How did first century Jewish burial work? (Mark 15:42 - 16:1)

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church exploring the background, context, meaning, and significance of the account of Jesus of Nazareth in the book of Mark.

Transcript

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Hey, hope you're doing well. Tim here, and we are diving deep into the book of Mark. So we had a wonderful resurrection Sunday yesterday. And I want to spend this week kind of wrapping up the book of Mark. And before we get to the resurrection, though, I do want to just touch on the last episode, of course, we ended with the death of Jesus, but that um in between that and the resurrection, of course, is the burial and then the women showing up with the spices. And so I just wanted to talk some about want to help you uh picture how like first century Jewish burial practices were uh worked, and so you can kind of fit this um into your head. So in uh in we we have we found a lot of first century Jewish tombs that we archaeologists have. Um and I've had the chance to live over in Jerusalem and study first century Jerusalem archaeology and got to visit a lot of these tombs and see how this works. But um so there's a lot of tombs. Tombs, of course, were always outside um the city walls uh because of Jewish purity law. You don't want to go buy tombs or dead bodies because that could render you ritually impure. So they're always outside the city, uh, city walls. And generally, in in as anything, I mean, um there's a spectrum, and especially between you know, folks who are poorer and more wealthy, there's real differences uh and be uh between different types of tombs, and so I'm gonna just kind of tell you generally what most of these first century tombs around Jerusalem are like. So uh tombs are usually like in a cave, um, you know, an underground area. Uh there's so much these are limestone hills around Jerusalem, and so there's actually a lot of the way limestone breaks apart, and um, there's a lot of caves around there. And so, in one of these caves, uh whether natural or um man-made, and then um, so you go into the cave, and usually these tombs were family tombs. Um you would have uh you know your ancestors all gathered in this family tomb. In the in the um the kind of the Old Testament period, they also had family tombs. Um, and the the tombs uh worked a little different, but the same kind of idea of a cut of a of a cave where your ancestors were buried, and that's why even the phrase, I don't know if you've never noticed in the Old Testament this phrase being gathered to your fathers. Um you literally, your bones would be put in with the bones of your uh of your ancestors. And so um it was still uh it was still kind of this family cave tomb uh in Jesus' day. And they would have uh so you'd have this cave tomb, and then there would be these different types of um benches. There sometimes um they would be kind of like almost like a tunnel going back into the cave wall, just big enough for one body. Uh and those were called cochim. Um, or sometimes there would be these kind of benches cut out of the side of the wall called archisolia. Um but either way, there were these there would be a place to poop to put the body for the first year. And so you would anoint the body with um you first you wash the body, um, and this would happen on the same day of the death. You'd um wash the body, you'd anoint the body, um, wrap it in spices and linen, and this would be to essentially reduce one to honor the person, and two to reduce the smell uh during the period of decomposition, and then you'd place the body on this stone shelf, what you know, one of a couple different types of stone shelves, and then essentially you would leave the body there uh for a year. Um the tomb would be closed with a stone, uh and you've seen kind of the classic big circle rolling stones. Those there are a few of them, those are very unusual. There's also kind of more plugged stones that just kind of plug, uh plug the hole. Interestingly, those are called rolling stones, and so that raises some question over exactly what kind of stone, um, but that's a whole nother uh conversation. And so, but the the cave was plugged, closed, um, keep the smell in there, keep animals, critters out. Uh, the body for one year would decompose, and then at the at the end of the year, uh the family would return and you'd gather the bones, and then you would put the bones in a limestone box called an ossuary. And uh an ossuary, the size of it was essentially as long as a human femur, because that's the longest uh human bone. Um and so the the um the person's bones will be put into the ossuary box, the the ossuary box will be closed. Uh an ossuary, you can I mean just Google it, you can see how big these are. Um yeah, how to describe the size of this? I mean, it's like a it's the size of a you know, a small chest. Um, yeah, I g probably the easiest way is to just to look one up. They're often wealthier ones are intricately carved, and then at the end of it, you would have um, and we found these, you would even the person's name would be scratched down the end, um, so the f later generations would know who they are. And then you would, and so in the family tomb, we've we've found these family tombs, um, there would be dozens and dozens of these ossuary boxes um as uh people pass away, and then in the kind of the Kochim or the Archasolia, um, if there's somebody who's died in the past year, they would be they would be there in their there as they're um in that first year as their their bodies decomposing, getting ready to be uh to be put in the ossuary. And so this is the um this is the process that faithful kind of first this is the the Jewish burial practice in Judea around Jerusalem that was happening. And so all everything that we read in the Gospels maps right onto this. We we're told that Joseph of Arimathea has a new tomb, nobody had uh ever been buried there. Why that is exactly we don't know. Um is he new to the area? Is the family tomb full up? I you know, but somehow there's a new unused tomb. Um uh Joseph from the book of John, I believe it is, but we read Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, do the initial burial uh preparation, put Jesus in the tomb that day on that Friday. Um, and then the women they want to do kind of a secondary um burial preparation, um, anointing the body. They get the stuff together, and of course they head there on um that Sunday morning, and uh and then you know the story from there. The stone uh is the this the stone entrance is moved, they go inside um into this cave, and uh um and where they expect to see the body, they see um an angel. So that's that's how burial practices uh worked in the first century, and I hope you know, like so much of what we've done um throughout this entire uh this entire series, I hope even you know teachings like this just help bring greater reality um to the biblical account. Uh you know, I sometimes I think folks can read these accounts and they feel like fairy tales. Um but they're not fairy tales. They're they're historical accounts of God's incredible actions in human history. Um these are real men and women going about their ordinary lives of burying a friend, and then God's extraordinary work breaks into the world. Um, and that is good news for us still today. Grace and peace.