{"id":32236,"date":"2017-03-15T00:10:48","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T05:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josh.org\/?p=32236"},"modified":"2024-02-12T16:53:43","modified_gmt":"2024-02-12T22:53:43","slug":"jesus-resurrection-burial-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/jesus-resurrection-burial-details\/","title":{"rendered":"Burial Details of the Resurrection of Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this post exploring the validity of the resurrection of Christ, we invite you to consider the factual, historical evidence that gives believers certainty that Jesus died and rose from the dead, just as He promised.<\/span> In our\u00a0last\u00a0blog post we focused on the crucifixion<\/strong><\/a> details, including the fact that\u00a0Pilate demanded confirmation of Jesus’ death before\u00a0he ordered Jesus pulled off\u00a0the cross.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let’s look at how Jesus’s body was prepared for burial, and some of the extra precautions the Jewish leaders took to ensure that Jesus\u2019 disciples couldn\u2019t steal His body.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"burial\"<\/p>\n

Yes, Jesus Really Died<\/h2>\n

Last week\u00a0we covered the details of the torture that Jesus was forced to endure both before and after Pontias Pilate, governor of the Roman province of Judea from 26-36 AD, ordered His crucifixion. We know that Jesus\u00a0had severe lacerations\u00a0on his torso from being flogged. We\u00a0know that Jesus\u00a0had extensive head and facial wounds and swelling, from being beaten and having a sharp, thorny crown jammed onto his head. And we\u00a0know that Jesus\u00a0had puncture wounds in his feet and wrists from\u00a0the nails that held\u00a0him to the cross. His body also suffered\u00a0a\u00a0large puncture wound, after a\u00a0thick spear was\u00a0thrust into His side to confirm His death.<\/p>\n

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Yet some critics say that Jesus wasn’t really dead. Rather, he supposedly “swooned.” Says Pastor Greg Laurie<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0“The swoon theory is one of Satan’s oldest lies concerning the resurrection<\/strong><\/a>. This theory proposes that Jesus did not rise from the dead, because He never really died. Instead, Jesus went into a deep coma or ‘swoon’ from the severe pain and trauma of the crucifixion.\u00a0Then, in the cool atmosphere of the tomb, Christ revived, somehow escaped the strips of cloths that were wrapped tightly upon Him, and then appeared to His disciples.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As Laurie adds, the swoon theory flies in the face of facts. As we mentioned in last week’s post, the Romans guards were experts at crucifixion, and death was the only outcome that interested them. They confirmed Jesus’ death before Pilate released Him.<\/p>\n

Laurie drives Jesus’ death home with this:<\/p>\n

“Some time ago I read a local advice column that featured a reader’s question about the resurrection. The reader asked, ‘Dear Uticus, Our preacher said that Jesus swooned on the cross and then His disciples nursed Him to health. What do you think? Signed, Bewildered.’ Uticus responded, ‘Dear Bewildered, Beat your preacher with a cat-o’-nine-tails thirty-nine times. Nail him to a cross. Hang him in the sun for six hours. Run a spear through his side, embalm him, and put him in an airless tomb for thirty-six hours and see what happens. Sincerely, Uticus.'”<\/em><\/p>\n

Laurie concludes that\u00a0some people choose to believe the theory NOT because it’s plausible, or logical, “but because it’s something to hang their doubt on.” Bottom line, Jesus’ body was a physical\u00a0mess. Every inch of His dead body testified to the\u00a0excruciating pain of His undeserved mistreatment<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Jewish Burial Customs<\/h2>\n

As Jewish law prevented a crucified person from hanging on the cross during a Sabbath, a\u00a0dead body\u00a0had to be removed and buried before day’s end. So as the Sabbath drew near, the Roman guards considered breaking the legs of Jesus and the two thieves hanging next to him, to hasten their deaths. Finding\u00a0Jesus already dead, they\u00a0removed his body from the cross upon Pilate’s order. His body was immediately transported to the new, unused tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.<\/p>\n

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Mentioned in all four Gospels, Luke tells us that Joseph was part of the Sanhedrin<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0the group of Jewish religious leaders who demanded\u00a0Jesus\u2019 death. But Luke also records\u00a0that\u00a0Joseph opposed this decision, as\u00a0he secretly followed\u00a0Jesus. In John we learn that Joseph boldly asked Pilate for Jesus’ body, despite the risk to his social standing. Historical sources confirm\u00a0that Joseph provoked both Roman and Jewish elders with his request, eventually spending time in prison.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nicodemus<\/strong><\/a>, another Jewish leader who secretly believed in Jesus, stepped up to help Joseph\u00a0prepare Jesus’ body for burial. The exacting Jewish process started with\u00a0placing Jesus’\u00a0sheet-covered body on a board so it could be\u00a0bathed with\u00a0lukewarm water. A.P. Bender, in a Jewish Quarterly Review<\/em> article, states that the burial cleansing was so thorough, that even Jesus’\u00a0nails would have been cleaned and cut with a particular kind of pin, and His\u00a0hair specially arranged. Jesus would then have been clothed in grave vestments made of white linen. Women would have sewn the linen\u00a0without knots, which\u00a0were prohibited.<\/p>\n

