When the women showed up at the tomb on Sunday morning, the word Luke uses to describe their emotion is perplexity. When the angels, who seemed to be men, spoke to them, the theme of their communication was remembrance. When two disciples encountered Yeshua along the road, their experience was a mystery. When Yeshua spoke to the Eleven and other disciples gathered, his theme was continuation.

Perplexity. Remembrance. Mystery. Continuation.

Perplexity. None of the disciples, men or women, expected what they found. In the first place, they did not believe he would die. Now that he was dead, they did not believe he was the one they were hoping him to be. And they certainly did not know he would rise.

Luke 24:4 notes that they were perplexed when they found the stone rolled away and the body gone. Vs. 5 describes them as terrified, with faces bowed to the ground. When they went to report on things to the Eleven, we read in vs. 11 that all this seemed “as nonsense” to them.

In fact, we could say that the whole story of the empty tomb and the appearances of Yeshua is perplexing. N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God, 600-611) notes that there are four very strange features in the resurrection accounts:
(1) The resurrection accounts lack references to the Hebrew Bible even though the crucifixion accounts had been full of them.
(2) The resurrection accounts do not mention personal hope, the idea that Yeshua’s resurrection holds promise for our own resurrection.
(3) The resurrection accounts include women as the primary witnesses of the empty tomb though women were thought of poorly as witnesses.
(4) The resurrection accounts describe Yeshua’s body in surprising ways: no radiant light, he has wounds, he walks through things, he eats.

Wright concludes that the gospel writers felt obliged to tell the story in ways the communities of their time were used to hearing them. Eyewitnesses related what they had seen to eager groups wanting access to the story of what had happened in and through Yeshua. Many people had heard the stories told in a similar manner. The early forms of resurrection stories were not like sermons on the afterlife. They were lifelike, unidealized accounts of how a few men and women encountered the strangest event in history.

Perplexed is how we would we would have felt. Perplexed is a good way to describe the surprise of a missing body of a beloved teacher by people who were already devastated and disappointed that he did not turn out to be the One they hoped for.

It may be difficult to go back now and imagine how stupefied and disconcerted we would be. Knowing the end of the story it is hard to put ourselves back closer to the beginning.

But we should. It should occur to us repeatedly that the risen body of our great Teacher, Yeshua, is an astounding reality.

Furthermore, it should occur to us that this did not happen in a painting or an illustration in a children’s Bible. Neither were there glorious sets and movie orchestras playing the score in the background. There was no formal public relations firm handling the early Yeshua movement’s documents.

What we read in the gospels, and in particular, Luke, is raw. It happened to a few people deemed insignificant in their world. And Luke, like the other gospel writers, did not feel it permissible to tell the story in a different way. Quite likely these kind of eyewitness-focused accounts were what people were used to hearing.

That’s not to say that good faith-based writing and theology on the resurrection was impossible. Paul had already, long before Luke wrote, given to the Yeshua movement a theological account. He had already said that without the resurrection event, our faith is vain. He’d said that without the resurrection, the cross could not erase sins and death would not ever be reversed. Without the resurrection, said Paul, the dead are gone forever, the guilty remain unforgiven, those dead in Adam remain under the sentence of death, and there is no future resurrection for any of us to look forward to. Paul said all that in 1 Corinthians 15 before Luke ever set pen to papyrus.

But there is more than one purpose in the perplexity theme in Luke’s telling of the story. The first purpose is to faithfully record the kinds of things eyewitnesses had said. And that is important to us now, because we need to know these accounts are not invented. They don’t read like propaganda for a movement. They read like the inexplicable experiences of people trying desperately to figure out what God is up to. And the second purpose is to remind us that the things that happened in and through Yeshua are larger than life. They change us if we deal with what we observe. They may leave us perplexed, but they do so because they are too wonderful to accept easily and without serious thought about our own situation, our own future, and our own response.

The burial of Yeshua is an early belief of his followers, cited, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:4 as a longstanding tradition by the time of the 50’s when Paul wrote the letter. In recent times it has been claimed that Yeshua’s burial is a highly unlikely event, that criminals were generally refused burial or at most put in a shallow grave where carrion animals could disgrace the corpse. The burial of Yeshua has been the center of a number of rationalistic refutations of the resurrection: the body was lost in a shallow grave and the resurrection story resulted as a mistake, the body was moved by Joseph and the disciples could not find it, etc. Therefore, we are confronted with the question: is the burial of Yeshua realistic in light of Roman practices (and especially if Yeshua’s execution fit into the category of treason)?

Whenever we ask history questions, we need to think more deeply than usual about what history is and what to believe about it. Knowing “history” is neither as simple as many make it at face value nor as impossible as many make it.

