The Deposition
Caravaggio, 1604

Click here for an explanation of the color-coding used in the sayings and acts of Jesus.

Buried in the "Manner of Jews"

"And then the Jews drew the nails from the hands of the Lord and laid him on the earth. And the whole earth shook and there came a great fear."
     - Gospel of Peter 6:1

"...Roman crucifixion was state terrorism...its function was to deter resistance or revolt, especially among the lower classes; and...the body was usually left on the cross to be consumed eventually by the wild beasts. No wonder we have found only one body from all those thousands crucified around Jerusalem in that single century."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"The vulture "from the cross the felon's carcass tears, and with her brood the gory relic shares."
     - Juvenal

"Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather."
     - Matthew 24:28 // Luke 17:37

"If those who executed him also buried him, it would have been in a shallow, unmarked public grave shared by other victims. His body would have decayed quickly in the Middle Eastern heat unless it had first been devoured by the wild dogs that frequented public burial places in the ancient Jewish world."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 298

"Excavations around Jerusalem have not yet uncovered any evidence of a mass grave for criminals crucified or not. The most likely site for disposal of human trash would have been Ge Hinnom to the south west of Jerusalem. The southern wall of the valley is filled with tombs, many from the first century. But so far no evidence of a disposal dump for corpses of criminals. Not a single interred skeleton of a crucifixion victim has been found apart from the one at Giva'at ha Mitvar.
"But one does not have to resort to Ezekiel's vision of a general resurrection in the valley of dry bones to account for the disappearance of corpses and skeletons that have not received proper burial. Dogs and jackals eat bones and even dig deep to get them. And it would be impossible now to pinpoint an informal 1st c. grave that dogs had reexcavated to devour its contents. Roman authorities could care less what eventually happened to those they crucified. And until the Jewish war, Jerusalem authorities would also probably not care what happened to a criminal's carcass so long as it did not desecrate the Holy City during celebrations of a feast."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)

"If, as I maintain, Jesus' followers had fled upon his arrest and knew nothing whatsoever about his fate beyond the fact of crucifixion itself, the horror was not only that he had been executed but that he might not even have been decently buried. But then there was the law of Deuteronomy 21:22-23:"
     - John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)

"If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance."
     - Deuteronomy 21:22-23

In addition, "the Temple Scroll (IIQ Temple) records a command to bury the body of one who has been crucified on the same day, and applies it to both dead and live crucifixions."
     - Ryan Renn, "The Burial of Jesus - With Focus on the Views of the Jesus Seminar"

"The Jews are so careful about funeral rites that even malefactors who have been sentenced to crucifixion are taken down and buried before sunset."
     - Flavius Josephus, Jewish War 4. 317

"The unspoken hope and the unspoken presupposition behind the Cross Gospel is that Jesus would have been buried, out of piety, by the Jews who had crucified him. It never actually describes that burial, but it presumes that those who executed Jesus are totally in control of death, burial, and tomb."
     - John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)

In the synoptic gospel accounts, the Romans, not the Jews were in control of the deposition of Jesus' body. Most of the tens of thousands of Jews crucified by the Romans during the first century were left up on the crosses to serve as carrion for bird and dogs. Pontius Pilot was known for his brutality. Both he and Caiphus, the chief priest, were relieved from their duties by Rome for the harshness and insensitivity they displayed in suppressing a peaceful Sumerian demonstration a few years later. If Pilot had acquiesced to Jewish sensibilities and made an exception only for the depostion of Jesus' body, it would have been very much out of character for him. The two lestai or bandits crucified with Jesus would have received the same treatment unless there were unusual intervening circumstances involving the deposition of Jesus' body.

"...The gospels simply fail to account for the disposal of the corpses of those who were crucified with Jesus. This was not a problem that concerned either the evangelists or their audiences who were preoccupied by with the fate of Jesus' body alone. But it is a problem that any historical reconstruction of what happened to Jesus' corpse needs to take seriously. For if Jesus' body alone was allowed burial (which is all the gospels report), then one CANNOT consistently claim that potential desecration of the Passover or Sabbath was the reason for a Jewish aristocrat requesting and Pilate granting Jesus' burial. And without that general condition, the claim that Jesus was buried after his crucifixion is completely historically incredible."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)

Such a precedent, however, is described by Philo.

"I have known instances before now of men who had been crucified when this festival and holiday was at hand, being taken down and given up to their relations, in order to receive the honours of sepulture, and to enjoy such observances as are due to the dead. For it used to be considered, that even the dead ought to derive some enjoyment from the natal festival of a good emperor, and also that the sacred character of the festival ought to be regarded."
     - Philo, In Flaccum (83)

In addition, there is archaeological evidence from the remains of the crucified victim, Jehohanan.
"The family of Yehohanan ben Hagkol had evidently wielded some influence in order to retrieve his body for a decent burial, a similarity to the story of Jesus which is quite remarkable."
     - Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger, The Tomb of God (1996) p. 367

"Jesus would have to be buried in someone else's tomb, since as a Galilean his family's tomb (IF they had any) was at least 3 days journey to the north. But local dissidents could be buried on family property."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)

"The picture of the tomb was probably inspired by the story of Joshua's treatment of the five kings he had defeated (Josh 10:16-27)."
     - Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 160

"Then Joshua struck and killed the kings and hung them on five trees, and they were left hanging on the trees until evening. At sunset Joshua gave the order and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had been hiding. At the mouth of the cave they placed large rocks, which are there to this day. "
     - Joshua 10:26-27

According to the gospels, a wealthy benefactor came foreward to provide Jesus with a tomb in Jerusalem.

