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16. HIS DISCIPLES CAME BY NIGHT

        The gospels, of course, provide a story about what happened to Jesus' body.  Surprisingly, however, all four gospels agree on the role played by an otherwise obscure individual named Joseph of Arimathea.  His hometown, Arimathea, is thought to have been about twenty miles northwest of Jerusalem, but its exact location isn't certain.  According to Matthew 27.57, he was a "rich man"; Mark (Mk 15.43) and Luke (Lk 23.50) say he was a member of the Sanhedrin.  All four gospels agree that he was a disciple of Jesus'; all four agree that he appealed to Pilate and was given Jesus' body.  He is also named in the Signs Gospel, the very early text from which John borrows.

        All of this does not necessarily mean that Joseph of Arimathea was an historical figure, but it does prove that he was extremely important to very early Christian tradition.  He not only gets Jesus' body off the cross, where it otherwise would have been left to rot; in all four canonical versions as well as the Signs gospels, Joseph anoints the body with spices, wraps it in linen, and places it in his own garden tomb.  He is, in short, the human facilitator of the resurrection.

        Yet as narrative device, Joseph of Arimathea is actually an unnecessary complication.  We know from Philo (Flaccus 81-85) that it was customary for the Roman authorities to remove crucified bodies and release them to their kin on important holidays; the despised Alexandrian Prefect, Flaccus, gets bad marks for not doing so.  Why would the authors of the gospels, desperately inventing devices to suggest Pilate's sympathy for Jesus, not credit him with this final act of beneficence?  It would have been easy enough for Jesus' mother, who in the gospel is present at the crucifixion, to receive the body directly from the repentant Prefect's own centurion.  But she doesn't.  Why?

        An answer to that question is provided by Matthew.  In Mt 27.62-66, the author tells us that on the second day after the crucifixion the Pharisees (read "high priests") went to Pilate, warned him that the "deceiver" had forecast his resurrection after three days, and persuaded Pilate to give them a koustodias - a small contingent of Roman soldiers -- to make certain the tomb remained sealed.  On the third day, however, an angel rolled the stone door of the tomb aside, revealing the risen Jesus.  The Roman soldiers hurried back to the chief priests and reported what they had seen (here we must suspend disbelief about Roman soldiers reporting directly to the high priests).  The chief priests convened the Sanhedrin, and when they had done so, "they gave large money to the soldiers, Saying, Say you that His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.  And if this come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you [against disciplinary action for sleeping on duty].  So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day" (Mt 28.11-15).

        So, according to Matthew, the high priests bribed the Roman soldiers to accuse Jesus' disciples of stealing his body by night.  That the story was going about in Matthew's day suggests that it was the standard formula for debunking the resurrection -- thus the tale of the bribed soldiers was itself a very early tradition for Jews who would not accept Jesus as the resurrected Messiah.  That raises the question of why skeptical Jews required the bribed soldiers; why didn't they simply say that Jesus rotted on the cross while the city of Jerusalem watched?  The only plausible answer is that Jesus' body did come off the cross, early enough and in sufficient state of preservation to require bribed soldiers and body-snatching disciples in order to fully debunk the story of his resurrection.

        So we are left with the unnecessary rich man, the unnecessary bribed Roman soldiers, and a vanished body.  At this point it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some money passed between one of Jesus' wealthy patrons and, perhaps, the centurion in charge of the execution.  And as a result of that transaction, Jesus' body was removed from the cross.

        Now we turn to the question of whether that body was dead or alive.

Next: THE EMPTY TOMB

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Copyright (C) 2004 Michael Ennis
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 Claudia Procula, or Claudia Procle, the name given Pilate's wife in such popular fictions as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, is based solely on preposterous legends and forgeries long discredited by biblical scholars.