The Burial and Resurrection

Jesus died on the day before the Sabbath. That evening, Mark tells, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, went to Pilate and asked for the body. Pilate made sure from the centurion that Jesus was dead and granted it. Joseph wrapped the body in a linen cloth, laid it in a tomb cut out of rock and rolled a stone against the entrance (Mark 15:42–46). John adds that Nicodemus brought myrrh and aloes, and that the tomb was new and lay in a garden at the place of crucifixion (John 19:39–42); see Golgotha. Mary Magdalene and another Mary saw where he was laid (Mark 15:47). Matthew alone says that the chief priests had the tomb sealed and guarded (Matthew 27:62–66).

Very early on the first day of the week, Mark says, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome came with spices to anoint the body. They found the stone rolled back. Inside, a young man in a white robe told them: “He has risen. He is not here.” They were to tell the disciples and Peter that he was going ahead of them to Galilee. They fled and said nothing to anyone, “for they were afraid” (Mark 16:1–8). There the Gospel ends in Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest copies (Codex Sinaiticus Mark 16:8); the verses that follow in most Bibles are discussed under the Appearances and the Great Commission.

The other Gospels tell the discovery with differences. In Matthew there is an earthquake, an angel rolls the stone away, and Jesus himself meets the women as they run to tell the disciples (Matthew 28:1–10). In Luke two men in dazzling clothes speak to the women, the apostles think their report nonsense, and Peter runs to the tomb and sees the linen cloths lying by themselves (Luke 24:1–12). John names only Mary Magdalene, who comes while it is still dark and fetches Peter and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved”, who find the cloths lying there. She stays, weeping, and sees Jesus. She takes him for the gardener until he says her name, and she goes and tells the disciples that she has seen the Lord (John 20:1–18). All four agree on the day, on Mary Magdalene and on the open, empty tomb. None describes the rising itself.

The testimony usually dated earliest is Paul’s. Writing in the 50s, he repeats what he had “received”: that Christ died for our sins, “that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve”. He adds appearances to more than five hundred, to James, to all the apostles and last to himself (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). Paul mentions the burial but not the women or the finding of the empty tomb. Matthew reports another account current in his day, that the disciples had stolen the body (Matthew 28:11–15).

That God raised Jesus from the dead is the central claim of Christian faith. “If Christ has not been raised,” Paul writes, “then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Acts shows Christians gathering on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7), and the creed confesses that “the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures” (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed).