An Argument for the Historicity of Jesus's Burial via the Lack of Scriptural Allusion

 

Jesus's burial in a rock-hewn tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin, is depicted in all four Gospel traditions. A decent number of scholars have questioned the partial or total authenticity of this story, arguing that Jesus may have been dishonorably interred in an earth grave or perhaps not even buried at all [1]. The following will argue against both of these hypotheses and will argue that the lack of proper scriptural allusion makes both of these theories implausible. It will conclude that the Gospels are generally correct in their unexpected description of Joseph's role in honorably burying Jesus ,a precis defended by a substantial amount of scholars today [2].

Scriptural Allusions and Dishonorable Burial

Though the crucifixion of Jesus is an event that virtually no ancient historian would deny as a historical event, it is hard to deny that within the history of the event there is a large amount of Scripture and literary devices wrapped within around the historical fact. This idea of "tradition scripturalized" [3] fits in well with the retroactive incorporation of scripture of the Christian tradition. Events in the life of Jesus were used as the template to scope out potential parallels in Scripture, in order to find places in the Hebrew Bible to connect with the inherited oral tradition being passed along by the Church. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Passion narrative of Christ's death.

The earliest tradition of such Passion, found in Mark 15, makes heavy use of Psalm 22:

• vs. 1, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?" (Mk. 15:34)

• vs. 6-7, "[I am] scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me;(Mk. 15:16-20;29-32)

• vs. 7-8, " they make mouths at me; they wag their heads, 'He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (Mk. 15:29-32)

• vs. 14, "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint." (the general practice of crucifixion would dislocate the bone, Mk. 15:24, cf. Jn. 19:34 for the reference to being "poured out")

• vs. 15, "my strength is dried up like a potsherd." (Mk. 15:21, as Jesus is too weak to carry His own cross).

• vs. 15, "my tongue sticks to my jaws." (Mk. 15:23, cf. Jn. 19:28).

• vs. 16, "they pierce my hands and feet." (Mk. 15:21; John 20:24-29 later clarifies Jesus was pierced on the cross rather than tied with ropes.)

• vs. 18, "they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." (Mk. 15:24)

In establishing Mark's contingency on the 22nd Psalm, we now turn to the implications that this has on the main topic of this study: the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea.

What narrative would one expect a follower of Jesus, in utilizing Psalm 22 and other Scriptures, create in order to further this continuation of fulfilling literary parallels? Had Christians not known what had become of the body, Psalm 22 provides quite the creative inspiration for depicting the typical disposal of a crucifixion victim. If Jesus's corpse was originally deposed in a mass grave  (a fairly common fate for crucifixion victims outside of Israel)  to decompose in the heat Jerusalem sun, and, as Crossan [4] and Ehrman suggest [5], possibly eaten by dogs or other scavenging animals, verses 16 and 20 would suffice quite handsomely, "For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me... Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog!" The term "dog" (כְּלָ֫בִ֥ים) is obviously being used metaphorically here, yet the passage as a whole is also a poetic layout of the Psalmists language described in the figurative language of being "pierced", "mocked", "buried in dust", etc. The author of Mark retroactively put the literal pain Jesus during the crucifixion onto the more figurative language expressed by the anguished Psalmist. A known or potential tradition of Jesus's corpse eaten away by scavenging animals would have worked quite well. Note also such a tradition's connection to passages like Deuteronomy 28:26, "Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away."

 
Or suppose Jesus was entombed not by the Romans but by the Jewish Sanhedrin, likely in fulfillment of mandatory burial laws for the executed as laid out in Deu. 21:23. If Jesus had been dishonorably deposed in a criminal graveyard, shamefully decomposing is an earth grave for criminals until his bones were eventually collected per Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.5.-6.6, Mark could also have found plenty of parallels in Psalm 22. Does not a disposal of the corpse of Christ in a shallow earth grave not bring forth reminiscence of Ps. 22:15, "you lay me in the dust of death?" In reading vs. 17, "I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me" I immediately imagine the Pharisees mocking the rotting corpse of Jesus as they shamefully depose him. 