"Now there stood there Joseph, the friend of Pilate and of the Lord, and knowing that they were about to crucify him he came to Pilate and begged the body of the Lord for burial. And Pilate sent to Herod and begged his body. And Herod said, 'Brother Pilate, even if no one had begged him, we should bury him, since the Sabbath is drawing on. For it stands written in the law: the sun should not set on one that has been put to death."
     - Gospel of Peter 2:1-5a

Accounts in the Synoptic Gospels

"It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb."      - Mark 15:42-46

"As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock."      - Matthew 27:57-60a

"Now there was a man named Joseph, a member of the Council, a good and upright man, who had not consented to their decision and action. He came from the Judean town of Arimathea and he was waiting for the kingdom of God. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock, one in which no one had yet been laid. It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin."      - Luke 23:50-54

"Joseph of Arimathea, as a member of the Sanhedrin which, according to Mark, unanimously voted to condemn Jesus to death (Mk 14:55, 64; 15:1), is highly unlikely to be a Christian invention. If a high level of anti-Semitism is claimed to be present in the early Christian documents, then some weighty problems arise for those who claim that Joseph of Arimathea was invented by Mark."
     - Ryan Renn, "The Burial of Jesus - With Focus on the Views of the Jesus Seminar"

"...There was a hurry to get things done on the Preparation which could not be done on the Sabbath. But according to Mark's chronology of the Passion, the day of Preparation was that year the feast of the Passover, and the prohibitions with regard to Passover were as strict as those relating to the Sabbath. But the tradition says that Joseph of Arimathea bought the shroud that day, which if taken literally, would have meant a serious breach of the religious laws. Either Joseph did not buy the Shroud but already had it, or else, more likely, this section comes from a tradition which did not identify the Crucifixion with the Passover."
     - Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail

Speaking of the Suffering Servant:

"His grave was assigned to be with wicked men, yet with a rich man in his death."
     - Isaiah 53:9

In Matthew, the narrative "is much simpler. Joseph is now a 'disciple of Jesus', but he is also 'rich' and that explains why he has access to Pilate. There is nothing at all about him being, as in Mark, 'a respected member of the council' that has just condemned Jesus to death. And, furthermore, the tomb is now a 'new tomb' so that Jesus is the only body in it."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"But that he is rich would not be significantly new, since Mk 15:43 already stated that he is 'distinguished'; the Greek word here can mean 'noble,' 'influential,' or 'wealthy'; also supporting this is the type and location of the tomb Joseph used for the burial."
     - Ryan Renn, "The Burial of Jesus - With Focus on the Views of the Jesus Seminar"

"Luke follows Mark more closely, but he is just as aware as Matthew of the problem created by having Joseph in both camps at the same time. Hence he adds in the explanatory comment that although Joseph was 'a member of the council' that had just condemned Jesus, he 'had not agreed to their plan and action'. He also explicitly emphasizes that 'no one had ever yet been laid' in the tomb before Jesus."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore."
     - Hebrews 13:11-13

"...The Dead Sea Scrolls make it clear that because it constituted an act of defilement to walk over the dead, human graveyards were identified with the sign of a skull. It follows, quite naturally, that the 'place of a skull' (Golgotha/Calvary) was a cemetery - plainly, a restricted cemetery garden that contained an empty sepulcher in the charge of Joseph of Arimathea."
     - Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, p. 85

"No supporter, even an aristocrat, would have been in a position to claim the corpse of someone whom the Roman prefect had ordered executed as usurping the office of basileus. Not only is there no probable Christian witness to this arrangement, usurping a dignity that was not authorized by the emperor is the very charge that led to the execution of Sejanus and desecration of his corpse less than a year later."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)

(2) John's Account

"Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night."
     - John 19:38-39a

"Joseph is now a secret disciple, and he is accompanied by Nicodemus."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.".
     - John 19:39b

"If the aloe and myrrh were in dried or powdered formed, a whole row of sacks would probably be necessary to make up this weight, and Nicodemus must have had assistance to be able to transport the load. The transport would have been even more difficult if the substances were dissolved in wine, vinegar or oil. The theologian Paul Billerbeck makes the event appear as if an embalming was to take place with the aromatic substances added to oil. But the Rabbinical texts refer only to an oiling of the bodies of the departed. The addition of spices is nowhere mentioned, let alone in these quantities, and was never part of Jewish custom; nor was embalming.
"Myrrh was used as an ingredient for embalming by the Egyptians, but not for the burial rites of the Jews. Instead the Jewish custom prescribed that the body of the departed be washed and oiled, the hair cut and tidied, the corpse dressed again and the face covered with a cloth. The washing of the body was of such crucial importance that it had to be carried out even if it was the Sabbath. Yet there is no mention of any of this, not even the oiling. Instead it is said that on Easter Sunday the women came to the tomb to oil the body."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

