Mar 30, 2012 -- 8:29PM, Nino0814 wrote:

Here is a documentary covering the question, "where was Jesus buried?": www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episo...

There was no shrine or markings honoring this site until 300 years later ("found" under the orders of Constantine).   Why didn't the Christians keep the place sacred in their tradition?  

How confident are you that Jesus was buried in one of the tombs identified today? 

Why does it matter?

He's no longer using it!

Mar 30, 2012 -- 8:36PM, Roodog wrote:

Why does it matter?

He's no longer using it! 

Its a question of historic credibility of the Christian claim of the physical empty tomb.   In 1994 the spiritual leader of the Lubavitchers Jews, Rabbi Mendels Schneetson, died.  Many of his follower believed he was the messiah.  There is a daily pilgramage to his gravesite.  If they keep watch over an occuppied grave awaiting a possible miracle, a grave that was the exact place of the most significant historical event ever, should have been remembered.

IMO it is highly unlikely that Christians would not have preserve the tomb where Jesus was reported to have been laid, and then resurrected, as a sacred site, or at least records of Christians fraughts attempt to do so.  

Mar 31, 2012 -- 9:49AM, Dutch777 wrote:

   I wonder how appropriate is the comparison between the earlier Palestinian and later Ashkenazic-Hasidic Judaisms.

The only link I am making is our humanity; marking and honoring sacred sites is something people do.  The fact that no 1st century Christian tried to keep the site sacred is itself a historical fact that should be considered.

Unless, of course, Jesus wasn't actually laid in the tomb but was thrown into a ditch to be devoured by wild animals --- as was the Roman custom for executed felons and subversives.  I'm not denying the Joseph of Arimathea account; I'm just not placing great historic weight on it. 

 In any case, 1Pet. 3:19 "also he went and preached to the spirits in prison"; 1Pet.4:6 "For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead"---would suggest an alternative hypothesis: viz. that the resurrection was from Sheol, not the tomb.  If we consider the alternative hypothesis, the need for a tomb would appear irrelevant, is das nicht wahr ?

 I'm not certain that we'll have a fact-based answer to the initial question.

IMO the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea is as historically questionable the as the later developed birth narratives.  In Paul's account (the earliest account) of Jesus being buried he implied that Christ was buried in the ground; this also leads me to believe the empty tomb was a literary device of Mark's or one of his sources. 

Maybe the first century Christians didn't bother marking the site of Jesus' burial because they didn't think it mattered. They were all expecting the second coming in their own lifetime, and by the time they caught on to the fact that that wasn't going to happen any time soon, the burial site had faded from living memory (if indeed there were any people left who remembered exactly where it was). Helena, Constantine's mother, had a good time identifying all sorts of sites that she claimed were connected with Jesus, without a shred of evidence to back her stories!

As for the suggested sites for the tomb provided by Joseph of Aramethea, tourist traps every one of them! My uncle was stationed with the British army in what was then the Palestine Mandate in 1947/48. He reported that if all the pieces of the true cross that were offered for sale in street markets were reassembled, the cross would stretch from Lebanon to the Sinai lengthwise, and from the Mediterranean to Trans-Jordan (as it was then) across! 

Mar 31, 2012 -- 6:49PM, Mostyn32 wrote:

Maybe the first century Christians didn't bother marking the site of Jesus' burial because they didn't think it mattered. They were all expecting the second coming in their own lifetime, and by the time they caught on to the fact that that wasn't going to happen any time soon, the burial site had faded from living memory (if indeed there were any people left who remembered exactly where it was). Helena, Constantine's mother, had a good time identifying all sorts of sites that she claimed were connected with Jesus, without a shred of evidence to back her stories!

As for the suggested sites for the tomb provided by Joseph of Aramethea, tourist traps every one of them! My uncle was stationed with the British army in what was then the Palestine Mandate in 1947/48. He reported that if all the pieces of the true cross that were offered for sale in street markets were reassembled, the cross would stretch from Lebanon to the Sinai lengthwise, and from the Mediterranean to Trans-Jordan (as it was then) across! 

Possibly the significance of the tomb was less important to the inner circle of disciples, but I cannot image that it would not have been of interest to anyone.   If the gospels are accurate regarding popular interested in Jesus, there were great crowds who followed his ministry, even if they were not fully committed.  The place his disciples claimed God performed a great miracle, with the miracle working rabbi, not being a site of interest to the crowds strains credulity.