This kind of shameful internment following an execution also parallels the suffering servant of Isaiah 52 and 53, a scripture used extensively by Christians for the passion of Jesus. Isaiah 53:9 speaks of God's servant as killed and possibly buried in the manner of evildoers despite being innocent, "And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth." Note also Is. 53:12, which has the servant "numbered with the transgressors", again being associated with the wicked in His suffering despite Himself having done no evil. One may also find parallels with the shameful death of the righteous man at the hands of wrongdoers in the Wisdom of Solomon (2:12-21), who is then later exalted by God (3:1-11)

Archeologists digging up bones buried in an earth grave.

Thematically, both Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 involve the suffering (one may call it a passion) of one who is faithful to God, being persecuted, mocked, and tortured by his enemies before allegorically being killed and disposed of in a shameful manner. The first half of these passages deal with such suffering and the hope for God's rescue (Ps. 22:1-18; Is. 53:1-9), with the second half expressing optimism as God promises to vindicate the righteous from their iniquities in the future. Redemption and later vindication is eventually seen following the character's "death" and anguish (Ps. 22:19-31; Is. 52:13-15; 53:10-12).

Mark's Reversal of Expectation

Mark's loyalty to this formula is quite strong as He describes Jesus's arrest, trial, and execution. The Lord is unfairly prosecuted for a crime He was innocent of, mocked at while He was being tortured, and executed in a shameful way akin to the death of a criminal, all the while being silent (Mk. 14:61) in fulfillment of Is. 53:7. Yet Mark reverses expectations when it comes to Jesus's burial; Jesus is, contra Ps. 22:15 and Is. 53:9, not laid in a criminal's grave but instead is given the rather surprising treatment of an honorable burial. Joseph of Arimathea, being described as "seeking the Kingdom of God" in Mk. 15:43, buries the body of Jesus not in an earth grave (which was the typical method to bury Jews of the lower class, cf. Ps. 22:15) but in a rock-hewn tomb which were probably exclusive to the wealthy. Joseph also buys a linen cloth for Jesus to be buried in (Mk. 15:46), a fairly pricey expense for an executed criminal. 

Many may find Scriptural parallels in the second half of Is. 53:9, "[he was] a rich man in his death", to be mirrored in Mark's depiction of Joseph's role in burying Jesus. However, as W. Creighton Marlowe argues, the use of rich (עָשִׁיר) in the passage is not a statement pertaining to honorable burial, but is rather meant to further associate the suffering servant as one unfairly killed and buried by the wicked, [6]

"The common association of wealth and wickedness in the OT world suggests that within this synonymous parallelism, the full sense is "[the] wealthy [wicked]." The author's intention in v. 9 was to tell about the servant's undeserved suffering (v. 9b), wherein he was portrayed and processed as a criminal in his death and burial by his persecutors and prosecutors (v. 9a). The plan of these evil people (rich and reprobate) was to place him among the refuse of mankind (v. 9a), even though he had committed no violent and verbal crimes (v.9b)…A case has been made for the understanding of Isaiah 53:9 as a text that reveals that (1) the suffering servant would be handled by his opponents as a criminal in regard to his death and burial (53:9a); and (2) this treatment would be unfair and unjust because this servant had never sinned verbally or had never acted violently or retaliated verbally (53:9b)."

Indeed, the Septuagint likewise renders the Greek use of "rich" in Is. 53:9b as being in association with the wicked, with Yahweh avenging His servant who was oppressed by the wicked and the wealthy, [7] 

"The LXX’s use of [wicked] and [rich] reflects a view of the wicked and the rich as a visible, enduring class of people distinct from those who confess their sin and the servant’s atoning work in 53:1-7. In several places of LXX Isaiah, the rich is related to the wicked that is the object of God’s judgement. Thus, the LXX rendering in v. 9 makes the sentence imply God’s retribution against the wicked and the rich who despised and killed the servant".

In other words, Isaiah's use of "rich" is denotative of rich oppressors who trample the poor, a common theme among the Old Testament prophets. Just as the servant "made his grave with the wicked", the Hebrew parallelism also suggests that he further "was a rich man in death." Both of these statements imply a treatment of the servant as an unrighteous criminal by despite his innocence. Thus this speaks not of an honorable burial in a rich man's tomb, but acts as further artillery for the theming of a degrading death and burial of a blameless man. 

Matthew 27:57 notes Joseph's status as a "rich man" that buries Jesus in his own expensive tomb, which could be seen as the evangelist's reading of Mark's narrative back onto Is. 53:9b. Yet even if Matthew read Mark in this way, it's not at all clear as to how Mark would have originally seen the passage in this manner. Mark does not note Joseph's wealth (though certainly a Sanhedrin member would be affluent) nor does he state that Joseph buried Jesus in his own personal tomb. Furthermore, why Mark would suddenly take a passage about shameful burial and knit it into a narrative depicting a partially-respectable internment is beyond me. Mark's use of Psalm  22 and Isaiah 53 elsewhere in his passion narrative clearly take the mockery and death of Jesus as a negative thing disposed onto a guiltless man; one would think he would continue this trend with the burial narrative, as so many aforecited verses would have helped achieve this goal. Had Mark 15 wanted to use Is. 53:9, a narration of a contemptible internment would have been apropos: "he made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man [an unrighteous man] in [the manner of] his death." Why would Mark suddenly reinterpret the ignominy of the "rich man" passage into something of honor, given that he consistently sticks with the discomfiture of the servant's passion throughout the rest of his narrative, including during the mocking and crucifixion of Christ?

A rock-hewn tomb in Jerusalem, usually meant as communal  tombs for wealthy families

 One can, in their creativity, quite easily construct an alternative tradition of Mk. 15:42-47, formulating a narrative that emphasizes Jesus's passion and more closely follows the tribulation of the righteous undergone in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, [8]

"And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, the Sanhedrin went to Pilate and requested the body of the Lord for burial. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. Pilate, having sent to Herod, requested his body. And Herod said: 'Brother Pilate, even if no one had requested him, we would have buried him, since indeed Sabbath is dawning. For in the Law it has been written: The sun is not to set on one put to death.' And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to the members of the court. Having taken the body of the Lord, they said “Let us drag along the Son of God now that we have killed Him. Let us bury Him quickly before the sun sets. Let Him make His grave with the wicked.”And they dug a plot and laid the body of the Lord inside, rejoicing in their wickedness. This was done so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, “you lay me in the dust of death.” Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid."

Such a tradition, rife with the motifs of innocence, dishonor, Christological titles, and Scriptural allusions, is highly expected under the hypothesis of literary creation. The honorable nature of the Canonical Gospels stands out like a sore thumb when compared to this hypothetical account that more closely follows the motifs of the Torah.

Why Invent an Honorable Burial?

If Christians desired to depose of Jesus in a dishonorable manner in order to follow Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, why suddenly have Joseph treat Jesus properly when in the preceding verses the Pharisees mocked Jesus at every turn?  Such a tonal shift prematurely puts the vindication of the servant at the moment of His burial, rather than following it. A closer formula to the Torah would be having Jesus dishonorably killed and buried, having divine exaltation only after the tribulation undergone by His enemies in the form of an empty tomb and post-mortem vindication (Mk. 16:1-8). 

One may argue that the dishonor of Christ being interned unceremoniously would be too much for the early Christians too bear, and that such an act of shame would need to be masked by a literary spinning of Jesus's respectable burial by a member of the court. This is peculiar; would a dishonorable burial really be such a hard pill to swallow given the extent of shame Jesus had already endured on the cross? Paul goes as far as to denotate Jesus's crucifixion as the certification for God's curse upon Him (Gal. 3:13), and admits that the crucifixion was embarrassing and troubling for Jewish and Gentile recipients of the Gospel message (1 Cor. 1:23). Yet the Church embraced such shame rather than hide it, reworking it into a message of atonement, forgiveness, debt payment, and salvation. I see no reason that a shameful burial would be any more problematic. As a matter of fact, Paul seems to promote the idea that our mortal, corruptible bodies are "sown in dishonor" (1 Cor. 15:43) like a seed prior to being raised in glory, and throughout His epistles compares Christian's metaphorical burial (ie baptism) to Christ's burial (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12). In reading the epistles one does not get the impression that Paul would have had any reservation towards a dishonorable burial; if anything, he probably would have used it to further his analogy.

Christians afterall did not shy away from the brutality of Jesus's crucifixion, taking every blow and every mocking statement as a further burden that Christ bore for those He loved. The Gospels trend upward in trajectory not only in the level of innocence given to Jesus by Pilate, but also in the level of suffering He endures during the Passion. All four Gospels record Jesus bring mocked, with each getting slightly more detailed in the descriptions of shame deposed to Christ. Mark starts with Jesus being flogged and mocked before being crucified, with John ending the tetralogy of Passion narratives with Jesus's body being pierced in order to ensure His death (Jn. 19:34), while also adding further desecration to the corpse. Little resilience is given to lessen Jesus's pain prior to His burial. 