History is story. Someone tells a story. We read the story. The story has some connection to events that were witnessed and reported. We cannot recover the Event, but only the Story. No Story could ever be a completely accurate rendering of the Event. What people often want to know is whether the Story is “true.”

I have said in Yeshua in Context that we should evaluate stories based on whether they are internally coherent and externally believable. There is no such thing as “certain knowledge” about events. But if a story is internally coherent and externally believable, we should grant the likelihood that the Event has some true correspondence to the Story.

In considering the believability of the burial story of Yeshua, I have used as my main sources Raymond Brown’s The Death of the Messiah, Vol. 2 and Craig Evan’s chapter, “The Silence of Burial,” in Evans and Wright’s Jesus, the Final Days. I would point to the following as indicators of the believability and coherence of Mark’s burial story:

(1) Certain believable tensions are evident in the Mark story: Joseph needs “courage” to approach Pilate about the matter, Joseph does not cooperate with the disciples who watch from a distance, women are the only witnesses with the men apparently afraid to show themselves, and Joseph is not described here as a disciple.

(2) There is a certain ambiguity about whether Joseph is a disciple or not and the theory that he was not a disciple, or at least openly, until after the resurrection, adds believability to the account. Matthew and John report him as a disciple, but Mark does not.

(3) Jewish piety demanded burial and the demand would be heightened by the sanctity of the feast. That burial of the dead is a matter of Jewish piety is confirmed in many sources, but especially in the book of Tobit. Tobit’s righteousness is described again and again in terms of his work to bury the dead. Corpses defiled the land in Jewish thought. No one would want Jerusalem defiled at Passover.

(4) While Pilate might have been reluctant to allow burial for one executed for treason, he had political pressure not to go against Jewish piety at a crowded festival and pressure from the fact that Joseph was a high-ranking official.

(5) The tendency in the gospels, as Richard Bauckham has shown, is to name characters only if they are famous or if they were known to the Yeshua-community personally. Joseph of Arimathea is named in all four gospels. Evangelists in many cases would not name a character even if he or she were known in other gospels. Bauckham has argued that the tendency was to name only characters whose eyewitness testimony was known to the evangelist first or second-hand.

(6) The so-called evidence that Rome would absolutely refuse burial to one executed for treason is overstated. Many examples involve the Jewish War, which is a different case. The Mark story demonstrates tension over this matter, since Joseph had to muster “courage” to request the body. And when a member of the Sanhedrin at a feast with numerous thousands of pilgrims in Jerusalem made a request related to Jewish piety, Pilate is not likely to refuse it.

(7) Against the argument that Yeshua would have been put in a shallow grave, which could possibly satisfy the requirement to remove the bodies and keep the land pure, is the piety of giving proper burial. A righteous man like Joseph would not likely have been satisfied with a shallow grave. It is possible that to a Sanhedrin member Yeshua did not deserve an honorable burial in the tomb of his choice. But piety would insist on a proper burial and not something that could expose the land to defilement through carrion animals.

(8) There are a number of reasons to think Joseph was not a disciple: (1) Pilate would be less likely to release the body to a disciple; (2) the women were not in cooperation with Joseph, but had to observe secretly; (3) there are reasons why a pious Jewish council member would bury Yeshua even if not a disciple; and (4) some texts such as Acts 13:29 speak of the “they” who took down Yeshua’s body; and (5) Mark, the earliest account, does not say Joseph was a disciple. Yet Matthew and John say he was a disciple. Also, the fact of Joseph being named suggests that the later Yeshua-community knew his testimony as a witness. A good scenario which handles all this evidence is that Joseph was not a disciple at the time, but became one after the resurrection. Thus, his request for the body would not have raised concerns from Pilate that the disciples would venerate the body or create a martyr.

In conclusion, then, the story, as presented in Mark, is coherent and believable. There was tension over whether a Roman ruler would allow a body to be buried when crucified on a charge related to treason. The one requesting burial had suitable motivation, was highly placed, and was not identified at that time as a disciple. The disciples (women) had to passively watch and note where the body was buried, not having any power to interfere.

Deciding whether to believe the Story of Yeshua’s burial is about a real Event is an important step in asking the bigger question: are the resurrection Stories of Yeshua about a real Event?

Many who have written on the resurrection stories and considered whether they describe a real event in history have made a simple point: women’s testimony was not considered valid or desirable in ancient courts. The evidence for this point is not lock-tight, but it is probably true that female testimony had less value to men in power.

Yet, all four evangelists bring up the women who were at the cross and the tomb. Why?

And why are some named and others unnamed?

Furthermore, there is one gospel in which women play a larger role than in the others. That is the gospel of Luke. Why does Luke name so many women and show more deeply than the other evangelists how early and how deeply the women were involved?

What is a woman reading the gospels to think about all this? Was Yeshua forward thinking about women’s roles? Were the disciples as forward thinking as Yeshua?

