Introduction
Timeline Speculations
The Time Window
Phase 1: Three O’Clock to Jesus’ Death
Phase 2: Death to Joseph of Arimathea’s Arrival
Phase 3: Journey to Pontius Pilate
Phase 4: Detour to the Market
Phase 5: Removing Jesus from the Cross
Phase 6: Preparation of the Body and Burial
Conclusion
Introduction
Good Friday and Easter Sunday bookend the holiest three days on the Christian calendar. As I write this, the world has just witnessed the 2025 Easter celebration in Rome, where the ailing Pope Francis gave his poignant Easter blessing just hours before his death. The Apostles’ Creed, embraced by the Catholic Church and other denominations, summarizes what Jesus went through during this period:[1]
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell. On the third day he rose again.
This is a profession of faith, but that first sentence is also a historical claim, and Christian pilgrims regularly visit Jerusalem to venerate the sites where the crucifixion events supposedly took place. The most prominent is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is believed to contain Jesus’ crucifixion site, the Stone of Unction (the slab where Jesus’ body was prepared for burial), and his burial tomb.[2] The Holy Sepulchre is favored by the older “smells and bells” branches of Christianity, such as the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Since the 19th century, various Protestant groups and the Mormons have fled the incense and icons of the Sepulchre to a more serene location further north called the Garden Tomb.[3] Many believe it is the authentic location for Jesus’ crucifixion because it is near a geological feature that resembles a skull; Jesus’ crucifixion site, Golgotha, translates as the “Place of the Skull” (Mark 15:22).[4]
In this essay, I want to drill down into the historicity of a very specific portion of this Easter weekend narrative, namely the brief period between Jesus’ death and burial. I will focus on the account in the Gospel of Mark, as most scholars consider it the earliest gospel written and thus closest in time to when the actual events occurred. These are the events in the Mark account that I read as historical assertions (Mark 15:37-46):
- Jesus died on the cross shortly after three o’clock on a Friday afternoon.
- Once he died, a member of the Jewish council named Joseph of Arimathea went to Pontius Pilate to ask for Jesus’ body.
- Pilate granted approval after the centurion who was posted to Golgotha confirmed the death.
- Joseph of Arimathea then bought a burial cloth, returned to Golgotha, took Jesus down from the cross, wrapped him in the cloth, and placed him in a rock cut tomb, rolling a stone to cover its entrance.
- Joseph of Arimathea had to race against the sundial to accomplish all of this, as the Sabbath would begin at sunset, and Jewish law prohibited burial on the Sabbath.
The last bullet raises the central question I want to examine: was there enough time for Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus before sunset? The Christian world shouts “Yes!” I say not so fast.
Timeline Speculations
Anyone attempting to answer this question must rely much more on speculation than facts. First, the Gospel of Mark is frustratingly short on details. It does not say what time, exactly, Jesus died, nor the exact time of sunset, which would establish Joseph of Arimathea’s time window. It does not identify the path Joseph of Arimathea took through Jerusalem to find Pontius Pilate. It does not reveal the marketplace where Joseph of Arimathea bought the burial cloth. Some time-consuming tasks are also dispensed with in just a few words, such as the removal of Jesus from the cross with “he took him down” (Mark 15:46).
A second problem is that Jerusalem is one of the most recycled cities on the planet. As archeologist Jodi Magness highlights in her 2024 book, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From its Beginnings to the Crusades, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Muslims, and then the crusaders all knocked over parts of the city to construct new buildings, walls, and roads.[5] This topographical upheaval has confounded scholarly efforts to identify with certainty the locations of Golgotha, the tomb, and other key sites. This is an obvious problem for making a time estimate, because much of the estimate will depend on how long it took Joseph of Arimathea to move about between these locations to complete his mission.
On top of this, some Bible scholars, such as Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan, argue that Jesus’ tomb burial may not have happened at all, based on what is known of Roman crucifixion practices.[6] Public crucifixion had the twofold purpose of terrorizing local populations and executing the worst offenders in the most painful and humiliating way possible. The humiliation continued after death, as dead bodies were left on crosses to decompose and be eaten by scavengers. Given these goals, Pontius Pilate was unlikely to have given Jesus’ body to Joseph of Arimathea in deference to Jewish burial sensibilities.
