Between the Tomb and the Dogs: Reassessing the Burial of Jesus

The question of what happened to Jesus’ body after his death is one of the most debated topics in the study of Christian origins. Most discussions tend to portray it as a choice between two options. The first is the traditional Gospel account, where Jesus is buried in a new rock-cut tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy follower. The second is the view made popular by John Dominic Crossan, who argues that the Romans rarely allowed bodies to be removed from crosses, and that Jesus’ remains may have been left to be eaten by animals.

There is also a third view, supported by many scholars and likely the most historically accurate: Jesus was given a real but dishonorable Jewish burial, probably in a simple trench grave or a plot for the condemned, not in a wealthy family tomb. As one commenter recently pointed out, the debate is commonly framed as either-or, but Crossan himself refers to both the possibility of animals and a shallow grave. The real questions are when, how, and by whom Jesus’ body was buried.

This article reviews the archaeological, legal, and textual evidence for this middle-ground view. It draws on the research of Byron R. McCane, Jodi Magness, Craig A. Evans, Raymond Brown, Dale C. Allison, Jr., as well as the critical perspectives of Crossan and Bart Ehrman, who have helped renew this debate.

The Two Poles of the Popular Debate

A. The Maximalist View

The traditional position, defended today by Craig Evans, Jodi Magness, and others, takes the Gospel burial narratives largely at face value. Magness, an American archaeologist and scholar of religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she holds the Kenan Distinguished Professorship for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism, has argued that the Gospel descriptions cohere with what archaeology has revealed about Jewish burial in the late Second Temple period.

Her argument is based on archaeological findings. Over a thousand rock-cut tombs have been found around Jerusalem, each with burial chambers and niches for bodies. Magness notes that this fits what we know about how wealthy Jews buried their dead at the time. While this does not prove the Gospel story is historical, it shows that the sources for these accounts were familiar with these burial traditions.

Craig Evans adds to this by looking at Roman law. He argues that after Jesus was crucified as a supposed troublemaker, his body would have been buried in a tomb, but not in a place of honor, following Jewish law. The Romans allowed this. Evans believes Jesus’ body was taken down and buried in a known tomb by someone representing the Jewish Sanhedrin, and that this should be seen as a historical fact.

B. The Minimalist View

John Dominic Crossan offered the main challenge to this view. Bart Ehrman later developed a similar, though more cautious, position. Ehrman stresses that it is important to remember why the Romans crucified people, especially those accused of insurrection or treason. Jesus was executed for claiming to be the King of the Jews, which was seen as a political crime.

Both Crossan and Ehrman argue that Romans usually left crucified bodies exposed as a warning to others. Ehrman believes that as more people learn about Roman practices, most scholars will agree that bodies were rarely taken down. In this view, the detailed Gospel burial stories are later additions meant to address the problem of an unburied messiah.

Roman Practice Was Less Uniform Than the Minimalists Suggest

The minimalist view is based on the idea that Romans usually left crucified bodies unburied. However, the legal and historical evidence is more complex than this simple claim.

A. The Digesta and Roman Legal Tradition

The chief legal evidence comes from the Digesta. As Evans notes, Roman law regarding the burial of the executed is far more nuanced and lenient than many suppose; in the Digesta, compiled by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century (AD 530–533) but comprising a great deal of law from the first and second centuries, important and relevant material is found in chapter 24 of book 48. The jurist Ulpian, who supplies more than forty percent of Justinian’s Digesta, preserves a ruling from his De officio proconsulis stating that the bodies of those condemned to death should not be refused to their relatives, supported by an appeal to the precedent of the great emperor Augustus as expressed in his autobiography.

The opinion of Julius Paulus is cited even more unconditionally: the bodies of persons who have been punished should be given to whoever requests them for the purpose of burial. Bodies of the executed should be allowed burial, but official requests must be made; bodies cannot simply be taken down from crosses or gibbets without permission.

Based on this evidence, Evans concludes that early laws in the Digesta show that, in most cases, executed people, including those crucified, were allowed to be buried if someone requested it.

B. The Skeptical Counter

Ehrman responds that the Digesta was compiled much later, between 530 and 533 CE, long after Rome became Christian, so it may not reflect first-century Roman law. Still, he admits that the Digesta includes earlier rulings, so it is possible this rule was in effect during Jesus’ time.

The Digesta also notes that burial was permitted only if someone requested it and received permission, and that it was sometimes denied, especially for those convicted of high treason. Ehrman focuses on this point, since Jesus was executed for treason, so the exception might apply to his case.

C. Peacetime Concessions to Jewish Sensibilities

Despite this, several ancient sources indicate that the Romans were flexible in peacetime, especially regarding Jewish customs. Evans points out that Romans respected Jewish burial practices, as seen in the writings of Philo and Josephus. Josephus says Jews made sure to bury those who were crucified before sunset. Since only Romans could carry out executions in Judea, this means that even those crucified by the Romans were buried.

