Joseph of Arimathea

• Joseph of Arimathea

174:5.1About noon­time, as Philip was pur­chas­ing sup­plies for the new camp which was that day be­ing es­tab­lished near Geth­sem­ane, he was ac­costed by a del­e­ga­tion of strangers, a group of be­liev­ing Greeks from Alexan­dria, Athens, and Rome, whose spokesman said to the apos­tle: “You have been pointed out to us by those who know you; so we come to you, Sir, with the re­quest to see Je­sus, your Mas­ter.” Philip was taken by sur­prise thus to meet these promi­nent and in­quir­ing Greek gen­tiles in the mar­ket place, and, since Je­sus had so ex­plic­itly charged all of the twelve not to en­gage in any pub­lic teach­ing dur­ing the Pass­over week, he was a bit per­plexed as to the right way to han­dle this mat­ter. He was also dis­con­certed be­cause these men were for­eign gen­tiles. If they had been Jews or near-by and fa­mil­iar gen­tiles, he would not have hes­i­tated so markedly. What he did was this: He asked these Greeks to re­main right where they were. As he has­tened away, they sup­posed that he went in search of Je­sus, but in re­al­ity he hur­ried off to the home of Joseph, where he knew An­drew and the other apos­tles were at lunch; and call­ing An­drew out, he ex­plained the pur­pose of his com­ing, and then, ac­com­pa­nied by An­drew, he re­turned to the wait­ing Greeks.

• Joseph of Arimathea

188:3.3Mary the mother of Je­sus, with Ruth and Jude, re­turned to Beth­any to join their fam­ily this Sat­ur­day evening just be­fore sun­set. David Zeb­e­dee re­mained at the home of Nicode­mus, where he had ar­ranged for his mes­sen­gers to as­sem­ble early Sun­day morn­ing. The women of Gal­i­lee, who pre­pared spices for the fur­ther em­balm­ing of Je­sus’ body, tar­ried at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

175:0.1Shortly af­ter two o’clock on this Tues­day af­ter­noon, Je­sus, ac­com­pa­nied by eleven apos­tles, Joseph of Ari­mathea, the thirty Greeks, and cer­tain other dis­ci­ples, ar­rived at the tem­ple and be­gan the de­liv­ery of his last ad­dress in the courts of the sa­cred ed­i­fice. This dis­course was in­tended to be his last ap­peal to the Jew­ish peo­ple and the fi­nal in­dict­ment of his ve­he­ment en­e­mies and would-be de­stroy­ers—the scribes, Phar­isees, Sad­ducees, and the chief rulers of Is­rael. Through­out the forenoon the var­i­ous groups had had an op­por­tu­nity to ques­tion Je­sus; this af­ter­noon no one asked him a ques­tion.

188:1.2A cru­ci­fied per­son could not be buried in a Jew­ish ceme­tery; there was a strict law against such a pro­ce­dure. Joseph and Nicode­mus knew this law, and on the way out to Gol­go­tha they had de­cided to bury Je­sus in Joseph’s new fam­ily tomb, hewn out of solid rock, lo­cated a short dis­tance north of Gol­go­tha and across the road lead­ing to Samaria. No one had ever lain in this tomb, and they thought it ap­pro­pri­ate that the Mas­ter should rest there. Joseph re­ally be­lieved that Je­sus would rise from the dead, but Nicode­mus was very doubt­ful. These for­mer mem­bers of the San­hedrin had kept their faith in Je­sus more or less of a se­cret, al­though their fel­low San­hedrists had long sus­pected them, even be­fore they with­drew from the coun­cil. From now on they were the most out­spo­ken dis­ci­ples of Je­sus in all Je­ru­sa­lem.

188:1.8Aside from David Zeb­e­dee and Joseph of Ari­mathea, very few of Je­sus’ dis­ci­ples re­ally be­lieved or un­der­stood that he was due to arise from the tomb on the third day.

142:6.9But Nicode­mus did sum­mon faith enough to lay hold of the king­dom. He faintly protested when his col­leagues of the San­hedrin sought to con­demn Je­sus with­out a hear­ing; and with Joseph of Ari­mathea, he later boldly ac­knowl­edged his faith and claimed the body of Je­sus, even when most of the dis­ci­ples had fled in fear from the scenes of their Mas­ter’s fi­nal suf­fer­ing and death.

187:6.2Af­ter the death of the Mas­ter, John sent the women, in charge of Jude, to the home of Eli­jah Mark, where they tar­ried over the Sab­bath day. John him­self, be­ing well known by this time to the Ro­man cen­tu­rion, re­mained at Gol­go­tha un­til Joseph and Nicode­mus ar­rived on the scene with an or­der from Pi­late au­tho­riz­ing them to take pos­ses­sion of the body of Je­sus.