"Taking Jesus' body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs."
     - John 19:40

"St John tells us that Jesus was buried in the 'manner of the Jews' (19:40). At the time of Jesus' death it was the custom of the Jews to wash the body, then dress it in clean linen clothes, generally garments worn at festivals, to bind a cloth or bandage under the chin and tie it at the crown of the head to prevent the jaw sagging. A cloth was sometimes placed over the face, but invariably the feet and wrists were also bound (as we learn from St John in Chapter 11, where he describes the raising of Lazarus: Jesus tells those who were caring for him to 'unbind him and let him go free'.) When all this was done, the body was laid on the long linen shroud, which ran the full length of the body and then back over the head to the feet again. Before the shroud was bound to the body, it was packed with spices and herbs, and coins were placed over the eyes. Months later, when the body had sufficiently decomposed, the bones were placed in an ossuary, a small stone or wooden chest, and placed alongside others in the family tomb. Jews did not swathe their dead in bandages like Egyptian mummies, and the Romans cremated their dead. Consequently there were at least six, and possibly seven pieces of cloth involved in a Jewish burial."
     - Noel Currer-Briggs, The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail

"At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there."
     - John 19:41

"Jesus is now fully and even regally buried. This is not a hurried enshrouding but, finally, a complete and appropriate burial according to custom. Finally, that brand-new tomb is now located in a garden, which of course increases its magnificence."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

(3) A Rescue Operation?

"In his Autobiography, Josephus relates that after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. he was engaged on an errand for the Roman commander Titus when he came across three crosses on which three of his acquaintances had been crucified. Greatly upset, he went to Titus and begged for their lives. His petition was granted. The men were taken down, their wounds dressed and every effort was made by the doctors to save them. Two of the men succumbed, but one was healed and survived, which showed that recovery from crucifixion was possible, especially if the victim had not suffered for many hours."
     - Hugh J. Schonfield, After the Cross

"There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall [snake venom]; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it."
     - Matthew 27:34

"...Two substances that will produce a simulacrum of death: haoma and tetrodotoxin. The first was available regularly from the Zoroastrians who used it as part of their worship. The second was in the livers of the blowfish extant from at least the time of the VIth Dynasty both in the Nile Delta and in the Red Sea. The Japanese continue its hazardous use today as do the Haitians."
     - Tom Simms (CrossTalk)

"The juice of aloes, as modern pharmacopoeias explain, is a strong and fast-acting purgative - precisely what would have been needed by Simon to expel the poisonous 'gall' from Jesus' body."
     - Laurence Gardner, Bloodline of the Holy Grail, p. 92

"Both substances, aloe [a healing gel] and myrrh [a disinfectant], were commonly used for the treatment of large injured areas, because they could easily be made into ointments and tinctures. Some researchers claim that the Jews often mixed myrrh with labdanum, the resin of the cistus rockrose. This was used especially for plasters and bandages. Clearly one has to see such mixtures as the most specific means for the rapid and effective healing of wounds, combined with the greatest possible efficacy against danger of infection, at the time of Jesus. There can therefore be no doubt that Nicodemus procured an astonishing quantity of highly specific medicinal herbs with the sole purpose of treating the wounds on the body of Jesus. These spices could have served no other purpose."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

"The success of such a rescue operation would depend on speedy medical help. Therefore, Jesus had to be brought out of the tomb at the earliest possible moment after the termination of the Sabbath. And because such a rescue was a serious criminal act designed to defeat the ends of justice, this removal had to take place after dark. The open tomb, the removed and folded linen bandages, and the disappearance of the body before dawn on Sunday would all have a natural explanation if it was intended to restore Jesus to health and activity by taking him where he would receive care and teatment."
     - Hugh J. Schonfield, After the Cross

"To teat Jesus the therapeuts evidently used a sweat-promoting packing formed with the help of an excessive quantity of herbs, similar in a way to the cooking method. One has to see John's edesan othoniois ('and wound it in linen clothes') against this background, to get to the true meaning. What was meant was not binding round in the sense of wrapping up, but the way a heavy plaster covered or went round the whole body. Dioscorides, the Cilician doctor of the first century, also used both the verbs deo and eneileo to denote wrapping in linen cloths."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

In an actual test of their hypothesis, however, Kersten and Gruber found that a subject wrapped in such a tinctured shroud quickly underwent circulatory collapse.