The main exception to this practice happened during times of war. For example, when Titus besieged Jerusalem in AD 69–70, thousands were crucified, and few were buried. This was meant to frighten the rebels and end the uprising. Normally, though, Roman authorities in Israel allowed the burial of executed criminals.

The Archaeological Witness: The Crucified Yehohanan

One of the most important pieces of physical evidence is a 1968 discovery at Giv’at ha-Mivtar. Archaeologists found a heel bone with a nail through it among human remains dating from the first century BC to the first century AD.

The victim’s name, Yehohanan, was found on his ossuary. His right heel had been pierced. After his death, his body was taken down from the cross and buried in his family tomb. The nail remained because it hit a hard knot in the wood, bending and curling it so that the executioners could not remove it.

Yehohanan’s case shows that crucified Jews in the Roman-controlled Levant could be buried, and even have their bones later placed in an ossuary. However, Evans notes that evidence like this is rare because small bones often do not survive, and most crucified people were poor and would not have been buried in family tombs like Yehohanan, who was from a wealthy family. Jesus, by contrast, was not.

The Jewish Imperative: Burial Before Sundown

Regardless of Roman practices, Jewish law required burial on the same day. McCane explains that Jews in the Levant saw prompt burial as the proper way to treat the dead. Jewish leaders in first-century Jerusalem would have thought it right to take Jesus’ body down at sunset, but not to bury him like most other Jews.

This was due to both religious and societal reasons. Burial customs change slowly, and for centuries, Israelites and Jews buried their dead quickly and buried those who were dishonored in shame. These traditions are among the most conservative aspects of any culture, especially in religious societies.

McCane also notes that this tradition would have influenced the council that condemned Jesus. There is no need to think any council members secretly supported Jesus; it is enough that some were devout Jews involved in his trial. Their religious norms would have led them to ensure Jesus was buried in shame at sunset, which meant someone had to ask Pilate for his body.

This idea also explains a detail in the Gospels: Joseph of Arimathea buries only Jesus, not the others crucified with him. Jewish customs about dishonorable burial help make sense of this, since burial in shame applied only to those condemned by Jewish authorities.

SIDEBAR: The Law of the Two Graveyards: Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:5–6

No single text is more important to the middle-ground hypothesis than the Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin 6:5–6. Though compiled around 200 AD, this passage is widely held by scholars to preserve much older Second Temple practices.

A. The Text

The Mishnah opens with an unconditional rule: the Sages said not only that an executed transgressor must be buried on the same day that he is killed, but anyone who leaves his deceased relative overnight without burying him transgresses a prohibition. This is grounded in Deuteronomy 21:23, the same scriptural injunction quoted in the Gospels and in Paul’s famous “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” (Gal 3:13).

The text then specifies the segregation of criminal burial: a wicked person is not buried next to a righteous one; two graveyards were kept in readiness by the court, because a person liable for a more stringent death penalty is not buried near one who was liable for a lesser death penalty. Or, as Evans renders it: “They did not bury [the executed criminal] in the burying-place of his fathers. But two burying-places were kept in readiness by the Sanhedrin, one for them that were beheaded or strangled, and one for them that were stoned or burnt” (m. Sanhedrin 6:5).

The companion tractate Semahot 13.7 adds an even sharper distinction: “Neither a corpse nor the bones of a corpse may be transferred from a wretched place to an honored place, nor, needless to say, from an honored place to a wretched place; but if to the family tomb, even from an honored place to a wretched place, it is permitted.”

B. The Prohibition of Mourning

The Mishnah also forbids public mourning for the executed: “they used not to make [open] lamentation … for mourning has place in the heart alone” (m. Sanhedrin 6:6). This is a striking and often-overlooked detail, because it neatly explains the Gospels’ conspicuous silence about traditional Jewish mourning rites for Jesus.

C. Secondary Burial and Eventual Return

The system was not a permanent banishment. Once the flesh of the deceased had decomposed, the bones would be gathered and buried in their proper place in the ancestral burial plot. This is the well-attested practice of secondary burial in ossuaries that flourished in Second Temple Jerusalem.

D. Why This Text Matters

Evans notes that these burial rules show that executed criminals were actually buried. If they were not, there would be no reason to set aside special tombs for them or to move remains from a ‘wretched place’ to an ‘honored place.’

However, there is a complication. The two Sanhedrin graveyards were meant for people condemned by Jewish courts, not Roman ones. Since Jesus was executed by the Romans, it is less likely he was buried in the Sanhedrin’s cemetery. Still, the main Jewish rule remained: anyone condemned was not to be buried with honor in a family tomb.