A dishonorable discernment of His body would both follow the trend of the suffering servant in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, as well as further emphasize the extent Jesus suffered for the sins of the world. Not even His body would be spared. To the early Christians, the theology of suffering was quite pertinent. Jesus was flogged for our sins. Jesus was mocked for our sins. Jesus was killed for our sins. Why not have Jesus's burial in an obscure dirt plot add on to the Lord's burden for our sins? Jut as Christians looked back to Deuteronomic laws to emphasizes Jesus's status as being cursed through the cross (cf. Gal. 3:13 to Deu. 21:23), it would only be canny to further this by applying a shameful burial, or lack of burial altogether, to passages like Deuteronomy 28:26, which speaks of God punishing the wicked by allowing their exposed corpses to be consumed by birds and other animals. 

Another thought: given the Markan inverse of using kingly motifs as mockery rather than flattery, a dishonorable burial would in fact serve better here. Jesus is given a reed, a purple robe, and a crown of thorns as a form of ridicule rather than regality (Mk. 15:16-20) The title "King of the Jews" is given to Jesus in Mark 15:2 and in other Gospels is a sign with the phrase is nailed above His head in various languages (Jn. 19:21). How fitting would it have been to continue this "dishonored King" motif with Jesus's shameful burial? The Talmud is no stranger stories of kings buried in dishonor. King Jehoiakim is dishonorably deposed in Jeremiah 22:19, "He will have the burial of a donkey— dragged away and thrown outside the gates of Jerusalem.” How ironic would it have been to have the corpse of Jesus pulled by a donkey outside the gates of Jerusalem in order to parallel the treatment of King Jehoiakim's body; this would be a direct reversal of Jesus's triumphal entry on a donkey per Mark 11:1-11. Just as Jesus is given unflattering treatment to parody His status as king, it would only make sense to give the dead king a "chariot" in which He is violently dragged around to further His disgrace. This concept actually correlates quite well the graphic description laid in the 4th century (or later) Jewish polemic the Toldot Yeshua, where Jesus's corpse is dragged through Jerusalem in order to mock the Christian movement, [9]

"Therefore they all assembled, and tying the body [of Jesus] to a horse's tail, brought it and threw it down before the Queen, saying, 'Behold the man of whom you have said, He has gone up to heaven.' When the Queen saw him, she was overwhelmed with shame and unable to speak. Moreover, while the body was dragged about for some time, the hair of the head was pulled out. And this is the reason why now the hair of a monk is shaved off in the middle of the head; it is done in remembrance of what happened to Yeshu."

This again goes to show that a shameful burial would have furthered the Markan narrative of Jesus as a King treated with dishonor.

The Inconsistency of an Honorable Burial

But, if for the sake of argument we are to ignore prior Scriptural precedent and presume that Christians wanted Jesus to be given an honorable burial to mask the potential embarrassment that a dishonorable internment would carry, why present such a reserved tale? In Mark 15:42-47 there are still dishonorable elements to the burial of Jesus, though these are more reflective of Jewish oral law than they are of Old Testament scripture; per the Mishnah (6.6) Jesus is not entombed in his family grave with bodies of the righteous, and there is no public mourning or crowd display of grief. The women companions of Jesus, despite watching Joseph care for the body, do nothing to assist him; perhaps this is because they, as companions of Jesus, would not be allowed to help with the burial given Jesus's status as an executed criminal, leaving the job to the Sanhedrin and their servants to depose of the wicked (cf. Acts 13:29). [10]

Thus the Gospels leave us with a quasi-honorable burial; Joseph lays Jesus is a tomb for the affluent, wrapped in a fairly nice burial shroud. If the later Gospels are to be believed, Joseph also buried Jesus in his own new tomb (Matt. 27:59), where "no one had yet been laid" (Lk. 23:35), and he adorns the body with expensive spices (Jn. 19:39-40). The rules for interning an executed criminal are still followed, leaving out the involvement of Jesus's companions, being buried by the Pharisees instead of his family, and the forbiddance of public lamentation. Joseph seems to have been making the best of what he could given the situation (perhaps because Joseph was possibly sympathetic to the Christian way per Mk. 15:43; Lk. 23:50-51; Jn. 19:38), essentially dressing up the corpse as nice as he could while not technically violating the law. Such balance implies a careful tiptoeing around of tradition on Joseph's part. [11]