And what does all this say about the likelihood of the resurrection stories being true reporting of eyewitness testimony about events that really happened?

Richard Bauckham’s Theory of Named Eyewitnesses
In Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham makes the case that the evangelists tend to name their sources. He meticulously records examples of some characters being named in some gospels but not others. He considers variation in names between gospels and considers other theories. His case, overall, is overwhelming. See other examples of this phenomenon: Cleopas, Why You Should Know Him and Simon of Cyrene, Why You Should Know Him.

Specifically, Bauckham says the evangelists had a tendency only to name those whose testimony was known to them first or secondhand. And the use of names indicates that eyewitnesses played a prominent role in the first generation of Yeshua’s community. The phenomenon of unnamed characters, even for example in a story Matthew or Luke relate which they found in Mark, suggests that there was an ideal of historical integrity. The evangelists were not content to name characters simply because Mark had named them in his gospel. The theory which best fits the facts is that they named only those who testimony was personally known to them by word of mouth (either from the source directly or someone who could report having personally heard the source).

The women at the cross and tomb are a good example of the remarkable variation in named and unnamed characters:

AT THE CROSS
MARK…………………MATTHEW…………………LUKE……………………..JOHN
Magdalene………….Magdalene………………………………………………Magdalene
Mary mother ………Mary mother……………………………………………
of James & Joses of James & Joseph
Salome………………………………………………………………………………
………………………..Mother of Zebedees…………………………………..
……………………………………………………………………………………….Mary mother of Yeshua
……………………………………………………………………………………….Mary’s sister
……………………………………………………………………………………….Mary wife of Clopas

AT THE BURIAL
MARK…………………..MATTHEW………………..LUKE……………………JOHN
Magdalene……………Magdalene……………………………………………
…………………………..other Mary…………………………………………..
Mary mother of…………………………………………………………………
Joses

AT THE TOMB
MARK…………………..MATTHEW………………….LUKE………………….JOHN
Magdalene……………Magdalene…………………Magdalene………….Magdalene
………………………….other Mary……………………………………………
Salome……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………Joanna………………
Mary mother of………………………………………Mary mother of…..
James James

Observations
Bauckham thinks that in providing well-sourced history according to Jewish and Greco-Roman conventions of the time, the evangelists tended to provide two or three witnesses for the cross, burial, and empty tomb (even John lists other witnesses such as Peter and the beloved disciple).

Joanna is an interesting case with regard to Luke. In his prologue, Luke speaks of researching his account and using eyewitnesses. Was Joanna one of Luke’s sources? She is only mentioned in Luke 8:3 and 24:10. Joanna was the wife of one of Herod Antipas’ stewards, a woman in high places and wealthy enough to donate and support Yeshua’s disciples.

The one consistent witness across all of the gospels at all three events was Mary Magdalene. It would seem that she was the best known woman eyewitness in the early Yeshua community. She deserves an article of her own exploring her story as best we can piece it together.

Salome, a woman whose story is not told in the gospels, is another interesting case. Mark lists her at the cross and the tomb, but not at the burial. Is this because Mark the historian only reported names of those whose testimony he knew of from each event? Did he know of Salome’s presence at the cross and tomb, but not at the burial? It would seem Mark is being quite careful.

The mother of John and James son of Zebedee is only listed by Matthew and only at the cross. Again, this seems like remarkable restraint and care in writing the story. What could explain these variations better than the theory of the evangelists’ dependence on direct eyewitness testimony?

Bauckham brings up a case to show Luke’s careful method as well. One of the women he has mentioned in the Yeshua circle is Susanna (Luke 8:3). Yet he does not write Susanna into the tomb stories. This is yet another piece of evidence for the eyewitness theory.

And what about the larger issue of women and their participation in the work of Yeshua and his male disciples?

The Women in Luke
In general, Luke gives us a unique view of the larger group of Yeshua’s disciples beyond the Twelve more than any other gospel (Bauckham lists, for example, Luke 6:17; 8:1-3; 10:1-20; 19:37; 23:49; 24:9, 33).

I keeping with this broader view, Luke also shows the involvement of women more than any gospel. He alone names Joanna and Susanna. He alone notes that women were supporters of Yeshua’s band (8:1-3). Also, the angel in Luke 24:6-7 indicates that the women had known about Yeshua’s predictions of his death and resurrection. As Bauckham says, this reveals that the women were not simply outsiders or supporters, but part of Yeshua’s inner circle who knew his secret mission.

Perhaps the enhanced importance of the women in Luke’s gospel is also part of the eyewitness theory. Since Luke did his own research and went beyond simply using Mark as a source, it must be that women such as Joanna were special sources for him. Luke found a less relied upon source of eyewitness information to use in his gospel, the women who may have been at least partially overlooked by the other evangelists.