That said, unlikely does not mean impossible, and there were rock cut tombs all around Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, so tomb burial remains plausible. In the sections that follow, I would like to explore whether time constraints nonetheless rule out tomb burial by sunset, based on a granular reading of Mark. I first estimate the total time window I believe Joseph of Arimathea had, and then break Mark’s narrative down into six phases. For each, I flag the textual clues that I believe point to the most plausible time estimate, and then countdown the remaining minutes until sunset. Will Joseph of Arimathea succeed?
The Time Window
The last time reference in Mark before Jesus’ death was three o’clock in the afternoon, when Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani” (Mark 15:33-34). Many translations say instead that Jesus made this cry at the “ninth hour.” This gets back to the sundial idea. The ancients divided the daylight hours into twelve, with noon marking midday. Sunrise was at six o’clock in the morning, so the ninth hour was nine hours later, or three o’clock. Further, this establishes that three hours (180 minutes) is the general time window for Jesus’ burial—from three o’clock until sunset at six o’clock in the evening.
But the length of sundial hours will change during the year based on one’s location and the date, so I am going to take a stab at refining this estimate. We know the location was Jerusalem and that all the gospels agree Jesus died on a Friday. We also know Jesus was crucified by Pilate, who scholars say was Roman prefect of Judaea between the years 26 and 36.[7] Many scholars also believe that the most likely crucifixion date within this range would fall between the years 30 and 33, based on other Biblical clues (such as chronological information from the apostle Paul’s New Testament letters).[8] After that, the problems begin.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) say that Jesus died on the first day of Passover, or the 15th of Nisan on the Jewish calendar, because Jesus’ last meal with his disciples was a Passover meal (Matthew 26:19, Mark 14:16, Luke 22:13). As the Jewish day begins at sunset, this means that the 15th of Nisan began on a Thursday after sunset, with Jesus eating the Passover meal that evening. It was still the 15th of Nisan when he died on the cross Friday afternoon. The Gospel of John, however, says that Jesus was crucified on the 14th of Nisan, the day of Preparation for the Passover (John 18:28 and 19:14). The Jewish celebrants in Jerusalem would have been busy preparing for both the coming of the Sabbath and their Passover meals when Jesus died. The time problem is that Passover is a moveable feast, so its celebration can occur anytime between late March or well into April. The question for Bible scholars and ancient calendar experts is thus: between the years 26 and 36, were there any Fridays that fell on either the 14th or 15th of Nisan?
It turns out that the two best candidates match the John account, with the 14th of Nisan falling on a Friday on April 7, 30, and April 3, 33.[9] Maddeningly, these dates need to be tweaked further as they are from the Romans’ Julian calendar, the dominant calendar at the time of the crucifixion. Today we use the Gregorian calendar, which replaced the Julian in 1582. To translate the Julian into Gregorian, calendar experts use what is called the proleptic Gregorian calendar for dates prior to 1582. The correction from the Julian to the proleptic Gregorian moves the dates two days earlier, making the two most likely crucifixion dates as April 5, 30 and April 1, 33.[10]
To make my sundial adjustment, I used the Time and Date website, which identifies the sunrise and sunset times for locations around the globe. I picked the longer day, April 5th, and checked the expected day length for April 5, 2025, for Jerusalem. The result was 12:38:48 hours.[11] Dividing that extra 38 minutes and 48 seconds (2,328 seconds) by 12 yields 194 seconds, or an extra 3:14 minutes per sundial hour, which I rounded up to 4 minutes to keep the math easier. Any genuine scholar out there can correct any blunders I have made, but adding 4 minutes to three sundial hours (three o’clock to sunset at six o’clock) adds an extra 12 minutes, for a total time window of 192 minutes.
Phase 1: Three O’Clock to Jesus’ Death
Mark does not say that Jesus died exactly at three o’clock. After Jesus made his cry, some bystanders speculate that Jesus was calling Elijah (Mark 15:35). One of the bystanders then runs, soaks a sponge with wine, and puts it on a reed to offer to Jesus, adding sarcastically: “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take him down” (Mark 15:36). After this, Jesus lets out a loud cry and breaths his last (Mark 15:37). Because Jesus cannot die until after he is offered this wine, the only time-consuming element is the bystander fetching the wine. How many minutes did that take?