Though in the Gospels, especially the later ones, put much attention on the spices and expenses used to entomb Christ, the account is still held back from a truly honorable burial. There are no crowds to mourn Him, no public displays of anguish, nor does anyone other than Joseph (and Nicodemus) assist in preparing the corpse. It is an honorable burial, but undeniably a private one. 

Should not the King of the Jews, if one is to create a fictional story, receive a burial fit for a man of status? Jesus is afterall considered a king all throughout the Passion narrative. Royalty tended to have quite large turnouts to their funerals, where a large crowd wept and mourned for their fallen ruler (Gen. 50:1-11; 2 Sam 3:31; 2 Chron. 24:15-17, etc.). One can easily imagine that, perhaps after the Romans and Jews realize the error of their ways (cf. Mk. 15:39), Jesus is given a large eulogy fit for a king. We see something along these lines in the Gospel of Peter, where after the portents follow Christ's death, many of the Jews show regret in their sins and lament Jesus publicly in order to seek mercy from God's judgement. [12] If the Gospels wanted to portray a truly regal burial for the King of the Jews, they seem to have missed the mark. We are only given a story of a private and honorable burial, but nothing more. 

Vindication Without Proper Burial

A final consideration: would an honorable burial be required in order to best depict Jesus's exaltation and bodily assumption into heaven? It is conceivable that Mark would need to have the body be accessible in order to "prove" that the resurrection had in fact taken place. A rotted corpse unceremoniously disposed may hamper this effect. 

 

This objection limps. In the ancient world there was no shortage of tales of apotheosis that did not involve the person being previously entombed. Let us not forget the stories of the body of Aeneas disappearing on the battlefield (Dionysius, Rom. Anti., 1.64.4.) or the corpse of Aristeas going missing before he can be buried, only to appear again later on (Herodotus, Hist. 4. 13-16). The Christian Scriptures also show that it was not unheard of for a highly revered figure to be vindicated following a terrible death and dishonorable burial. Most well-known are the Maccabean martyrs, who still receive the hope of future resurrection and exaltation despite their bodies being completely dismembered by the soldiers of Antiochus IV (2 Macc. 7:4-42). New Testament examples also abound. Luke 16 foretells of a parable of the rich man and Lazarus, where the wealthy Jew is buried presumably extravagantly (vs. 22) and yet is damned to hell, whereas the body of the impoverished Lazarus is not said to be buried but is instead carried away to heaven by angels. The two witnesses of Revelation 11:7-12 are killed and left unburied, yet still manage to ascend to heaven in front of all present. 

Jewish and Christian texts of the 1st and 2nd century likewise give frequent examples of figures being translated into heaven sans burial. In the Testament of Job 39:11-13 and 40:3-4, the children of Job are crushed under a large building, with their bodies being lost and unrecoverable; however, they are shown to be assumed into heaven and appear to their family in a glorified state. The Protoevangelism of James 24:3 has the body of Zacharias vanish after he is murdered before it can be interred. 

Clearly then, ancient people were not averse to telling stories of missing bodies without the need to include a formal burial. Is it really a stretch of the imagination for the author of Mark to have constructed a vindication narrative (perhaps through a missing body motif) without giving Jesus a proper burial in a rich man's tomb? Could not the shame of a dishonorable burial just as easily been avoided by a pre-burial resurrection of Christ? [13] There are afterall examples of crucified bodies vanishing mysteriously before being removed from the cross, as seen in The Testament of Joseph of Arimathea (4:1), "And I Joseph begged the body of Jesus, and put it in a new tomb, where no one had been put. And of the robber on the right the body was not found..." All of this serves as evidence that an appeal to a "missing-body" motif cannot be used as a necessary condition for inventing the burial of Jesus. 

 What is Expected Versus What is Observed

Using a Bayesian understanding of predictive power, even if we are to depose of the incorporation of actual numbers, we can estimate how these two competing hypotheses create expectation for the data actually observed. Let us call these the Hypothesis of Literary Creation (HLC) and the Hypothesis of Historical Reportage (HHR).