The Heart of the Middle-Ground Hypothesis

A. McCane’s “Burial in Shame”

Byron R. McCane made a key contribution to the middle-ground view in his 2003 book Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus, which uses archaeology, sociology, and textual analysis to help uncover what happened. McCane’s main point is clear: after his death, Jesus’ body was treated with shame and buried in disgrace like a condemned criminal.

McCane notes that Jewish customs and the Gospel stories agree: Jesus’ burial fits the pattern of dishonorable burial. In every Gospel, Jesus is not buried in a family tomb, and no one performs mourning rituals for him. When the women visit, they come only to see the tomb or to anoint the body. Matthew, Luke, and John all say the tomb was one ‘where no one had yet been laid.’

Following Raymond Brown’s analysis, many scholars believe it is likely that Jesus, as an executed criminal, received a dishonorable burial arranged by one or more members of the Sanhedrin. Brown points out that Mark’s account does not suggest that Joseph gave Jesus an honorable burial.

McCane explains that dishonorable burial had a deep cultural meaning: being buried away from the family tomb, by choice, meant being cut off from family traditions. This wasn’t only unfortunate; it was considered shameful.

B. Trench Graves, Not Tombs

A key archaeological point is that only wealthy families in Jesus’ time used rock-cut tombs and later placed bones in ossuaries. Poor families from Galilee, like Jesus’, would have used simple graves.

Even Magness, who supports the Gospel burial story, admits that it is unlikely the Sanhedrin had a rock-cut tomb for criminals. Such tombs were for wealthy families. If there was time before the Sabbath, Jesus would most likely have been buried in a trench grave. Magness suggests Joseph of Arimathea may have offered his own tomb in this emergency.

This is the main point: even those who support the traditional view agree that, unless a wealthy person had intervened, someone like Jesus would have been buried in a trench grave rather than a rock-cut tomb.

C. Parallel Burial Practices Across the Empire

This class-based burial pattern was not unique to Judea. In Rome, poor people were also buried in simple graves, and the bodies of paupers and criminals were often placed in mass graves.

The Gospel of Peter: A Window Onto Early Burial Anxieties

No discussion of the burial of Jesus can ignore the so-called Gospel of Peter, a non-canonical passion narrative whose burial scene has played an outsized role in debates ever since John Dominic Crossan made it central to his reconstruction.

A. The Document Itself

The Gospel of Peter is a fragmentary apocryphal gospel from the mid-second century AD, pseudonymously attributed to the apostle Peter as its first-person narrator. It focuses on Jesus’ passion, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection while incorporating novel narrative elements that are not found in the canonical gospels. The text, originally composed in Koine Greek, survives primarily in an eighth-century manuscript fragment discovered in 1886–1887 within the Akhmîm Codex from a grave in Upper Egypt. The fragment begins mid-sentence during Jesus’ trial before Herod Antipas and ends abruptly with Peter, Andrew, and Levi fishing on the Sea of Galilee.

Most scholars date the Gospel of Peter to between 120 and 190 AD, with many preferring 150–180 AD. The early church knew about this document but rejected it.

B. The Burial Scene

What makes the Gospel of Peter so striking for our purposes is how its burial account intensifies the Jewish-law framing already visible in the Synoptics. In the fragment, Joseph acts as the friend of Pilate and the Lord; seeing that they were about to crucify Jesus, he went to Pilate and asked for the body for burial. Pilate sent for Herod, asking him for the body. Herod replied, “Brother Pilate, even if someone hadn’t asked for him, we would’ve buried him, since also Sabbath is beginning, because it’s written in the Law, ‘The sun shouldn’t set on one who’s been killed.'”

This passage is notable because the author has Herod cite the Deuteronomic law (Deut. 21:23), which supports the middle-ground view. It shows that some saw burial as a legal requirement, regardless of whether Joseph intervened.

C. Crossan’s Use and Its Critics

Crossan argued that an early version of the Gospel of Peter, which he called the ‘Cross Gospel,’ contains the oldest passion story, even older than Mark’s, which is why it played a major role in his reconstruction.

Most scholars disagree with Crossan. They see the Gospel of Peter’s burial scene as a later addition that builds on and adds to the canonical Gospels, not as an earlier source. Its features, like Jesus being ‘silent as having no pain’ and the dramatic cry at the sixth hour, along with legendary details such as a walking, talking cross, show that it is a secondary, embellished account.

D. What Peter Still Tells Us

Even if the Gospel of Peter is a later account, it still shows how second-century Christians thought about Jesus’ burial. The legendary details in Peter’s Gospel primarily enhance the honor accorded to Jesus’ body, supporting the idea that the tradition shifted from a shameful to a more honorable story, as McCane’s hypothesis indicates.