"Naturally we also hear nothing of the washing of the corpse which was so important in Jewish burials. Joseph did not wash Jesus, because he was not dead....The act of washing would only have caused the many wounds covered in clotted blood to start bleeding again."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

Ancient medical treatises "describe an ointment as marham Isa which means the 'ointment of Jesus'. Materia Medica in Greek stated that this ointment was first prepared for the injuries received by Jesus Christ. The reference to this ointment is found in over a thousand books on medicine including the famous book Qanun by Bu Ali Sena (Avicenna). The ointment is particularly suited to stop the flow of blood from external injuries.
"In common with other Muslims, the Ahmadiyya Community believes that Jesus was a righteous prophet raised by God among the Israelites. The Ahmadiyya version of the crucifixion is that Jesus did not die on the cross. When he was taken down from the cross he was still alive but only in a state of swoon or unconsciousness. He was removed to the sepulcher by his close friends and followers. Healing ointments and herbs were administered to his wounds and he was restored to health. He then travelled to the East in search of the lost ten tribes of Israel in fulfillment of his Divine mission, lived to a ripe old age, died and buried in Kashmir."
     - M. M. Ahmad, "The Lost Tribes of Israel", The Muslim Sunrise, Summer 1991

"...and We gave Jesus and his mother refuge in a lofty place which was secure and watered with springs."
     - Quran, ch. 23: v. 51

(4) Reports of Survival

In the twenty-first chapter of John, Jesus exhorts Peter, to "Follow me" (John 21:23), then concludes with the cryptic comment that not all Jesus accomplished was recorded in the Gospels.

"And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen."
     - John 21:25

"In the Apocryphon of James, one of the Christian-Gnostic manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, James, a disciple of Jesus, writes a letter to another disciple enclosing a 'secret book' in Hebrew letters. James begins to narrate a dialogue he had with Jesus"
     - The Christian Conspiracy: The Orthodox Suppression of Original Christianity

"Savior appeared, after he had departed from us while we gazed at him. And five hundred and fifty days after he rose from the dead, we said to him: 'Have you gone and departed from us?'"
     - Apocryphon of James

"This statement is followed by a lengthy discourse and admonishments from Jesus to James and Peter."
     - The Christian Conspiracy: The Orthodox Suppression of Original Christianity

At the end of the Apocryphon of James, Jesus ascends in a chariot of wind to the accompaniment of angelic hymns and praises (suggestive of the visionary Sabbath Songs). The belief that Jesus remained on earth for years after his crucifixion imparting a secret teaching, the "hidden years", persisted among early Christian gnostic commununities.

"It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples, and instructing them..."
     - Pistis Sophia (3rd century Gnostic gospel)

"According to the Sethian-Ophites, an ancient Christian sect, Jesus remained on earth for eighteen months after the resurrection, imparting great 'mysteries' to his disciples, then was taken up into heaven."
     - The Christian Conspiracy: The Orthodox Suppression of Original Christianity

The notion that Jesus was not killed on the cross can be traced back to Basilides in the second century. To Basilides, Christ was the Pleroma - the light from the Father - and therefore a man in appearance only. Accordingly, Simon of Cyrene, who reputedly carried the cross for Jesus, was crucified in his place while Jesus watched from a hiding place, laughing. This is the account that is repeated in the Qur'an.
Jesus' death on the cross is not disputed by ancient historians. Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, and Josephus (although in a contested passage) all report that Jesus was executed. (For details, see the section on Jesus Outside the New Testament.) In addition, Paul admits that such a shameful death (to Roman supporters and collaborators) was an impediment, not a help, in spreading the message of Christianity.

"Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."
     - 1 Corinthians 1:22-24

Risen From the Grave

1st C. Tomb in the Jezreel Valley

Mark's account of the empty tomb was structured on the story of Daniel in the lion's den (Daniel 6).

"...A leader of the nation opposed to the spokesman for God's people (Darius of Persia; Joseph of Arimathea), yet one who in his heart reveres that spokesman (Daniel; Jesus), though greatly distressed, feels obliged to place the spokesman into a pit in the ground and cover it with a stone (the lion's den; the tomb), an act that clearly means the spokesman's permanent end. In both stories the death of the spokesman is required by law (the law of the Medes and Persians; the law of Rome), and in both, the executor of that law is reluctant to enforce it (Darius 'exerted himself until evening' to save Daniel; Pilate attempted to convince an angry mob that Jesus should be released). But despite reluctance and delay, late in the afternoon both heroes are placed into the pit. In both stories a stone is put over the opening, and in both the placer of the stone has hope in the providence of God (Darius says, 'Your own God... will save you', Joseph 'looked forward to the kingdom of God'). Early on a subsequent morning in both stories ('At dawn, as soon as it was light' - Dan. 6:19, 'just after sunrise - Mark 16:2), the pit is approached by those who cared deeply for the hero (Darius; the three women). Next comes joyful news (Daniel lives; 'He has been raised again'). In both stories, the stone is removed, death is miraculously overcome, and deliverance is assisted by an angel ('My God sent his angel,' to shut the lions' mouths, says Daniel; 'a young man... dressed in a white robe' has removed the stone, says Mark)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) pp. 135-136

(1) The Soldiers on Guard

"The elders were afraid and came to Pilate, entreating him and saying, 'Give us soldiers that we may watch his sepulcher for three days, lest his disciples come and steal him away and the people suppose that he is risen from the dead, and do us harm' And Pilate gave them Petronius the centurion with soldiers to watch the sepulcher. And with them there came elders and scribes to the sepulcher. And all who were there, together with the centurion and the soldiers, rolled thither a great stone and laid it against the entrance to the sepulcher and put on it seven seals, pitched a tent and kept watch."
     - Gospel of Peter 8:2b-6