As argued above, one would expect the HLC to follow in accordance with previously established motifs found in the Old Testament Scriptures pertaining to the suffering of the innocent servant of God. There are about 4 conceivable scenarios involving the burial of Jesus that one could expect a priori before examining the textual evidence: 

1. The whereabouts of Jesus's corpse were unknown and Christians invented a narrative using the Scriptures.

2. The body of Jesus was dishonorably buried and Christians kept the tradition (along with the shame of crucifixion) in accordance with Scriptural motifs.

3. The body of Jesus was dishonorably buried and Christians invented an honorable burial to hide the shame of such embarrassment.

4. The body of Jesus was honorably buried and Christians preserved the tradition with minimal changes.

The HLC fits options 1 and 3, though if choice 1 predicts heavy use of the Scriptures, then we would expect an explicitly dishonorable burial narrative. This does not account for the Gospel data. Option 3 would account for the narrative for in Mark 15:42-47 but, as argued above, goes against the grain of the motifs that the Gospel authors are trying to follow. It thus cannot adequately explain the sudden reversal of expectation that contrasts Mark's prior use of Scripture. 

The HHR falls under options 2 and 4. The former choice is highly expected yet contradicts the data that all of our sources denotate to the reader. Option 4 is initially surprising but posteriorly most simply explains the data we observe. The choice, then, seems fairly clear: the Gospel of Mark wrote that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus in rock-hewn tomb simply because that is what was initially observed and transmitted by the early Christin community. 

Concluding Thoughts

The New Testament narrative of Joseph of Arimathea burying the body of Jesus in his personal family tomb stands out as quite unusual and unexpected. The sheer strangeness of it has led many to suspect literary fiction on behalf of Mark rather than historical reportage, yet as argued above the evidence and literary expectation to the contrary makes the invention hypothesis untenable. There are significant reasons to conclude that the honorable burial of Jesus is generally lacking embellishment. 

I have argued that a narrative depicting a dishonorable burial of Jesus would have been preserved by the Church had it occurred, or probably constructed had the whereabouts of the corpse been unknown. To summarize the arguments:

1. The dishonorable disposal of a wrongfully executed servant of God fits the motifs found in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, scriptures that were heavily used by early Christians in reflecting on Jesus's passion. Likewise is the case with the dishonorable burial of wicked Kings in the Talmud, which would have furthered Mark's theme of portraying Jesus as a dishonored king. 

2. Christians did not show averseness to Jesus's shameful death by crucifixion, instead turning it into a crucial aspect of their theology. Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 15 also seems to further the idea that our "sowing" will be dishonored but that our resurrection will be glorious, in direct comparison to Jesus. This indicates that Christians would not have tried to hide the shameful burial of their master but would have used it to their advantage.

3. The honorable burial of Jesus is still quite reserved, being private and quiet in nature rather than public and regal. Only minimal attention is given to Jesus's burial in the tomb of a wealthy man, opting out of having a more royal depiction of burial consistent with the Markan motif of Jesus's kingship. This is surprising if the narrative is trying to invent honorable elements to hide the embarrassment of the grave. 

4. Judaism knew of stories of post-mortem vindication, both bodily and otherwise, without needing a proper burial. The lack of a rock-hewn tomb would not have been problematic for Christians wanting to speak of Christ's vindication.

To culminate, arguments in favor of the Gospels inventing the honorable burial of Jesus do not hold much water. The strangeness of the account is implicit of a memory being recounted rather than later legend. 

.........................................

References

[1] For an overview of scholars who have doubted the historicity of Jesus's burial by Joseph of Arimathea and see it as a later legend, see the following: Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. Harper, 1994, pg. 123-158; Spong, John Shelby. Resurrection: Myth or Reality? HarperOne, 1995, pg. 225-229; Aus, Roger David. The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, and the Death, Burial, and Translation of Moses in Judaic Tradition. Univ. Press of America, 2008, pg. 139-171; and Ehrman, Bart D. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. HarperOne, 2015, pg. 157-161.