Reading the Gospels Through the Middle-Ground Lens

If Jesus was buried in shame before sundown, as the middle-ground view suggests, several puzzling details in the Gospel stories make more sense.

The reference to a “new” tomb in the Synoptic Gospels, described as “where no one had yet been laid,” may have signified separation from family tombs, suggesting it was a place for the dishonored dead rather than a mark of honor.

The Gospels do not mention traditional Jewish mourning rituals, which fits with the Mishnaic rule against public mourning for executed criminals.

The women returning later to anoint Jesus’ body suggests the first burial was rushed and incomplete, which matches what we would expect from a quick, shameful burial before the Sabbath.

In Mark’s account, Jesus’ body is not placed in a family tomb or given the usual honorific rituals, both signs of a shameful burial. Mark’s mention of the stone may be an early effort to soften the memory of this shame, a trend that becomes stronger in later Gospels.

The middle-ground view does not need to claim Joseph of Arimathea was fictional. It is simpler to think that someone, possibly a Sanhedrin member acting out of religious duty, arranged for Jesus’ prompt burial as required by Jewish law.

Dale Allison’s Cautious Defense of the Burial Tradition

The most sophisticated recent treatment of the burial question is by Dale C. Allison, Jr., the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. His landmark 2021 work The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (T&T Clark), a major revision of his 2005 chapter “Resurrecting Jesus,” has rapidly become essential reading.

A. Allison’s Methodological Stance

A key point in Allison’s book is that historical research on early Christianity should not serve the goals of either Christian apologists or secular skeptics. He believes both sides often push historical reasoning to fit their own beliefs.

Although Allison is not a skeptic, he is a challenging writer on this topic. He avoids common arguments based on apocryphal gospels or dismissing miracles as impossible. Instead, he carefully defends points where skepticism is reasonable.

B. Allison on the Burial of Jesus

Regarding Jesus’ burial, Allison supports its historicity. He considers burial by Joseph of Arimathea “highly likely,” based on multiple sources, the absence of legendary details, some embarrassing elements, the use of real names, and public knowledge of the burial and tomb location.

This is important because Allison, who is not an apologist, finds the main burial tradition more likely than not to be true. Some maximalist critics, like William Lane Craig, argue that the same reasons Allison gives for the burial’s historicity should also support the empty tomb, which Allison accepts only with hesitation.

C. Where Allison Fits in the Middle Ground

Allison does not fully accept McCane’s “burial in shame” idea, but his approach is similar. He agrees that some kind of burial took place, but is unsure of the details. This puts him close to the middle-ground view: he supports the basic fact of burial without insisting on the story of a wealthy disciple’s tomb.

In this way, Allison reflects the growing scholarly consensus of the past twenty years: Jesus was almost certainly buried, the burial followed Jewish customs, and it was probably less elaborate than the Gospel stories suggest.

Why This View Is the Most Historically Probable

Several lines of evidence support the middle-ground view as the most likely historical explanation:

1. Statistical likelihood: Although there are over a thousand rock-cut tombs, most people in Jerusalem were buried in simple trench graves. So, for a non-elite Jew, ground burial was the norm.
2. Economic realism: Jesus and his followers were not wealthy. Magness points out that Jesus came from a poor family, so they likely used ordinary graves, like most Jews of that era.
3. Status of an executed criminal: Even if a family could afford a tomb, Jewish law (m. Sanhedrin 6:5) did not allow a condemned criminal to be buried in the family plot.
4. Convergence of legal and cultural pressures: Roman law usually permitted burial upon request, Jewish law required burial before sundown, and the Sanhedrin was responsible for burying those it condemned.
5. Explanatory power: The middle-ground view fits both Jewish burial laws and customs, and does not depend on the unlikely idea of a wealthy person giving a special tomb to a condemned outsider.
6. Trajectory of the tradition: The story develops from Mark’s simple, almost shameful account to more honorable versions in Matthew, Luke, John, and the Gospel of Peter.
7. Scholarly convergence: Over the past twenty years, scholars like Dale Allison, McCane, and Magness have increasingly supported some form of the middle-ground view.

Honest Caveats

This reconstruction cannot be proven, but neither can the maximalist nor the minimalist view. McCane’s thesis has been criticized, with William Lane Craig and Jodi Magness offering different challenges in published articles. The debate continues and is not settled.

What we can say for sure is that the usual debate, between a perfect tomb and a body left for animals, is a false choice. The most likely scenario is that Jesus was quickly and dishonorably buried in a trench grave or a criminal’s plot. This view fits the archaeological evidence, Jewish burial laws, the development of the tradition, and the careful work of scholars like Dale Allison.

In short, this is the view that best fits the evidence we have.