188:0.3In the mean­time, Joseph of Ari­mathea, ac­com­pa­nied by Nicode­mus, had gone to Pi­late and asked that the body of Je­sus be turned over to them for proper burial. It was not un­com­mon for friends of cru­ci­fied per­sons to of­fer bribes to the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties for the priv­i­lege of gain­ing pos­ses­sion of such bod­ies. Joseph went be­fore Pi­late with a large sum of money, in case it be­came nec­es­sary to pay for per­mis­sion to re­move Je­sus’ body to a pri­vate burial tomb. But Pi­late would not take money for this. When he heard the re­quest, he quickly signed the or­der which au­tho­rized Joseph to pro­ceed to Gol­go­tha and take im­me­di­ate and full pos­ses­sion of the Mas­ter’s body. In the mean­time, the sand­storm hav­ing con­sid­er­ably abated, a group of Jews rep­re­sent­ing the San­hedrin had gone out to Gol­go­tha for the pur­pose of mak­ing sure that Je­sus’ body ac­com­pa­nied those of the brig­ands to the open pub­lic burial pits.

142:8.4Al­though Je­sus and the apos­tles spent the en­tire month of June in or near Je­ru­sa­lem, they did no pub­lic teach­ing dur­ing this pe­riod. They lived for the most part in tents, which they pitched in a shaded park, or gar­den, known in that day as Geth­sem­ane. This park was sit­u­ated on the west­ern slope of the Mount of Olives not far from the brook Kidron. The Sab­bath week­ends they usu­ally spent with Laz­a­rus and his sis­ters at Beth­any. Je­sus en­tered within the walls of Je­ru­sa­lem only a few times, but a large num­ber of in­ter­ested in­quir­ers came out to Geth­sem­ane to visit with him. One Fri­day evening Nicode­mus and one Joseph of Ari­mathea ven­tured out to see Je­sus but turned back through fear even af­ter they were stand­ing be­fore the en­trance to the Mas­ter’s tent. And, of course, they did not per­ceive that Je­sus knew all about their do­ings.

150:1.1Of all the dar­ing things which Je­sus did in con­nec­tion with his earth ca­reer, the most amaz­ing was his sud­den an­nounce­ment on the evening of Jan­uary 16: “On the mor­row we will set apart ten women for the min­is­ter­ing work of the king­dom.” At the be­gin­ning of the two weeks’ pe­riod dur­ing which the apos­tles and the evan­ge­lists were to be ab­sent from Beth­saida on their fur­lough, Je­sus re­quested David to sum­mon his par­ents back to their home and to dis­patch mes­sen­gers call­ing to Beth­saida ten de­vout women who had served in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the for­mer en­camp­ment and the tented in­fir­mary. These women had all lis­tened to the in­struc­tion given the young evan­ge­lists, but it had never oc­curred to ei­ther them­selves or their teach­ers that Je­sus would dare to com­mis­sion women to teach the gospel of the king­dom and min­is­ter to the sick. These ten women se­lected and com­mis­sioned by Je­sus were: Su­sanna, the daugh­ter of the for­mer chazan of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the stew­ard of Herod An­tipas; Eliz­a­beth, the daugh­ter of a wealthy Jew of Tiberias and Sep­pho­ris; Martha, the el­der sis­ter of An­drew and Pe­ter; Rachel, the sis­ter-in-law of Jude, the Mas­ter’s brother in the flesh; Nas­anta, the daugh­ter of El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian; Milcha, a cousin of the Apos­tle Thomas; Ruth, the el­dest daugh­ter of Mat­thew Levi; Celta, the daugh­ter of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion; and Aga­man, a widow of Da­mas­cus. Sub­se­quently, Je­sus added two other women to this group—Mary Mag­da­lene and Re­becca, the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea.

188:1.4They car­ried the body into the tomb, a cham­ber about ten feet square, where they hur­riedly pre­pared it for burial. The Jews did not re­ally bury their dead; they ac­tu­ally em­balmed them. Joseph and Nicode­mus had brought with them large quan­ti­ties of myrrh and aloes, and they now wrapped the body with ban­dages sat­u­rated with these so­lu­tions. When the em­balm­ing was com­pleted, they tied a nap­kin about the face, wrapped the body in a linen sheet, and rev­er­ently placed it on a shelf in the tomb.

188:1.3At about half past four o’clock the burial pro­ces­sion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth started from Gol­go­tha for Joseph’s tomb across the way. The body was wrapped in a linen sheet as the four men car­ried it, fol­lowed by the faith­ful women watch­ers from Gal­i­lee. The mor­tals who bore the ma­te­rial body of Je­sus to the tomb were: Joseph, Nicode­mus, John, and the Ro­man cen­tu­rion.