[2] For a general literature review of scholars who have argued in favor of the historicity of Jesus's burial by Joseph of Arimathea (or at least accept the account as plausible), see the following: O'Collins, Gerald, and Daniel Kendall. "Did Joseph of Arimathea Exist?." Biblica 75, no. 2 (1994): 235-241.; Craig, William Lane. "Was Jesus Buried in Shame? Reflections on B. McCane's Proposal." The Expository Times 115, no. 12 (2004): 404-409.; Magness, Jodi. "Ossuaries and the Burials of Jesus and James." Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 121-154; Evans, Craig. "Jewish Burial Traditions and the Resurrection of Jesus." Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3, no. 2 (2005): 233-248; Cook, John Granger. "Crucifixion and Burial." New Testament Studies 57, no. 2 (2011): 193-213.; and Allison Jr, Dale C. The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021. pg. 94-115. For commentators who accept the general historicity of Jesus's internment by Joseph (or the Sanhedrin) in a tomb or grave but express skepticism towards the details of honorable burial, see the following: Fuller, Reginald Horace. The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives. Fortress Press, 1971, pg. 54;.Brown, Raymond E. "The Burial of Jesus (Mark 15: 42-47)." The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 50, no. 2 (1988): 233-245; McCane, Byron R., "'Where No One Had Yet Been Laid'. The Shame of Jesus' Burial." in Chilton, Bruce and Craig A. Evans. Authenticating the Activities of Jesus (1999): 431-452; Carrier, Richard C. "The Burial of Jesus in Light of Jewish Law." in Price, Robert and Jeffrey Jay Lowder, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave. Prometheus Books, 2005. pg. 369-392; and Dijkhuizen, Petra. "Buried Shamefully: Historical Reconstruction of Jesus' Burial and Tomb." Neotestamentica 45, no. 1 (2011): 115-129.

[3] A term coined by Mark Goodacre in "Prophecy Historicized or Tradition Scripturalized? Reflections on the Origins of the Passion Narrative." The New Testament and the Church: Essays in Honour of John Muddiman 532 (2016): 37-51.

[4]  Crossan, Jesus, pg. 123-158.

[5] Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, pg. 157-161.

[6] Marlowe, W. Creighton. "The Wicked Wealthy in Isaiah 53: 9." The Asbury Journal 64, no. 2 (2009): 68-81, esp. 73-74.

[7] See pg. 20 of Kim, Hyukki "Textual Tradition in Hebrew and Greek: Isaiah 52: 13-53: 12". Textual Traditions of the Old Testament (Masters and PhD Seminar), 2008: 1-32. Retrieved from http://torontosarangchurch.com/sermon/Isa53%20in%20Hebrew%20and%20Greek.pdf. Other commentators have noted the vengeful nature of Is. 53:9b, where the rich are seen as oppressors defaming God's servant. See for example pg. 228-229 of Watson, Francis B. "Mistranslation and the Death of Christ : Isaiah 53 LXX and its Pauline Reception.", in Translating the New Testament :Text, Translation, Theology. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans) 2009:215-250.

[8] This is derived from a combination of the burial tradition found in the Gospel of Peter, along with my own creative tweaking using Psalm 22:15 and Is. 53:9b.

[9] See Chapter 3 of the Sepher Toledot Yeshua, a translation of which can be found at https://lost-history.com/toldoth.php. 

[10] McCane, et al. "Where No One Had Yet Been Laid."

[11] For more conservative defenses of the argument that the honorable elements of the burial were not invented, see Shea, George. "On the Burial of Jesus in Mark 15:42-47" Christendom, 17, no. 1. 1991; and Craig, "Was Jesus Buried in Shame?"

[12] As the Gospel of Peter 6: 25-27 states, "Then the Jews and the elders and the priests, having come to know how much wrong they had done themselves, began to beat themselves and say: 'Woe to our sins. The judgment has approached and the end of Jerusalem.' But I with the companions was sorrowful; and having been wounded in spirit, we were in hiding, for we were sought after by them as wrongdoers and as wishing to set fire to the sanctuary. In addition to all these things we were fasting; and we were sitting mourning and weeping night and day until the Sabbath."

[13] It can be pointed out that early Christians did not seem averse to venerating martyrs dishonorably buried; later tradition has it that James the brother of Jesus was stoned by the Pharisees and buried on the spot by the Sanhedrin in front of the temple, yet Christians still allegedly noted the location as a site of reverence decades later. See Hegassipius's narrative as quoted by Eusebius in Ecc. His. 2.23