I focused on two important clues in Mark 15:36, which says the wine offeror was a “bystander” who “ran” to get the wine. As a bystander with no connection to Jesus, he is unlikely to have brought the wine, reed, and sponge there himself. Also, if he had, why run? His supplies would have been right at his feet. Likewise, he would have had no need to run if others at the crucifixion site had brought wine they were willing to share, such as supporters of the two crucified revolutionaries (although none are described in Mark), or the kindly Roman guards.
My conclusion is that the bystander ran because he had to leave the crucifixion site to get the wine and supplies, but where he went and how long he took is unknowable. Possibly, the Romans may have had multiple crucifixions going on not far from Golgotha, so the bystander ran to one of them to find supplies. I will be conservative and say Phase 1 took 12 minutes, which sadly (happily?) removes that extra time I tortured out of my ancient calendar analysis. This brings us back to three modern hours from Jesus’ death until his burial, or 180 minutes until sunset (192-12).
Phase 2: Death to Joseph of Arimathea’s Arrival
This is the most difficult period to hazard a guess on time. The Mark account makes clear that there was a time gap between Jesus’ death and when Joseph of Arimathea could have learned about the death (Mark 15:42-43, emphasis added):
When it was already evening, since it was the day of preparation, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a distinguished member of the council, who was himself awaiting the kingdom of God, came and courageously went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.
None of the gospels actually place Joseph of Arimathea at Golgotha at the time of Jesus’ death. Other than the centurion (Mark 15:39), the only eyewitnesses Mark cites are the women followers of Jesus from Galilee who watched Jesus’ death from a distance (Mark 15:40-41). I will assume that what Mark meant by “came” is that Joseph of Arimathea came to Golgotha from some other location within Jerusalem, and then saw that Jesus was dead.
But the real question is: if Jesus cried out at three o’clock as the afternoon, and died just 12 minutes later by my reckoning, what did Mark mean when he wrote that it was “already evening” when Joseph of Arimathea arrived? I did not come across much in the way of Bible commentary specific to this issue, but a few sources did believe that “evening” meant it was after sunset. The problem with this interpretation is that it makes Mark’s whole burial narrative nonsensical. If Joseph of Arimathea did not arrive at Golgotha until after sunset on Friday, why go to Pilate to request Jesus’ body so that he could bury him before sunset?
Could another possibility be that, strangely enough, “evening” meant immediately after three o’clock? In his April 8, 2020 online article “The Timing of Jesus’ Death,” Karlo Broussard discusses a related issue, the apparent contradiction between the Mark’s and John’s gospels about the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion.[12] The Mark account said it occurred at nine o’clock in the morning (Mark 15:25). The John account said it occurred around noon (John 19:14). As a solution, Broussard offered the thoughts of New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg, who argued that the Jews divided daylight hours into four three-hour increments, and generally identified the timing of events by rounding up or down to the quarter hour. Thus, Mark’s reference to nine o’clock could mean anytime between nine o’clock and noon. If both Gospel writers were discussing the same time period, then Mark may have simply rounded down to nine o’clock and John rounded up to noon, eliminating the contradiction (of course, an all-knowing Divine Author would have foreseen that this contradiction would cause interpretation problems centuries later, so why not simply inspire both human authors to round in the same direction?).
Following this same quarter hour idea, could Mark have meant “evening” to mean that final quarter hour block from three o’clock to six o’clock? If so, then Joseph of Arimathea could have arrived in the evening, but perhaps just as Jesus was dying, so my Phase 2 would take no time at all. But if Mark had meant this, why write the narrative with such confusing verbiage? He could have simply said that Joseph of Arimathea was at Golgotha when Jesus died, right along with the women from Galilee.
I think Mark meant to say that some period of time did pass between Jesus’ death and Joseph of Arimathea’s arrival at Golgotha, but it was not yet sunset, so there was still time for Joseph of Arimathea to complete his task. For my guesstimate, I will assume Joseph of Arimathea arrived at Golgotha at the next sundial hour, or four o’clock, which means that Phase 2 took 52 minutes. This leaves 128 minutes until sunset (180-52).
Phase 3: Journey to Pontius Pilate
After seeing Jesus dead on the cross, a saddened Joseph of Arimathea began his mission. As described in Mark 15:43-45, he went to Pilate to request Jesus’ body. Shocked that Jesus was dead already, Pilate summoned the centurion to confirm the news. Pilate then released the body to Joseph of Arimathea. Presumably, Joseph of Arimathea and the centurion then returned to Golgotha together, so that the centurion could communicate Pilate’s orders to the guards. The Phase 3 question is: if Joseph of Arimathea left Golgotha at four o’clock to find Pilate, how long did it take him to return?
