The Case For Christ

honorable burial?"
Apparently, my observation put me in good company. "Luke may have
felt this same discomfort," Craig said, "which would explain why
he added one important detail-Joseph of Arimathea wasn't present
when the official vote was taken. So that would explain things.
But the significant point about Joseph of Arimathea is that he
would not be the sort of person who would have been invented by
Christian legend or Christian authors."
I needed more than merely a conclusion on that matter; I wanted
some solid reasoning. "Why not?" I asked.
"Given the early Christian anger and bitterness toward the Jewish
leaders who had instigated the crucifixion of Jesus," he said,
"it's highly improbable that they would have invented one who did
the right thing by giving Jesus an honorable burial -especially
while all of Jesus' disciples deserted him! Besides, they
wouldn't make up a specific member of a specific group, whom
people could check out for themselves and ask about this. So
Joseph is undoubtedly a historical figure."
Before I could ask a follow-up question, Craig continued. "I'll
add that if this burial by Joseph were a legend that developed
later, you'd expect to find other competing burial traditions
about what happened to Jesus' body. However, you don't find
these at all.
As a result, the majority of New Testament scholars today agree
that the burial account of Jesus is fundamentally reliable. John
A. T. Robinson, the late Cambridge University New Testament
scholar, said the honorable burial of Jesus is one of the
earliest and best-attested facts that we have about the
historical Jesus."
Craig's explanations satisfied me that Jesus' body was indeed
placed in Joseph's tomb. But the creed left an ambiguity:
perhaps, even after the Resurrection, his body remained entombed.
"While the creed says Jesus was crucified, buried, and then
resurrected, it doesn't specifically say the tomb was empty," I
pointed out. "Doesn't this leave room for the possibility that
the Resurrection was only spiritual in nature and that Jesus'
body was still in the tomb?" "The creed definitely implies the
empty tomb," Craig countered. "You see, the Jews had a physical
concept of resurrection. For them, the primary object of the
resurrection was the bones of the deceased-not even the flesh,
which was thought to be perishable. After the flesh rotted away,