with full awareness that he’s Bart Ehrman, and I’m not.  

But even Bart Ehrman isn’t going to say “Jesus was arrested at the courtyard” when there’s zero evidence that’s the case.  Why would later accounts not mention this, when the disciples would have very much been around to witness it?  (As opposed to later events.)  Why invent a betrayal that never happened, make the disciples into cowards who abandoned him (and couldn’t stay awake) and denied him several times?  The Doctrine of Dissimilarity calls all that into question (you remember what that is, right?  no need to be embarrassed).  We know we have a heavily embellished story, but also a story that has a ring of truth to it–because the people in it behave like–well–people.  

You’re saying that because they knew for a fact he wasn’t buried, they made up a story to say that he was, and everybody believed it?  And how did they know this, if (as Bart thinks) they all got out of town before sundown?  

I agree (I’m getting tired of repeating this) that the story we have is inaccurate, but when we have several bodies of crucifixion victims that were buried, why assume Jesus got no form of burial at all, when you insist the Romans thought he was nothing special?  Why do you need to keep denying it, when you’ve just made an assertion that isn’t backed up by anything we know?    

‘Why guess at all’?  So you distinguish between ‘guesses’ and ‘suspicions’?  Not a big thesaurus fan, I guess (or suspect–whichever).  Point is, you guessed about something that happened two thousand years ago, and as to your wisdom–that cup runneth dry.  😉

Stephen, geez.  I read them over several times.  And I kept asking myself “Is he serious?” 

I guess I shouldn’t have asked, huh?

You did in fact guess, and your guess was not educated.  At all. 

I know you were talking at the end about my making guesses about you (maybe you’re a bit too sensitive for internet discussion?), but I would describe that more as ‘speculation’ (I can use synonyms too), and you were just doing the same about me, so again–get the log out.  Of your eye.  Or possibly your butt.

😀

Well, getting back to the lovely topic of crucifixion itself–Bart mentioned John Granger Cook’s Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (and also said he’d never read it all the way through, which is understandable–the main text is 449 pages, and it’s not what you’d call a page-turner). 

Like most scholarly works of this type, you won’t easily find a cheap copy online, and and there’s no ebook (which would cost almost as much anyway).  But I work for a university library, and we have it.  It’s on my desk now. It’s an exhaustive account of every surviving reference to crucifixion.  But I was interested in Roman practices at the time of Jesus, which he helpfully puts at the back of the book.

And here’s what he has to say about what happened after crucifixion–Page 429–

Crucified bodies could rot on crosses or be buried.

There’s a footnote with multiple sources to substantiate this (journal articles, none of which I have on my desk), but seems like it really varied.  He does not say whether it was more common for the bodies to rot or be buried, probably because he doesn’t know.  The author of the definitive crucifixion book. According to Bart. 

There are also earlier references to burial of the crucified, on pages 111, 239, 371, and 385-7.  There is reference to burial being something that was selectively withheld by magistrates–implying that if nobody cared about the victim staying up there, and somebody asked for the body, this was typically granted.  Even when burial was denied, there were ‘pits’ where the bodies would eventually be thrown.  Presumably they did not pay soldiers to stand around by pits full of dead bodies (which I would hope were located very far from the center of town), if somebody wanted to sort through the remains looking for a loved one. 

I therefore cannot see any factual basis for saying it’s impossible or even improbable that Jesus could have been buried.  I’m afraid the notion that Roman ‘Justice’ was implacable and invariant on this matter must be regarded as a myth–which was created in reaction to earlier mythologized accounts of real events.  My saying this does not mean I think any of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial are accurate, but I now think it likely (not certain) that he was buried, which served as the nucleus for stories of his resurrection, the empty tomb, Joseph of Arimathea.  As usual, the truth is somewhere in-between the extremes. 

John Dominic Crossan famously has said Jesus wasn’t taken up into heaven, he was eaten by dogs.  He’s a respected scholar, with a very strong opinion, that Bart largely concurs with, albeit less–colorfully. 

The reason I think he had some form of burial is that if that were not the case, there would be some accounts that diverged from the ones we have, and emphasized the degradation of his dead body, and then said that he was raised up regardless.  This is consistent with the Jewish Apocalyptic idea of resurrection of the dead, which didn’t require proper burial.  Though it must be said, him hanging on the cross until he rotted makes it much harder to explain where the resurrection stories came from.  My own opinion is that more time passed between his death and the visions/dreams that gave rise to those stories than the gospels depict. 