"The Roman Seal probably consisted of a cord suspended across the entrance affixed by a waxy seal at each end into which the official would stamp an insignia identifying their authority and warning potential thieves who dared break it."
     - "The Resurrection of Jesus-Fact or Fiction?"
     Return to God Magazine (Vol. 1 No. 3, p. 22)

According to the Gospel of Peter 8:1-4 the soldiers were Roman. The story may have been redacted from the hypothetical Cross Gospel where Roman soldiers serve as witnesses to Jesus heavenly ascent. If so the story may embody an earlier tradition than the account in Matthew, the only canonical gospel which mentions the guards.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Pilate suggests "that the Jews had Temple guards of their own who might perform this chore [of securing the tomb], and he urged that solution upon them. So it was Jewish soldiers who were assigned to the tomb of Jesus to guard it against the possibility of an Easter resurrection, at least according to Matthew."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 26

The Gospel of the Hebrews "also presupposes that the tomb was guarded by the high priest's personnel rather than by Roman soldiers."
     - The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p. 434

"The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate.'Sir', they said, 'we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, "After three days I will rise again." So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.'
'Take a guard', Pilate answered. 'Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.'"
     - Matthew 27:62-65

"A stone [lithon] was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it [esphragisato] with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel's situation might not be changed."      - Daniel 6:17 LXX

"He [Joseph] rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away." "So they [guards] went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone [sphragisantes ton lithon] and posting the guard."      - Matthew 27:60, 66

The guards were the only witnesses to the stone being rolled away from the tomb.

"His body was like chrysolite, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude. Daniel, was the only one who saw the vision; the men with me did not see it, but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves." "I fell prone on the ground in a trance."      - Daniel 10:6-7, 9 LXX

"There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men."      - Matthew 28:2-4

Jewish authorities countered accounts of the empty tomb by saying that it was all a hoax.

"A godless and lawless heresy had sprung up from one Jesus a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified; but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven."
     - A circular letter issued by the Sanhedrin (mentioned by Justin Martyr (2nd C) and Eusebius)

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, a Carthaginian theologian and writer (c. 155 - c. 200 C.E.) repeats the accusation.

"'This is He,' I will say, 'the son of the carpenter and the harlot, the sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan who had a devil. This is He whom you purchased from Judas, this is He who was struck with reed and fist, defiled with spittle, given gall and vinegar to drink. This is He whom the disciples secretly stole away to spread the story of His resurrection, or whom the gardener removed lest his lettuces be trampled by the throng of curious idlers.'"
     - Tertullian, De Spectaculis, 30:6 (197 C.E.)

A decree on a stone slab, reputedly found in Nazareth demands the death penalty for anyone caught stealing a body from a tomb. This has been cited as evidence that the controversy surrounding the fate of Jesus's body is based on historical fact. According to many scholars today, the story of the guards in front of the tomb was invented to counter the accusations of impropriety by the disciples. Why would the guards say that the disciples stole the body? The guards were bribed:

"...Some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, 'You are to say, "His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep." If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.' So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day."
     - Matthew 28:11-15

"Matthew admits that one night had passed before the guard was placed at the door of the tomb...If Christ rose at all, he rose before the soldiers walked sentry in front of his tomb; in other words, he rose on the very night of the very day he was placed in the tomb. The story of the Roman soldiers falling asleep is too feeble and clumsy to merit serious refutation; and that the soldiers were bribed to say they slept is, more preposterous still. The penalty for sleeping while doing sentry work would be death, and it requires a rather liberal bribe to induce a man to offer himself for instant execution."
     - W. S. Ross, "Did Jesus Christ Rise from the Dead?"

Others reseachers not only dismiss the story but charge that the accusation of tomb robbery against the disciples was true.

"Is there any credible explanation as to how the author [of the Gospel of Matthew] knew about the bribe? It is pure fabrication, a lie intended to discredit the rumor that the disciples stole the body but tracing its origin to a secret meeting of his own concoction. His intention is, in fact, to cover up what he knew to be the truth, the eleven did indeed steal the body."
     - L. M. Barré, "A Very Pretty Lie"

(2) The Third Day

Church of the Holy Sepulcher
Speaking of the Suffering Servant:

"For where is the wrath of the oppressor? He who is cowed down will soon be set free; he will not die and go down into the pit, neither shall his bread fail."
     - Isaiah 51:13-15

"In the darkness at the back of the church [of the Holy Sepulcher] lies the decrepit chapel of the Syrian Christians, deserted now, save for one poor oil lamp, and here, in a dank corner, are ancient Jewish tombs cut into the rock and dating to the time of Jesus. These, traditionally, are ascribed to the family of Joseph of Arimathea..."
     - John Romer, Testament

