The Case For Christ

Bible in my lap and quickly reviewed the passage: "For what I
received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was
buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the
Scriptures . . ." The creed then goes on to list several
appearances of the resurrected Jesus. "This creed is incredibly
early and therefore trustworthy material," Craig said.
"Essentially, it's a four-line formula. The first line refers to
the Crucifixion, the second to the burial, the third to the
Resurrection, and the fourth to Jesus' appearances. As you can
see, the
second line affirms that Jesus was buried."
That was too vague for me. "Wait a minute," I interjected. "He
may have been buried, but was it in a tomb? And was it through
Joseph of Arimathea, this mysterious character who comes out of
nowhere to claim the body?"
Craig remained patient. "This creed is actually a summary that
corresponds line by line with what the gospels teach," he
explained. "When we turn to the gospels, we find multiple,
independent attestation of this burial story, and Joseph of
Arimathea is specifically named in all four accounts. On top of
that, the burial story in Mark is so extremely early that it's
simply not possible for it to have been subject to legendary
corruption."
"How can you tell it's early?" I asked.
"Two reasons," he said. "First, Mark is generally considered to
be the earliest gospel. Second, his gospel basically consists of
short anecdotes about Jesus, more like pearls on a string than a
smooth, continuous narrative.
"But when you get to the last week of Jesus' life-the so-called
passion story-then you do have a continuous narrative of events
in sequence. This passion story was apparently taken by Mark from
an even earlier source-and this source included the story of
Jesus being buried in the tomb."
IS JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA HISTORICAL?
While those were good arguments, I spotted a problem with Mark's
account of what happened. "Mark says that the entire Sanhedrin
voted to condemn Jesus," I said. "If that's true, this means
Joseph of Arimathea cast his ballot to kill Jesus. Isn't it
highly unlikely that he would have then come to give Jesus an