JESUS had been convinced that his crucifixion would not be the end. Provided that he faithfully discharged the duties incumbent upon him as the Messiah in his manifestation as the Servant of the Lord, he was assured that God would exalt him in readiness for his further manifestation as ruler over the Kingdom of God. The glorification would be initiated by his resurrection. According to the synoptic Gospels, as his last trials approached, he had spoken to his disciples with confidence of his rising on the third day. He even went so far as to make an appointment to meet them afterwards in his beloved Galilee.
The expectation of resurrection was a Jewish one, involving the reanimation of the body which in some way would have become immortalised. When the time came for the inauguration of the Kingdom of God the faithful dead would rise to share its bliss, and in Paul's view the surviving living saints would undergo a change.1 It is claimed in the Gospels that persons raised from the dead were able to resume normal existence, except that in the Kingdom of God there would be no sex relationship. In the curious story in Matthew of the appearance of dead saints at the time of the crucifixion it is their bodies which arise, come out of their tombs, and go into Jerusalem. The resurrection of Jesus was understood to be of the same order: his body was believed to have left the tomb and could be handled: the revived Jesus could speak, eat and drink and walk about. There was no impairment of those faculties and capacities he had in his lifetime. At the same time new capacities were acquired such as the ability to appear and disappear at will.
We are not dealing in the Gospels with hallucinations, with psychic phenomena or survival in the Spiritualist sense. These possibilities do not fit the circumstances as they are narrated. However the traditions of the resurrection of Jesus are to be explained it cannot legitimately be on these lines.
The Gospels in this part of their narrative exhibit the same characteristics we have encountered in earlier parts. There is some conflict between Galilean and Judean versions of what took place. There is a heightening of the miraculous in the later Gospels, and emphasis of the deity of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. There is a paucity of material, and consequent absence of vital information. In Mark, the least legendary of the Gospels, the text breaks off abruptly and tantalisingly at a crucial point, the point at which the women of Jesus’ company coming on Sunday morning to the tomb in which he had been laid on Friday evening find it empty. Inside a young man clothed in white is sitting, who gives them the message that Jesus is risen, and bids them tell his disciples that he will meet them in Galilee. In fear and trembling they depart hastily, and from this Gospel we learn no more. Some suspicion is created that the lost end of Mark was not necessarily accidental.
In the supernatural details furnished in the other Gospels we are reminded of the character of the Nativity Stories. The end of the records of Jesus as they were set down some seventy years later is of the same quality as the beginning. What was given out as fact has become blended with fairy-tale. Complete with all its legendary features, the proposition of the resurrection of Jesus is being stated, not argued. There is no inquest on the strange occurrences, no examination of witnesses, no analysis of the evidence. We have only what the Evangelists report, what little data they had at command now embellished and adorned, totally inadequate to prove anything. Much could have happened of which there was no knowledge, no recollection, to throw a different light on the circumstances. Various possibilities can be suggested; but we cannot know the truth, one way or the other. We should frankly admit this. Yet we are fully entitled to investigate to the extent that is practicable, and it is more probable that we shall be on the right track if the clues we employ are derived from what is presented for our attention. On that basis let us quest for further enlightenment.
There cannot at this stage be absent from our thinking that Jesus would be concerned to plan for his resurrection as he was for the events which led up to his execution. This is to assume that he did speak in advance of rising on the third day and rejoining his disciples in Galilee. To be so explicit he would be unlikely to be relying solely on an act of God quite beyond his control. From this viewpoint the story of the resurrection would not begin with his burial: it would begin much earlier. We must grant that the same imperatives were present, the need to realise the messianic predictions as Jesus had interpreted them. These predictions, as in Isaiah liii, foreshadowed renewal of life after suffering and the grave, for there followed on: ‘He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.’ We are therefore bound to go over again some of the ground we have covered, to detect whether anything is revealed which can assist us.
What we chiefly note is that the plans of Jesus were laid with remarkable care for timing. He had singled out a particular Passover as the season when he would suffer, and had taken every precaution to ensure that he would not be arrested beforehand. During the first half of Passion Week, keeping himself in the public eye by conducting his activities in the Temple, he had aggravated the ecclesiastical authorities to the pitch that they were determined to destroy him as soon as it should be feasible without risk of a tumult; but he was careful not to help them by staying in the city after dark. Not until Wednesday evening did Jesus apply the pressure that decided Judas to go to the Council with an offer to betray him, and by his secret arrangements he saw to it that the arrest would not take place until Thursday evening after he had partaken of the Last Supper in Jerusalem with his disciples. All this suggests that he intended that his crucifixion should be on Friday, which would be the eve of the Sabbath. Calculating that it would require some hours on Friday morning for the Council to obtain his condemnation by Pilate, which could not be withheld as the charge was treason against the emperor, and knowing that in accordance with custom he would not be left on the cross over the Sabbath, but would be taken down well before sunset when the Sabbath commenced, Jesus could roughly reckon that he would experience crucifixion for not much more than three or four hours, whereas normally the agonies of the crucified lasted for as many days.