To answer this, the first riddle is to figure out where Pilate was. His last recorded location was in the palace, or praetorium, where he had sentenced Jesus to be scourged and crucified (Mark 15:15-16). Having no other likely location to go by, I will assume that Pilate was back at the palace in the late afternoon when Joseph of Arimathea came knocking. However, as with seemingly everything, Bible scholars and archeologists debate which palace Mark was talking about.
Modern Christian tradition holds that the palace was the Antonia Fortress, which was at the northwestern corner of the Temple Mount. To honor Jesus’ agonizing walk with his cross to Golgotha, Christian pilgrims today walk a path called the Via Dolorosa (Latin for “Way of Sorrow”), which starts from the suspected location of the Antonia Fortress to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, many scholars believe the more likely location for the praetorium was Herod’s Palace.[13] As a result of the 2,000 years of bulldozing across Jerusalem, Herod’s Palace is gone, but a landmark called the Citadel or Tower of David, which contains the Tower of David Museum, marks its approximate location.
I think Joseph of Arimathea found Pilate at Herod’s Palace. But then a second riddle arises — where was the centurion when Pilate summoned him? Back at Golgotha, of course! Where else would he be? Mark says nothing about Joseph of Arimathea and the centurion talking to each other, let alone strolling together to the Palace so they could meet with Pilate. Also, even after Jesus died, the centurion and his guards still had duties at Golgotha, as the two revolutionaries crucified with Jesus had not yet died.
To summon the centurion, then, I must assume that Pilate sent a soldier to Golgotha to fetch the centurion and bring him back to the Palace. Thus, Phase 3 really involves four stages:
- Joseph of Arimathea from Golgotha to Herod’s Palace
- Soldier to Golgotha to fetch centurion
- Centurion and soldier return to Herod’s Palace
- Joseph of Arimathea and centurion return to Golgotha
To calculate the time, I needed to know the distance and likely travel time from Golgotha to Herod’s Palace (with the Tower of David Museum as our modern stand in), then multiply by four. It is beyond the scope of this essay to dive fully into the debates about whether the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden Tomb, or some other location is the true Golgotha. However, for Phase 3, I can assess whether the Holy Sepulchre or the Garden Tomb made better candidates for a successful tomb burial. This will disappoint Garden Tomb fans, but Jesus could never have been buried by sunset if the Garden Tomb marks where Golgotha was.
According to Google Maps, the walking distance from the Garden Tomb to the Tower of David Museum is 1.4 kilometers, or about a 20-minute walk on Jerusalem’s modern streets. To adjust the travel time to Jesus’ day, I added a fudge factor of 50 percent (10 minutes), making the total travel time 30 minutes. First, I added this time because scholars widely believe that the population of Jerusalem swelled by tens of thousands during the Passover celebration.[14] Jerusalem’s ancient streets were likely clogged with meandering pilgrims getting their final Passover and Sabbath chores done before sundown. I would also expect small but normal delays to eat away at the time, like Joseph of Arimathea having to wait in the lobby for a bit before his audience with Pilate, the time for the audience itself, the guard and centurion getting distracted with crowd control, and other exigencies. If my four stages each took 30 minutes, then Phase 3 from the Garden Tomb would take 120 minutes, leaving Joseph of Arimathea only 8 minutes to complete all his remaining tasks before sunset (128-120). Impossible.
Again, per Google Maps, the walking distance from the Holy Sepulchre to the Tower of David Museum is about 400 meters, or about a 6-minute walk. Add my 50 percent fudge factor, or 3 minutes (which seems woefully low now), then each of the four stages took 9 minutes, or 36 minutes total. Because the Garden Tomb is ruled out, I will use the Holy Sepulchre as the location for Golgotha for Phase 3, with the caveat that the true location remains an open question. I estimate Phase 3 took 36 minutes, so there would now be just 92 minutes until sunset (128-36).
Phase 4: Detour to the Market
Phases 4 through 6 all come out of Mark 15:46:
Having bought a linen cloth, he took him down, wrapped him in the linen cloth and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb.