"No one can be sure that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built over the tomb where Jesus was buried. Today it is impossible to see the tomb the fourth-century Christians identified, because Caliph Hakim's men smashed it with hammers and picks in 1009. Among pilgrims who saw it before then was a man called Arculf, who traveled from France to the Holy Land in about 680. He reported that inside the tomb there was 'a single shelf stretching from head to foot without division, which would take one person lying on his back. It is like a cave with its opening facing the south part of the tomb, and is made with a low roof over it.'
"Arculf's description fits very well a first-century tomb of the richer type, with an arched recess for a body or coffin (an arconsolium)."
     - Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus

Tomb Interior St. Stephan's Monastery, Jerusalem

"Burials of that period would have left the body exposed upon a rock ledge in the open tomb until the flesh decayed, then the bones would have been collected and placed in a small ossuary, often mingled with the remains of other members of the same family. The three women of the Gospels who brought unguents to anoint Jesus' corpse in the tomb were performing a tender act for, as the story of Jesus at Lazarus' tomb makes pain, quickly decaying corpses usually required that the tomb chamber be sealed until such time that natural desiccation had cleared the air in the tomb.".
     - John Romer, Testament

Symbolism of the Three Days

"Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence."
     - Hosea 6:1-2

"Hosea is, in these verses, not discussing the career of a holy man seven hundred years in the future. He is addressing his own countrymen in his own time, calling upon a corrupt people for moral and religious reform, berating a people of whom one could say:"
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 132

"Their deeds are outrageous.
At Israel's sanctuary I have seen a horrible thing:
there Ephraim played the wanton
and Israel defiled himself."
     - Hosiah 6:10

"For the Jews, when the end of the world came, all life would die in the climactic battle of Armageddon [at the fortress Megiddo, in northern Israel]. Then the still of darkness and death would reign over the earth for three days. Finally, at dawn, after three days, the Kingdom of God would descend from the sky to inaugurate the reign of God on earth. That dawning would usher in the first day of the new creation. So when Jesus came to be seen by his original disciples, all of whom were Jewish, as that special life through whom the Kingdom of God would be established on earth, the post-Armageddon darkness was applied to his death on the cross (Mark 15:33, Matt. 27:45, Luke 23:44), and the symbolic three days in Jewish mythology that would pass between the end of the world and the dawning of the Kingdom of God was applied to the time between his death and resurrection as a means of interpreting him as the inbreaking agent or firstfruits of God's Kingdom."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 297

" The expression 'on the third day' was also a feature of such significant Old Testament passages as:
     - the sacrifice of Isaac 'on the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away...' (Gen 22.4)
     - Moses' request to Pharaoh to allow his people to 'go a three days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD' (Ex 5.3)
     - the initial stage of the exodus involved the people 'going three days in the wilderness...' (Ex 14.22)
and, most significantly,
     - the enigmatic prophecy in Hosea 6.1-3, that seems to give a thumbnail sketch of the earliest Easter tradition:"
     - Gregory C. Jenks (CrossTalk)

"...The Gospels state quite literally that only thirty-six hours or one and a half days [Friday evening to Sunday morning] came between the death of Jesus and his resurrection. So the measure of time represented by the symbol 'three days' must be not a chronological measure, but rather a symbolic measure familiar to the Jews."
     - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 297

"But the LORD provided a great fish [Hebrew nephesh also translated as "soul" in Genesis 2] to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights."
     - Jonah 1:17

"For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one [or something] greater than Jonah is here."
     - Matthew 12:40-41

"In Q, from which Matthew took this passage, the sign of Jonah was probably understood as the preaching of Jonah that caused the Ninevites to repent (Luke 11:30). But Matthew has interpreted the sign of Jonah to mean the three days and nights Christ is alleged to have spent in the bowels of the earth. Since Luke does not seem to know this interpretation, we must assume it did not appear in Q, but is a Christian reinterpretation provided by Matthew. It certainly did not originate with Jesus."
     - Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels

Reconciling the Calendar
Coleen Miller argues that the "three days" of the entombment were not just symbolic but real.

"Jesus was murdered during the Jew's preparation for the Passover, as the first Holy day of Unleavened Bread, a.k.a. Passover, was drawing on. Repeated mentions of the 'Sabbath' that was drawing on that fateful day, in the synoptic Gospels, are in reference to the annual Sabbath, not the weekly Sabbath that starts at sundown on Fridays."
     - Colleen Miller, "Did Jesus Rise on Sunday Morning?"

"The LORD's Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the fifteenth day of that month the LORD's Feast of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. On the first day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. For seven days present an offering made to the LORD by fire. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work."
     - Leviticus 23:5-8

"The first and last day of days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread are Sabbaths that come once a year. The Jews did not want to defile themselves and disqualify themselves from being able to observe the commanded Holy Days, aka annual Sabbath days. The weekly Sabbath was not at issue when Jesus was killed, but referances to it support the truth about Jesus being 72 hours in the grave. The weekly Sabbath ends at sunset on Saturday. On Friday, the only intervening day between the annual sabbath and the weekly Sabbath, the women who followed Jesus bought and prepared the spices needed to finish embalming him, then they rested on the Saturday, the weekly Sabbath (from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday)."
     - Colleen Miller, "Did Jesus Rise on Sunday Morning?"