I wasn’t thinking of Paul specifically, but since you bring him up–he was pretty cautious about this kind of thing.  He did not, for example, raise the matter of the divine conception and the virgin birth.  If there had been some controversy over whether Jesus was buried, I don’t see him getting into that dispute.  He’d have avoided the subject until there was clear consensus, because as a Pharisee who believed in the resurrection of the dead (and even reportedly used that belief to divide Pharisees and Sadducees to make good his escape, in Acts).  The story that Jesus received some form of burial clearly goes back long before the gospels, and probably the sources they draw upon.  It is, in fact, probably what happened, but again, not necessarily as described.  There would have been few details available when it came time to write the stories, which were devotional in nature, not historical.

By nucleus, I mean that all stories of this type grow around kernels of fact.  First there are things people know happened–then things they want to believe happened.  A story not based on anything real is not usually a story that survives.  Certainly not  under the circumstances Christianity survived and grew. 

I think there were no stories circulating about his not being buried because that isn’t what happened. 

I don’t know Roger David Aus personally, so your use of the term ‘friend’ would seem to be sarcasm?  The stories that women were the first to learn of Jesus’ resurrection would have been problematic in a heavily patriarchal society, and they, unlike the male disciples, were unlikely to be arrested.  It’s not hard to imagine them staying around to try and do what little they could for the remains of a man they loved, who had shown them a level of respect they rarely got from other men. 

If you have derived absolute certainty from my saying I believe something to be true, there may again be some problem with your understanding of our shared mother tongue. 

So to be clear, I don’t know this to be the case.  It is an opinion.  Like Jesus being eaten by dogs (who obviously couldn’t climb up on the cross to devour him, so he had to come down sometime for them to chow down).  But it is an opinion based on reading, and what I read (which Bart recommended) says burial of the crucified was not uncommon.  There is therefore no solid basis for disbelieving that he was buried, when all surviving sources say he was. 

Jesus was not a notorious outlaw, a known zealot, a person who had (to our knowledge) conspired against Rome in any way.  Therefore, the supreme penalty of hanging there on the cross for weeks or months simply isn’t very likely.  We can’t say his crucifixion was an afterthought, and then say they were determined to keep him up there to humiliate and frighten followers who were not around to witness this degradation.

It’s a bad argument.  I therefore reject it.  But I don’t claim to know what really happened.  This is what I think.  Okay?

It’s possible nobody knew (I have already said details about it were almost certainly scarce and probably conflicting), but it’s inconceivable nobody inquired.  And it would not have been difficult to learn his body had been left on the cross.  The whole point of doing that is that everybody knows, right?  That’s a really simple story to remember.  Impossible to forget.

Nobody remembered Joan of Arc’s body not being burned into cinders (burned twice after her death) and thrown into the Seine, to avoid any part of her being preserved as a holy relic.  Why not?  Because that served very well to illustrate what she had undergone, and the perfidy of those who had accused her of witchcraft.  It became part of her legend, and an important one. 

James Connolly, one of the Easter Rebellion leaders, was killed by firing squad, strapped to a chair, because he was so badly wounded he couldn’t stand up.  The most famous song about him talks about how his body was thrown into a mass burial pit, with quicklime, no shroud or coffin, because the English deemed him a traitor.  And that just increased the sense of his martyrdom.  Nobody makes up a story about proper burial for all the brave soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts (and their commander, Robert Gould Shaw) after they fell in battle outside Charleston.  They were also thrown into a mass grave, black and white together, for all eternity.  Gould’s father said he was proud his son had been buried that way.

Defiling the corpse of a person you admire and love doesn’t make you think less of that person.  It makes you think less of the people who did it, as well it should  So why not bring that up?  Because it probably didn’t happen. Because Jesus wasn’t the leader of an army that had risen up against the state.  He was just a man nobody understood very well.  And that is still a problem today.

The argument is that everybody said he was, and there’s no reason to think he wasn’t, because it’s factually untrue that the Romans always left bodies to rot on the cross (this being the rock that arguments that he did not receive burial are invariably built).