My Phase 4 is the purchase of the linen cloth. Somewhere in Jerusalem, the future Shroud of Turin was sitting on a vendor’s table. I will assume that Joseph of Arimathea begged leave of the centurion as they left Herod’s Palace and detoured to the marketplace to buy it. But where did he go? The huge esplanade at the Temple Mount was an option, as it was both a religious and commercial center and was packed with merchants and vendors.[15] But given the short time until sunset and the mass of pilgrims in town for Passover, Joseph of Arimathea would have found bedlam when he got there. Imagine him fighting his way to the linen cloth stall, only to find a mob of other mourners, frantically buying shrouds before sunset, or last-minute Passover shoppers needing that perfect new table cloth. To avoid the Temple crowds, did he instead waste precious minutes wandering the maze of streets in ancient Jerusalem, looking for a linen shop? Unknowable.
One could easily imagine this detour taking an hour or more, but I will be conservative and assume instead that linen shops were likely ubiquitous across Jerusalem and often located not far from cemetery areas. I will project that Joseph of Arimathea needed a modest detour of 15 minutes each way, inclusive of the transaction time at the vendor’s stall. Thus, Phase 4 took 30 minutes, which leaves 62 minutes until sunset (92-30). Is that sweat I see on Joseph of Arimathea’s brow, as he watches the sun sink rapidly on the horizon?
Phase 5: Removing Jesus from the Cross
Phase 5 is that terse “he took him down” from Mark 15:46 noted earlier. Finally, Joseph of Arimathea arrives at Golgotha with his newly purchased linen cloth—but did he also buy a crowbar?
None of the gospels describe the removal of Jesus from the cross in any detail, nor have I found scholarly discussion as to how it was accomplished. Scholars speculate more on how crucifixion itself was carried out, which typically began with a prisoner being forced to carry the crossbeam of the cross to the crucifixion site.[16] The vertical poles were reused and remained at the crucifixion site, possibly laying on the ground near a hole ready for setting the pole in. In Jesus’ case, the Romans would have taken the crossbeam, secured it to the pole, and then laid Jesus on the completed cross to nail him in (by tradition, three nails, one through both feet and one through each hand). Using ropes and muscle, the Romans then would have pushed the pole up into position to drop it in the hole. This is essentially the process portrayed in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, although his cinematic Romans forced Jesus to carry the entire cross through Jerusalem (clips of the crucifixion scenes are available on YouTube).
For his removal, the most likely scenario is that the Roman guards did it, per Pilate’s orders from the centurion. A literal reading of the “he took him down” in Mark 15:46 is absurd, as that paints a scene of the Roman guards standing by, chuckling, as a panicky Joseph of Arimathea stood on a rickety ladder and struggled to remove Jesus himself. I will defer, however, to a scenario that retains Joseph of Arimathea’s role in the removal, which is to assume he found assistants for this phase. This appears to be a widely held Christian view, as many works of Christian art over the centuries have embraced this idea, such as The Descent from the Cross (1612-1614) from Peter Paul Rubens.[17] Generally, the imagery shows several people involved in the process, using ladders and linens to gently and reverently lower Jesus to the ground, into the waiting arms of his mother. This is how the scene is depicted in The Passion of the Christ as well, but with the Roman guards assisting with the reverential lowering.
What is missing from the movie, the artwork, and any scholarly discussion I came across is a depiction or description of how Jesus’ hands and feet were freed from the nails. My assumption is that Joseph of Arimathea and his assistants would have tried desperately to avoid further damage to Jesus’ body. But as anyone who has ever fought with a stubborn nail in a piece of lumber can attest, the wood gets chewed up the more you have to fight with the nail. If the challenge instead is to use crude iron tools to free flesh and bone that is firmly nailed into a cross, it is the flesh and bone that would get mangled. I am going to estimate Phase 5 took 40 minutes, for the time needed to organize the assistants and supplies on site, get them on ladders, and then, somehow, carefully free Jesus’ hands and feet from the cross without destroying them in the process. There are now just 22 minutes until sunset (62-40).
Phase 6: Preparation of Body and Burial
The remainder of Mark 15:46 is my final phase, wherein Joseph of Arimathea wraps Jesus in the burial cloth, lays him in a tomb, and then rolls a stone against the entrance. I assume Joseph of Arimathea (along with an assistant or two from Phase 5) had to transport Jesus to an alternative location, rather than wrap his body at the foot of the cross. But how much time was needed to carry Jesus from Golgotha to this preparation site, and then from the preparation site to the tomb? Also, Mark does not describe the anointing of Jesus’ body prior to burial, which would use additional precious minutes. Did Joseph of Arimathea clean and anoint Jesus’ body at the preparation site?