Jesus, as we have appreciated, relied on the Old Testament Oracles, and what these intimated to him was that while there would be a conspiracy of the rulers to destroy him (as in Psalm ii), yet by the mercy of God he would be spared complete extinction of life. To illustrate this we must repeat here some of the passages which he would have regarded as prophetic.
‘Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. The bands of the grave compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple. He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of great waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy. God shall redeem my soul from the grasp of the grave. My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: and on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord . . . He asked life of thee, and thou gavest it him, even length of days for ever and ever.’1
It could be interpreted, therefore, that the Messiah would survive his terrible ordeal. To this end it was essential that the duration of his sufferings should be reduced to a minimum. The planning of Jesus had contributed effectively to assuring this.
Provided that crucifixion was not too prolonged it was possible for the life of the victim to be saved. First-hand information about this is furnished by Josephus. He tells us in his autobiography that during the last stage of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans he had been sent by Titus, the general in command, to inspect a potential camp site at Tekoa, about twelve miles south of the city. On his return he passed a number of prisoners who had been crucified, and recognised three of them as acquaintances. When he got back he went to Titus and pleaded for them. Titus ordered that they should be taken down and given the best possible treatment. Two of them died, but the third recovered. The indications are that these men had been on the cross longer than was Jesus, yet even so one of them survived.
If Jesus was convinced from the Scriptures that he was to suffer on the cross, but not to perish on it, there was no reason why he should not have been concerned to make what provision he could for his survival. We have had ample evidence that Jesus used his intelligence to assure the fulfilment of the predictions. He believed that as Messiah the spirit of wisdom and understanding had been conferred on him, and that it was God's will that he should employ these powers of the mind to accomplish what must come to pass. He did not expect, indeed it was alien to his nature, to sit with folded hands waiting for things to happen whether in a natural or supernatural manner. His whole ministry was purposeful, masterful and practical. He plotted and schemed with the utmost skill and resourcefulness, sometimes making secret arrangements, taking advantage of every circumstance conducive to the attainment of his objectives. It is difficult to credit that he had neglected to do anything about the supreme crisis of his career, when it was imperative that he should outwit the forces arrayed against him and wrest victory from the very jaws of death.
We have already made the point that Jesus had sought to bring it about that he would be on the cross not much more than three or four hours. If we follow the Fourth Gospel the ordeal lasted barely three hours, from a little after midday to about three o'clock in the afternoon. But this obviously was not enough. If he was to cheat death it was essential that well in advance of the time, which could not be much after five o'clock, when in any case he would be taken down because of the incoming Sabbath, he would have to give every appearance of being dead. Otherwise his actual death would be expedited by the soldiers in charge of the execution. Further, help must speedily be forthcoming. Unless his body came into possession of friendly hands there would be no possibility of his recovery. The ‘corpse’ would be thrown into the grave of a common criminal.
If the Gospels afforded us no assistance we would have to imagine how Jesus contrived to give the impression of death, and suggest a way in which his body could have been secured by his friends. It is by no means a novel theory that Jesus was not dead when taken from the cross, and some will have it that he subsequently recovered. The idea was used in fiction by George Moore in The Brook Kerith and by D. H. Lawrence in The Man who Died. However, we have to imagine very little since Mark and John agree on what is essential to the requirements of the situation. We have only to allow that in this as in other instances Jesus made private arrangements with someone he could trust, who would be in a position to accomplish his design. This person is identified to us in the Gospels as Joseph of Arimathea. He is one of the great mysteries of the Gospels. He is represented as a wealthy man, and a member of the Sanhedrin; and since he is said to have been waiting for the Kingdom of God he would have been a messianically-minded Pharisee. He enters the story unheralded, and after his task is fulfilled he disappears completely from the New Testament records. There is no indication whatever of his association with the apostles or that he openly joined the Nazorean movement.