Discovery by the Women

"When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, 'Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?' But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man [neaniskon] dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed."
     - Mark 16:1-5

"The women in Matthew could not be allowed the intention of anointing Jesus' body, for in his fiction guards were posted at the tomb precisely to keep anyone from touching the remains (no guards, of course, are mentioned in the other Gospels)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 138

"After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel [aggelos] of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. "
     - Matthew 28:1

"Mark does not make it clear enough to Matthew's satisfaction that the figure the women see at the tomb is an angel (aggelos) as Daniel had clearly called him; Mark's figure is merely a youth (neaniskon) in a white robe. For the sake of prophetic fulfillment, Matthew changed 'youth' to 'angel of the Lord' (Matt. 28:2)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 136

"On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women [Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them] took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus."
     - Luke 24:1-3

"My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight."      - Daniel 6:22a	"After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel [aggelos] of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. "      - Matthew 28:1-2
"...His face like lightning..." "His clothing was as white as snow..."      - Daniel 10:6, 7:9	"His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow."      - Matthew 28:3 "While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men [andres] in clothes that gleamed like lightning (astraptouse) stood beside them.      - Luke 24:4
"I fell with my face to the earth."      - Daniel 10:9	At the sight of Jesus, the women fell "prostrate before him."      - Matthew 28:9

"The shining white robes suggests that they [the angel(s)] were Essenes."
     - Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber, The Jesus Conspiracy - The Turin Shroud & The Truth About the Resurrection (1992)

A verse in the Old Testament suggests a more prosaic explanation.

"In Genesis, when Lot sees 'two angels' (duo aggeloi) ,'he worshipped with his face to the ground' (prosekunese to prosopo epi ten gen) - Gen. 19:1 LXX). Conjoining these verses allowed, or caused, Luke to change a single youth in a white robe to two men in dazzling garments. Perhaps the reason Luke calls them 'men' (andres) rather than angels is that the 'two angels' of Gen. 19:1 are described in verse two of the preceding chapter as 'men,' (andres)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) pp. 143-144

"Then he continued, 'Do not be afraid, Daniel....'"      - Daniel 10:12	"The angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid...'"      - Matthew 28:5a
"The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den..."      - Daniel 6:23	"So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples."      - Matthew 28:4-5, 8
As Daniel saw the angel - "I turned my face to the ground (edoka to prosopon mou epi ten gen)."      - Daniel 10:15 LXX	At the sight of the angels, the women "turned their faces to the ground (klinou son ta prosopa eis ten gen)."      - Luke 24:5

The Gospel of John omits all but one of the women and any mention of angels.

"...In Luke it is the women who believe, and the disciples who doubt, while in John it is the disciples who believe, while Mary Magdalene doubts, still assuming that someone has removed Jesus' corpse:"
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 145

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!'"
     - John 20:1-2

The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar "elected to designate the Johannine version gray...for two reasons: in John it is Mary alone who comes to the tomb and sees Jesus; the story in John may derive from the Signs Gospel, an underlying source for the final version of the Fourth Gospel....The Fellows affirmed that:

· Mary was among the early witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus;      and · Mary was considered a leader in the early Jesus movement along with Peter and Paul."

     - Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, pp. 478-479

Mark's Abrupt Ending
"Mark does not call his inner circle of followers 'disciples' from the Gethsemane incident (14:32) to the message of the mysterious young man sitting at the entrance to the empty tomb. Mark implies that he is the very young man who had fled naked [Mark 14:50-52] and hints at the eventual restoration of the disciples:"
     - Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 250

In Mark, the angel (messenger) sends the women to find Peter, who evidently is headed back to Galilee.

"'He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, "He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you."' Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid."
     - Mark 16:6-8

"...The awkward way Mark had of ending his Gospel with a preposition, gar, had its precedent in the LXX version Genesis story of Sara's embarassed laughter when told that she would bear a son; she, too, had been afraid 'for' (gar)...Mark's audience, though made up of Jews and Gentiles, knew these tanahk passages the Evangelist had used; they could make the connections."
     - Philip B. Lewis (Crosstalk)

"Mark apparently knew of stories of Jesus' disciples having appearances in Galilee (since that is where the youth tells the women to send the disciples) even though he did not see fit to describe them....The only witnesses to the empty tomb 'event' in the gospels are women, who at the earliest level of the synoptic tradition 'said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.' A reader of Mark, like Matthew, would naturally ask: If the women didn't tell anyone, how did Mark or anyone else know about the empty tomb? Hence, Matthew 28:8 and the single Matthean vision to the disciples in Galilee (fulfilling what Mark had Jesus predict)."
     - Mahlon H. Smith (Crosstalk)

Appended Accounts in the Synoptic Gospels

"So the women [Mary Magadala and another unidentified Mary] hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. 'Greetings,' he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.'"
     - Matthew 28: 5-10

"In revising Mark, Matthew appends an appearance of Jesus to the two Marys as they leave the tomb. Matthew may have known an oral tradition that gave warrant for this expansion of Mark. It is possible that the Signs Gospel, the predecessor to the Gospel of John, contained the story of an appearance to Mary of Magdala (John 20:11-18). The Gospel of Mary reports that Mary of Magdala saw the Lord in a vision (7:1). However, connecting Mary's vision with the empty tomb story was probably arbitrary. Since the empty tomb tale is probably Mark's invention, the appearance to Mary at the tome also has a dubious basis. Of course, the fictive nature of Matthew's narrative in no way discredits the claim that Mary had a vision of the risen Jesus."
     - Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 475

In Luke, the women do not meet Jesus and their story of an empty tomb is met with skepticism by the disciples.