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Starting at Jesus’\u00a0feet, the two men would have wrapped Jesus’\u00a0body in\u00a0linen cloth, placing aromatic spices mixed with a gummy substance called myrrh between the folds. The Jewish writer Josephus recorded that when King Herod died, more than\u00a0500 servants were needed to carry the spices used for his burial!<\/em> For Jesus, it is estimated that\u00a0at least a hundred pounds would have been\u00a0used.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jewish custom dictated that Jesus’\u00a0torso be wrapped to His\u00a0armpits. His preparers\u00a0would have then placed Jesus’\u00a0arms straight\u00a0alongside His\u00a0body, before wrapping more linen cloth around Him,\u00a0to the neck. A separate cloth was wrapped around His\u00a0head. As the gummy myrrh would have adhered so closely to Jesus’\u00a0body, it would have been difficult by this point for anyone to remove the linen cloth. And yet the Gospels record that the burial cloths were found in the empty burial tomb — neatly folded!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Added Security Precautions\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

We know that archaeologists have determined\u00a0that\u00a0rock tombs were used for burials during the time of Jesus. Each tomb had a groove, or trough, cut into the rock in front of it, which served to effectively seal the tomb closed as the stone was rolled into place at\u00a0the\u00a0entrance. Tomb stones\u00a0were large, averaging a weight of two tons or more. So if Jesus’ disciples had tried to remove\u00a0His body\u00a0— as Jewish leaders feared they might — Jesus’ followers would have found\u00a0it quite difficult\u00a0to roll the stone away from the entrance. Gravity, not just the stone’s weight, would have been against them. As would have been\u00a0the\u00a0Roman soldiers guarding the tomb.<\/p>\n

As it was advantageous\u00a0to both the Jewish and Roman leaders to remove the political problem of Jesus,\u00a0Pilate<\/a> <\/strong>willingly agreed to the stationing of Roman soldiers at\u00a0the\u00a0tomb.\u00a0After the guards had inspected the tomb, they would have rolled the stone into place. They would have then stretched a\u00a0cord across the stone,\u00a0fastening the ends\u00a0with sealing clay. The clay was stamped with Pilate’s\u00a0official signet, verifying\u00a0that Christ’s body was protected against vandals by nothing less than the power and authority of the Roman Empire. Anyone trying to move the stone knew they were incurring the wrath of Rome by breaking the seal.
\nHow do we know that the guards were highly\u00a0trained Roman warriors, not just Jewish temple guards?<\/p>\n

Because when Jesus did rise\u00a0three days later, as He promised, it was to the chief priests that the\u00a0soldiers ran for\u00a0protection. The soldiers understood, only too well, that it\u00a0was Roman practice to severely punish\u00a0soldiers if their prisoners went AWOL. The Jewish leaders not only promised their protection against Pilate, but gifted the soldiers with a bribe for not owning up to the truth: that the Roman guards\u00a0saw an angel as bright as lightning come down from heaven and roll the stone away before they fainted in terror.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Ponder This<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ironically,\u00a0despite all of their precautions and duplicity, none involved in this pivotal moment of\u00a0human history\u00a0could prevent the sharing of the Good News! We still tell it today, because it is true!\u00a0Christ\u00a0Jesus lives!<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the next blog post, we’ll look at the empty tomb. And soon we celebrate Easter. Take the Easter Challenge: with whom you can share God’s amazing love for us? Who can you invite\u00a0to church on\u00a0Easter Sunday? After just reading about what Jesus did for you and me, are you moved to know him\u00a0personally<\/a><\/strong> today?<\/em><\/p>\n

> > > Order Now: The Resurrection\u00a0and You<\/em><\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post exploring the validity of the resurrection of Christ, we invite you to consider the factual, historical evidence that gives believers certainty that Jesus died and rose from the dead, just as He promised. In our\u00a0last\u00a0blog post we focused on the crucifixion details, including the fact that\u00a0Pilate demanded confirmation of Jesus’ death before\u00a0he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23327,"featured_media":53077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"In this Easter post, we look at the fact of how Jesus's body was prepared for burial.","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[474,271,275,475,476,273,477],"translator":[],"blog-author":[78],"class_list":["post-32236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resurrection","tag-burial","tag-easter","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-burial","tag-pontius-pilate","tag-resurrection","tag-tomb","blog-author-josh-mcdowell-ministry-team"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/607\/2020\/03\/TombBlogSquare.jpeg","meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92555,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32236\/revisions\/92555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32236"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=32236"},{"taxonomy":"blog-author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog-author?post=32236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}