One of the possibilities we have to face is that the scantiness of information available to the Evangelists led them to build up their narrative not only by historicising Old Testament testimonies but also by ransacking the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Luke especially seems to have made use of information gleaned from Josephus.3 We have also to allow for confused memories and anachronisms entering into the Gospel tradition. It is therefore necessary to remark here that the account of two robbers being crucified with Jesus could have arisen from the crucifixion of the two ‘brigand’ sons of Judas of Galilee, James and Simon, by Tiberius Alexander when he was governor of Judea in the reign of Claudius, which is reported by Josephus.4 This incident might have become connected, as far as the part played by Joseph of Arimathea is concerned, with what we have already mentioned, that Josephus relates how three of his friends were crucified, and that he begged Titus for them. When they were taken down two died, but one recovered. This is very close to what the Gospels say. The two robbers crucified with Jesus died, but he was resurrected after Joseph of Arimathea had begged Pilate for his body. According to Mark, by the crucifixion of Jesus with two robbers the prophecy of Isaiah liii was fulfilled: ‘He was numbered with the transgressors.’
The very name Joseph of Arimathea is questionable. Josephus, again in his autobiography, telling of his own eminent ancestry, states that his grandfather Joseph begot Matthias in the tenth year of the reign of Archelaus (A.D. 6). The Greek text of the words ‘Joseph (begot) Matthias’ is simply Josepou Matthias. The name Joseph of Arimathea is given in the Greek of Mark as Joseph apo Arimathias. The similarity is striking. It is certainly curious that we have Josephus, himself a Josepou Matthias, begging the Roman commander for the bodies of three crucified friends, one of whom is brought back to life.
But this is not all. In the resurrection story in the Gospels Mark refers to a young man dressed in white seen at the empty tomb. Matthew more elaborately tells a story of a guard at the tomb. An angel descends to the accompaniment of an earthquake wearing a robe white as snow, ‘and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men’. Now we find in Josephus an account of the capture of the Jewish leader Simon bar Giora after the fall of Jerusalem. He tried to effect his escape from the city by tunnelling a way out from ancient subterranean caves; but failing in this he resorted to a stratagem. ‘Simon, thinking he might be able to scare and delude the Romans, put on a white robe, and buckled upon him a purple cloak, and appeared out of the ground in the place where the temple had formerly stood. Those who saw him were at first aghast and remained motionless; but afterwards they drew nearer and inquired who he was.’5
Such correspondences cannot easily be put down to coincidence. It has to be allowed that sources like Josephus have been employed to supplement the paucity of genuine recollections which outlasted the overwhelming catastrophe of the Jewish war with Rome.6 We are consequently warned that we should not accept the testimony of the Gospels at face value, and must employ every external agency available to check the information where we can. Generally, we must probe to extract elements in the traditions on which we can reasonably rely. Otherwise we shall be building a house on sand, and arguing about matters and sayings which have not been established as authentic. Continually we must be aware of the circumstances which contributed to and helped to shape and develop the story of Jesus as we find it in the Gospels.
There is no cause to doubt the crucifixion of Jesus, or that he had assistants to aid him in his bid for survival. We may accept that one of them was a member of the Sanhedrin, and we may agree to speak of him as Joseph of Arimathea, even if we cannot be positive that this was his name. Jesus could have got to know him through Nicodemus, mentioned only in the Fourth Gospel, during the three months from the previous October to January when he was at Jerusalem working out details of the Passover Plot. He needed highly placed individuals on whom he could count to give him inside information of what measures were being taken against him by the Council, and also to advise him about relations between the Council and the Roman governor, procedures in political trials, and other pertinent matters with which he was unfamiliar, but which had a bearing upon his course of action and affected his plans. Evidently Joseph was deeply impressed by Jesus and was ready to co-operate in frustrating the intentions of the Sadducean chief priests. Luke says that he had not consented to their counsel and deed, and John describes him as a secret disciple.
It transpired that Joseph had property in close proximity to Golgotha, the hill of execution. Part of this was under cultivation as a kitchen garden, and also on the site was a new tomb cut into the rock. That is to say, the tomb was a cavern, containing a chamber with a ledge or ledges on which the dead would be laid, and secured by a heavy stone rolled across the mouth. We learn about garden plots in this area, again from Josephus,7 for Titus was nearly trapped among them by a sally of the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem when with a few horsemen he rode down towards the north-west corner of the city to reconnoitre. The tomb in question could not have been more conveniently placed, and lent itself admirably to a plan to bring Jesus there in the event of his crucifixion.
Two things, however, were indispensable to the success of a rescue operation. The first was to administer a drug to Jesus on the cross to give the impression of premature death, and the second was to obtain the speedy delivery of the body to Joseph. No other manner of survival could be entertained by Jesus, since he was adamant about the fulfilment of the prophecies which demanded his suffering.
