THE BURIAL OF JESUS

Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the Jewish Council—the Sanhedrin which had earlier condemned Jesus. This kind wealthy man who respected Jesus had wished to ensure that Jesus’ corpse was buried in accordance with Jewish law  which stated that dead Jewish bodies should not be left exposed day or night.  He had donated his own burial tomb which had previously been carved out of a huge rock formation. The naked body of Jesus was wrapped in a new shroud and laid on a rock slab inside the tomb.  Then a heavy round slab of rock was rolled across the opening of the tomb. 

The next day—Saturday, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to the Roman fortress to meet with Pilate. They told Pilate of their fears that Jesus’ disciples might remove the body of Jesus from the tomb and claim that Jesus had risen from the dead in three days to preach again to the population.   

Pilate gave the order that two soldiers were to guard the tomb for the next three days.

The next day—Early Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene, the mother of James and along with Salome, bought spices to anoint Jesus’ body. After they entered the cemetery, they headed to the tomb of Jesus.

Now here is  a question to consider what the answer should be.

Where were the three guards at this time? 

It was just after sunrise when they were on their way to the tomb ³and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" ⁴But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side of the stone slab and they were alarmed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place here  where they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see jesus, just as he told you.'" Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

There is another version as to what occurred when Mary and  Salome bought spices to anoint Jesus’ body. After they approached the opened tomb,  Mary then  stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹

They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?" "They have taken my LORD away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this moment, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." ¹⁶Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means "Teacher"). Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" ¹

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the LORD!" And she told them that Jesus  had said these things to her.

It is at this point of this article that I am going to make crucial statements. You have the choice to believe me or not to believe me b ut I ask you to follow what I am going to say in the next parts of this article.  

First I will deal with the mention of the two angels siting in the tomb.

I do not really believe that angels actually exist.  I will explain how  I have arrived at that conclusion. 

There are many misconceptions about angels in heaven such as do we become angels after we die? Who are the angels who have always existed? What is the purpose and role of angels? There are  some concepts from Scriptures about the purpose God has for the angels he created to exist in heaven with him. 

First you have to believe that there is a God and second that there is a heaven. Millions of Atheists around the world do not believe in the existence of God or Heaven. 

If their conclusions are valid, then there were not two angels in the tomb talking to Mary.

When we were small children, we believed that there was a Santa Clause who brought good children gifts all around the world. But when we grew older, we realized that it was our parents who gave us  the gifts. Our conclusions were formed on the basis of common sense.

I honestly believe that common sense will convince people that the myths in the Bible are without any foundations at all. Here are some of those myths.

Moses crossing the Red Sea. God didn’t part the waters of the Red Sea for Moses and the hundreds of former slaves to cross. He actually took them across the small shallow lake that is several miles north of the Red Sea.  The Egyptian soldiers drowned in the lake when the tide rose in the afternoon.  

Moses didn’t turn the water of the Nile River into blood. The colour of the water was brought about by millions of red insects that were on the surface of the water. This happens even in this era  every once in a while. 

Moses didn’t see a bush that was in flames. The bush he saw had red leaves and when the wind blows, the bush appears to be on fire. 

Adam and Eve were not the first human beings on Earth. When their son, Cain killed his brother Able, Cain was cast out of the garden where they all lived. He later married a woman from another area and they eventually lived in a city.

What is Hades?  It is another word for Hell.   The “gates of Hades” was a colloquial Jewish phrase for death, which makes sense since Hades (or Sheol in Hebrew) is the realm of the dead and consequently a person would have to physically die to go there. That means that both bad and good people go there. They don’t go there permanently according to the Jews.

The best myth I found is the description of heaven as described by the last testament called Revelation.  It in part describes Heaven as a place where the streets are made of gold. Many Christians beeve that Mary is the quen of heaven and Jesus is the king of heaven. 

Another part of the Bible describes that Jesus fed five  thousand ffolowers s with five loafs of bread  and five fish. If you bnelive that, you are realy gullible.

Now I will  teturn you to Jesus’ death. 

When the Roman  soldier tghrust the tip of his spear ito Jesus’ chest, blood didn’t squirt out ecause his herart wasn’t pumpimng blood throughout is body. Water did come out of the wound since the human body has from 45-75% of water in the human body.

Since Jesus heart t had stopped  pumping blood throughout his body, that meant that his oxygenated  blood didn’t feed his brain  cells so the cells were no longer viable.  This meantg that he was totally brain dead a nd thus as a fprevously unctioning human, being he was actually dead.   Once the brain cells die, they cannogt be revised again.

The NewTestament drscibes two events after he was crucified in which his disciples saw two men whom they believed were Jesus. But in both occasions, the man they saw didn’t look like Jesus but they believed  that the mam was Jesus s because he spoke to them as if he was Jesus.   

Jesus really existed because Josephus, who was a historian Jew and a Roman citizen wrtote a small commnet in one of his books that Jesus was put to death by Pilate.

I am mindful that the Committee formed under the authority of King James had difficulty in searching  for the history of Jesus so they probably made some of te stories  up in the way they believed to be the truth. 

There is no doubt in my mind that he  really existed but I have difficulty in believing that he lived after he died and continued to preach until he was ascending to heaven in the presence of thousands of followers.