The specifics of his burial will probably always be open to question, and again, I do not state it to be a certainty he was buried (define ‘burial’–is a pauper’s grave burial as everyone defines it?), but a likelihood–which is true of just about everything other than that he existed, was a Jew, had some kind of religious ministry, and was crucified.

Since you once again misquoted me (you hate it when I do that), let me set the record straight again.  I think inquiries were made at a later time.

How much later?  Peter was writing about seeing Paul and James there (Galatians is dated late 40’s/early 50’s), and they seem very well established–they hadn’t just arrived.  The exile from Jerusalem didn’t last long.  (Pilate was removed from authority there in 37).

Which tends to argue further that after his crucifixion, it was widely recognized that Jesus hadn’t been any kind of threat, and the authorities lost interest in his followers.  And there were hardly well-developed Roman espionage assets there.  So inquiries would have been made about the fate of his body, and not decades later.  Again, if he was left to rot on the cross, that would have been very easy to learn about.  And the fact that female followers figure so heavily in the stories of  his burial and resurrection would argue that women, not  men, were the original purveyors of this part of his story.  And not necessarily reliable witnesses, but that’s not the question.  The question is, why did everyone agree he’d been buried, and nobody–not even critics of Christianity–ever suggest otherwise?

Because, after all, if he had been left to rot on the cross, you’d think that would have been the first thing people who doubted his resurrection to mention.  Instead they suggested somebody had removed the body from the grave. 

No, I wasn’t being that specific (how could I be?)  And James (the Just?) isn’t a known follower of Jesus at the time of the crucifixion.  I mentioned him meeting Paul to establish that it wasn’t long before there was a thriving Christian community in Jerusalem, who would have had the connections needed to make inquiries. 

Somebody you love is killed.  Let’s say in a natural disaster, a massive earthquake, and you have to flee. 

Is it conceivable to you that you wouldn’t try to learn the fate of his or her body at a later time?  When it was safe to go back and make inquiries?  And is it likely the story you got wouldn’t have conflicts, contradictions, gaps?  And might  you not look for some way to fill those in, because that is part of how human beings resolve grief?

There were just people, Robert.  So easy to forget that. 

I’d agree that there’s some evidence he was buried, and absolutely none that he wasn’t. 

And in my opinion, if he was known to have rotted on the cross, that memory would have survived among later opponents of Christianity, because it would have been the most humiliating charge they could imagine.  Instead, they suggested his body had been stolen from the grave (implying they had no reason to think he wasn’t buried). 

We can be pretty sure of this because of elements introduced into the burial story, to try and eliminate any possibility of grave robbing (tomb guards, giant rock, etc).  Just as Bart has suggested the virgin birth was in response to charges Jesus was illegitimate.  (Do we know this for a fact?  Of course not.  But Bart still suggested it.)

Obviously Paul mentioning the burial is important, but it’s not all we’ve got to work with. 

PS: Larry Hurtado (RIP) was a strong advocate for the virgin birth story coming along fairly early, and since it’s likely to be at least partly the result of the increasing pagan contingent, Paul would certainly be aware of it, had it been circulating while he was writing his epistles.  In any event, I think it’s indisputable that Paul was quite cautious about wading into early doctrinal disputes not directly related to his own mission to the gentiles, because we simply don’t see him doing that.  Consummate politician, that man. 

We only know about the anonymous Pre-Pauline tradition through implication.  Implication is what I’m talking about here. 

The question is not how strong an argument there is for burial, but how strong is the argument for non-burial.  Non-burial has no tradition, anonymous or otherwise.  It is something that was raised in the very recent past, by scholars taking a skeptical look at the Passion story (I have no problem with this), assumed crucified criminals rotted on the cross, and didn’t look deep enough to know that was not invariably the case, because who the hell wants to spend his life researching every last mention of crucifixion in ancient sources?  (John Granger Cook, that’s who.) 

And what is their argument, in sum?  Crucified people were left on the cross to rot, to serve as an example to all, strike fear into the hearts of sympathizers, emphasize the awesome power of Rome.  Meaning that if nobody in Jerusalem remembered Jesus rotted on the cross, a few years after his death, that argument is a crock, no matter how you parse it. 

The more you look, the less argument there is for non-burial.  So without any sources to substantiate it, why believe it?