If we allow that the story of Joseph going to Pilate is trust-worthy,8 then with the help of the common factors in the traditions we can attempt to reconstruct what happened. Considerations of safety and secrecy will have dictated that as few people as possible should be in the know or involved, and these would not have included any of the apostles, to whom Jesus never seems to have confided his plans as we have already noticed on several occasions. He dealt individually and singly with Judean individuals who were in a position to carry out the various parts of his design. His was the master-mind, and those to whom he gave his instructions neither worked together nor were acquainted with more than their specific function.
The first stage of the present action was the cross. We are told that there were bystanders there, and that one of them saturated a sponge with vinegar, impaled it on a cane and put it to the mouth of Jesus. He did not perform this office for either of the two robbers crucified with Jesus, which he might well have done if his intention was purely humanitarian. The incident took place, according to Mark, after Jesus had cried, ‘My God [Eli in Hebrew], my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Mark gives the words in Aramaic, which Peter would have used in describing the crucifixion; but Jesus no doubt quoted from Psalm xxii in Hebrew. This prompted some onlookers to suppose that he was calling for Elijah. The man who acted, who was sent there by Joseph to administer the drug, said: ‘Quiet! Let us see if Elijah will come to take him down.’ The man here showed his initiative by taking advantage of an opportune moment for his intervention, which no one would suspect was favourable to Jesus. Mark gives no reason for his action, but the Fourth Gospel says that Jesus called out, ‘I am thirsty,’ which could have been a signal. There was nothing unusual for a vessel containing a refreshing liquid to be at the place of execution, and it presented no problem to doctor the drink that was offered to Jesus. The plan may indeed have been suggested to Jesus by the prophetic words, ‘They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.’9 If what he received had been the normal wine vinegar diluted with water the effect would have been stimulating. In this case it was exactly the opposite. Jesus lapsed quickly into complete unconsciousness. His body sagged. His head lolled on his breast, and to all intents and purposes he was a dead man.
Directly it was seen that the drug had worked the man hastened to Joseph who was anxiously waiting for the news. At once he sought an audience with Pilate, to whom he would have ready access as a member of the Sanhedrin, and requested to have the body of Jesus. Pilate was greatly astonished, as well he might be, to hear that Jesus was already dead, and being on his guard in view of all that had happened he sent for the centurion in charge of the execution to obtain confirmation. When this was forth-coming, he readily gave the necessary permission. It has been noted by scholars that Joseph asked for the body (soma) of Jesus, which could indicate that he did not think of him as dead. It is only Pilate who refers to the corpse (ptoma).10
Joseph hurried to Golgotha with clean linen and spices. The Fourth Gospel says he was accompanied by Nicodemus. It also reports another circumstance. In view of the need to hasten death because of the Sabbath the two robbers had their legs broken with mallets, but Jesus was spared this treatment because he was believed to be dead already. To make sure, however, one of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side. The incident may have been introduced to historicise certain Old Testament testimonies. The passage11 suggests that some doubt was thrown on this new information when it was published. If it is correct, the chances that Jesus would recover were heavily diminished. Much would depend on the nature of the wound. The reported emission of blood shows at least that life was still in him.
As arranged, Jesus was conveyed carefully to the nearby tomb. The women of his following, who had been observing everything at a distance, saw where he was taken. Sorrowfully they made their way back to the city, proposing to return on the morning after the Sabbath to pay their tribute by anointing his body. It is evident that they were not expecting any resurrection.
1. I. Cor. xv. 51–3.
2. Ps. cxxxviii; Ps. xviii; Ps. xlix; Ps. xvi; Hos. vi; Ps, xxi. Even Ps. xxii, the ‘crucifixion’ psalm, speaks of help in extremity, and deliverance (vv. 20–5).
3. See Part Two, Chapter 5, The Second Phase.
4. Josephus, Antiq. XX. v. 2.
5. Josephus, Wars, VII. ii. 2.
6. See Part Two, Chapter 1, Messianism and the Development of Christianity.
7. Josephus, Wars, V. ii. 2.
8. The adverse evidence we have cited is from the autobiography of Josephus, published soon after A.D. 100. If Mark made use of it his Gospel must have been written later than that date, which seems unlikely, unless we hold the theory of an earlier draft of Mark (Ur-Markus) which did not give the particulars in question. On the whole, having noted the coincidences, it is safer to treat them in this instance as no more than that. With Matthew's additional incident, and in general with Luke, the case for dependence on Josephus is stronger since the connection is with works of this historian published between A.D. 75 and 95.
9. Ps. lxix. 21.
10. Mk. xv. 43, 45.
11. Jn. xix. 34–7.