190:3.1The fifth mor­ontia man­i­fes­ta­tion of Je­sus to the rec­og­ni­tion of mor­tal eyes oc­curred in the pres­ence of some twenty-five women be­liev­ers as­sem­bled at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea, at about fif­teen min­utes past four o’clock on this same Sun­day af­ter­noon. Mary Mag­da­lene had re­turned to Joseph’s house just a few min­utes be­fore this ap­pear­ance. James, Je­sus’ brother, had re­quested that noth­ing be said to the apos­tles con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s ap­pear­ance at Beth­any. He had not asked Mary to re­frain from re­port­ing the oc­cur­rence to her sis­ter be­liev­ers. Ac­cord­ingly, af­ter Mary had pledged all the women to se­crecy, she pro­ceeded to re­late what had so re­cently hap­pened while she was with Je­sus’ fam­ily at Beth­any. And she was in the very midst of this thrilling recital when a sud­den and solemn hush fell over them; they be­held in their very midst the fully vis­i­ble form of the risen Je­sus. He greeted them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. In the fel­low­ship of the king­dom there shall be nei­ther Jew nor gen­tile, rich nor poor, free nor bond, man nor woman. You also are called to pub­lish the good news of the lib­erty of man­kind through the gospel of son­ship with God in the king­dom of heaven. Go to all the world pro­claim­ing this gospel and con­firm­ing be­liev­ers in the faith thereof. And while you do this, for­get not to min­is­ter to the sick and strengthen those who are faint­hearted and fear-rid­den. And I will be with you al­ways, even to the ends of the earth.” And when he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight, while the women fell on their faces and wor­shiped in si­lence.

164:2.1Je­sus had at­tended the feast of taber­na­cles that he might pro­claim the gospel to the pil­grims from all parts of the em­pire; he now went up to the feast of the ded­i­ca­tion for just one pur­pose: to give the San­hedrin and the Jew­ish lead­ers an­other chance to see the light. The prin­ci­pal event of these few days in Je­ru­sa­lem oc­curred on Fri­day night at the home of Nicode­mus. Here were gath­ered to­gether some twenty-five Jew­ish lead­ers who be­lieved Je­sus’ teach­ing. Among this group were four­teen men who were then, or had re­cently been, mem­bers of the San­hedrin. This meet­ing was at­tended by Eber, Mata­dor­mus, and Joseph of Ari­mathea.

190:1.2When the apos­tles re­fused to be­lieve the re­port of the five women who rep­re­sented that they had seen Je­sus and talked with him, Mary Mag­da­lene re­turned to the tomb, and the oth­ers went back to Joseph’s house, where they re­lated their ex­pe­ri­ences to his daugh­ter and the other women. And the women be­lieved their re­port. Shortly af­ter six o’clock the daugh­ter of Joseph of Ari­mathea and the four women who had seen Je­sus went over to the home of Nicode­mus, where they re­lated all these hap­pen­ings to Joseph, Nicode­mus, David Zeb­e­dee, and the other men there as­sem­bled. Nicode­mus and the oth­ers doubted their story, doubted that Je­sus had risen from the dead; they con­jec­tured that the Jews had re­moved the body. Joseph and David were dis­posed to be­lieve the re­port, so much so that they hur­ried out to in­spect the tomb, and they found ev­ery­thing just as the women had de­scribed. And they were the last to so view the sepul­chre, for the high priest sent the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards to the tomb at half past seven o’clock to re­move the grave cloths. The cap­tain wrapped them all up in the linen sheet and threw them over a near-by cliff.

188:1.7While all this was go­ing on, the women were hid­ing near at hand so that they saw it all and ob­served where the Mas­ter had been laid. They thus se­creted them­selves be­cause it was not per­mis­si­ble for women to as­so­ciate with men at such a time. These women did not think Je­sus had been prop­erly pre­pared for burial, and they agreed among them­selves to go back to the home of Joseph, rest over the Sab­bath, make ready spices and oint­ments, and re­turn on Sun­day morn­ing prop­erly to pre­pare the Mas­ter’s body for the death rest. The women who thus tar­ried by the tomb on this Fri­day evening were: Mary Mag­da­lene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Martha an­other sis­ter of Je­sus’ mother, and Re­becca of Sep­pho­ris.

189:4.2At the home of Nicode­mus there were gath­ered to­gether, with David Zeb­e­dee and Joseph of Ari­mathea, some twelve or fif­teen of the more promi­nent of the Je­ru­sa­lem dis­ci­ples of Je­sus. At the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea there were some fif­teen or twenty of the lead­ing women be­liev­ers. Only these women abode in Joseph’s house, and they had kept close within dur­ing the hours of the Sab­bath day and the evening af­ter the Sab­bath, so that they were ig­no­rant of the mil­i­tary guard on watch at the tomb; nei­ther did they know that a sec­ond stone had been rolled in front of the tomb, and that both of these stones had been placed un­der the seal of Pi­late.

192:0.3Dur­ing the week they tar­ried in Je­ru­sa­lem, Mary the mother of Je­sus spent much of the time with the women be­liev­ers who were stop­ping at the home of Joseph of Ari­mathea.