"But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves..."
     - Luke 24:11-12a

"Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."
     - Luke 24:24

"Straight to Heaven" in John
"Matthew and Mark write that Jesus is leaving for Galilee where his disciples must follow and meet him; Luke writes that they must not leave Jerusalem; while John insists that Jesus is neither leaving for Galilee nor staying in Jerusalem; he is going straight to heaven:"
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 145

"I am now ascending to my Father (Anabainio pros ton patera mou)."
     - John 20:17

"I am ascending to him who sent me (anabaino pros ton aposteilanta me)."
     - Tobit 12:20 LXX

"The Book of Tobit is a work of religious fiction, written perhaps in the second century B.C., which presents a widespread Mediterranean-world soteriological myth: the descent of a heavenly figure as a man who performs saving acts, reveals his true identity, and returns to heaven. As we might expect, he declares his identity with the ancient-world formula of divine self-revelation: 'I am' (cf. Ex. 6:3 and John 8:58), a statement that has the conventional effect. When the angel says, 'I am Raphael' (Ego eimi Hraphael - Tob. 12:15 LXX), Tobit and his son 'fell upon their faces' (epeson epi prosopon - 12:16), just as when Jesus reveals himself to Judas and the soldiers, saying, 'I am' (Ego eimi), they 'fell to the ground' (epesan chamai - John 18:5, 6)."
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) p. 145

A Question of Reliability
"...It is difficult to explain how a story that grew up late and took shape merely in accord with the supposed demands of apologetic came to be framed in terms almost exclusively of women witnesses, who, as such, were notoriously invalid witnesses according to Jewish principles of evidence."
     - C. F. D. Moule, editor, The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ 1968, p. 9

"...Unbelievers living in his [Matthew's] district (thought to be Antioch) were scoffing that Jesus had not been resurrected, that his disciples had merely stolen the body and circulated a lie. In fact, says Matthew, this claim 'is current in Jewish circles to this day' (28:15). What for Mark had been the only visible evidence for the resurrection had become powerful evidence against the resurrection. "
     - Randal Helms, Gospel Fictions (1988) pp. 137-138

"J. Jeremias has demonstrated that about fifty tombs were venerated by the Jews before the time of Jesus."
     - Edwin M. Yamauchid, "Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History?"

"In these circumstances, is it possible that the original community of Jerusalem could have been completely uninterested in the tomb where Jesus was laid after his death?...Can the existence of this tradition at Jerusalem, centered around a specific place, in a relatively short lapse of time after the events, be explained as a pure legendary creation? Could one show an ordinary tomb as being the tomb of Jesus? Can one question without foundation known persons, the women designated by name and Joseph of Arimathea?"
     - The Resurrection and Jesus' Tomb: Mark 16, 1-8 in the Gospel Tradition," in P. de Surgy, op. cit., pp. 88, 101

(3) The Preeminence of the Beloved Disciple

Noli Me Tangere (detail) Titian (1511-12)

"So Peter and the other disciple [John] started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."
     - John 21:3-8

The author of John 21 is intent on exalting John, the Beloved Disciple, over Peter.
"The Beloved Disciple reaches the tomb first and looks into the tomb first. Peter is allowed, however, in deference to tradition, to enter the tomb first. But only the beloved Disciple is said to believe."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"After Peter and John [the Beloved] leave the tomb, Mary Magdalene, who had followed them there, stays behind weeping. She sees Jesus, we are told, but does not know it is Jesus (20:14), and supposes the man to be the gardener. Jesus reveals himself, and so she become the first eyewitness ."
     - Hugh J. Schonfield, After the Cross

"...Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, 'Woman, why are you crying?'
'They have taken my Lord away,' she said, 'and I don't know where they have put him.'
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.'Woman,' he said, 'why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?'
Thinking he was the gardener, she said,'Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.'
Jesus said to her, 'Mary.'
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, 'Rabboni!' (which means Teacher).
Jesus said, 'Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, "I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God".'"
     - John 20:11-17

(Note that the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scroll community conceived himself as a gardener irrigating the desert to restore paradise.)

"John's account of the empty tomb is the most novelistic of the several stories, recalling moving scenes from Hellenistic romance novels in which lovers return to the graves of their beloved, only to find that the tomb has been robbed, and that their loved one's body has been whisked away by tomb robbers, leaving only their grave clothes behind."
     - Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 471

The author of John 20, however, denigrates Mary Magdalene's role in the resurrection (as he did with Peter's).

"Mary gets to give the wrong interpretation of the empty tomb three times: to the disciples, to the angels, and finally to Jesus himself. She does not even recognize Jesus when he appears to her, at least until he addresses her. She is told to announce not the resurrection but the ascension."
     - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)