Answering the second question first, I think Mark did intend to say that Joseph of Arimathea largely skipped the anointing. In Mark, three women who witnessed the burial brought spices to anoint Jesus Sunday morning (Mark 16:1), which only makes sense if they observed that Jesus had not been anointed earlier. Similarly, Luke describes women preparing supplies for anointing (Luke 23:55-56). Only the Gospel of John provides a description of the anointing of Jesus, in that an assistant, Nicodemus, shows up with an astounding one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for the task (John 19:39-40). Christians routinely quote John to describe Jesus’ pious anointing, but this account is so over the top that, if attempted, my remaining 22 minutes for Phase 6 would vanish instantly.
That said, because the Mark and Luke accounts describe the women preparing spices and perfumes, but not water and linens for cleaning the body, it is plausible that they did witness Joseph of Arimathea at least clean the body before wrapping it in a cloth. I would accept this possibility, so I am going to estimate the time needed for Joseph of Arimathea to reverently clean and wrap Jesus’ body at 10 minutes.
As for my first question, I am sure many Christians would simply lead me back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As noted earlier, the crucifixion site, the Stone of Unction, and the tomb are all conveniently located in the same building, only a few steps away from each other. If one accepts that the Holy Sepulchre contains all three locations, exactly where they existed in Jesus’ day, then I would agree that 22 minutes would be just enough time to carry Jesus to the Stone of Unction, wash and wrap his body (but not a full anointing), and then place him in the tomb.
But I do not accept it. The Holy Sepulchre resulted from a pilgrimage that Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, made to Palestine in 326-328. Legendary accounts had her discovering the true Golgotha, the true tomb, and even the true cross underneath a Roman temple that she had torn down.[18] The first Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built over the site. All this was almost 300 years after Jesus’ crucifixion and about 1,500 years before archeology became a serious discipline, so I find these discoveries dubious. Also, the New Testament book of Acts, which supposedly records the early decades of the Christian movement, says nothing about those early Christians keeping vigil at the tomb and crucifixion site, so that they could pass on oral traditions of their exact locations to later generations. Finally, that Stone of Unction does not even have the benefit of early Christian tradition, as it seems to have popped into existence only in the 1300s, after it was conveniently placed at the entrance to the Holy Sepulchre.[19]
Rather than assuming that Golgotha, the preparation site, and the tomb were all right on top of each other, I am going to assume there was a modest 6-minute walk between each. This gives a total transportation time of 12 minutes, which, when added to the 10-minute preparation time, yields 22 minutes for Phase 6.
Gosh, this matches exactly my remaining time until sunset, so I guess it was possible that … WAIT! I forgot about the tomb stone! Joseph of Arimathea still had to roll the heavy stone to close the tomb, which would have taken at least an additional minute. Accordingly, my final time estimate for Phase 6 is 23 minutes, which puts the tomb burial 1 minute past sunset. Joseph of Arimathea was too late! No tomb burial!
Conclusion
Jokes aside, this exercise reminded me of that fictional quote from Sherlock Holmes: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Many herald this as the height of deductive reasoning. However, given the paucity of details in Mark and the knowledge gaps in scholarship I noted earlier, I found Sherlock’s dictum a bad fit for constructing a tomb burial timeline.
In my six phases, I did eliminate the impossible by ruling out speculative scenarios that included supernatural elements, defied logic, and so on. The problem is that, after eliminating the impossible, I was not left with a single scenario that must be true, as Sherlock would have it. Rather, there remained a dizzying array of plausible scenarios, all with alternative details that could either greatly help or hinder Joseph of Arimathea in his mission. With only three hours to work with, small changes of even a few minutes in any phase estimate could mean success or failure, as I sublimely showed in Phase 6. The real challenge was trying to figure out the most probable of the plausible scenarios.
Going back to my Phase 4 as an example, scholars will likely never be able to determine with high probability when and where Joseph of Arimathea bought the burial cloth (or if there even was a Joseph of Arimathea or a burial cloth). I estimated it took Joseph of Arimathea about 30 minutes, largely by assuming that there were lots of linen shops here and there in Jerusalem. Plausible, but I accept I have no proof of that. On the other hand, a devout believer could assume that Joseph of Arimathea did not even buy the burial cloth, so Phase 4 took not time at all. As a distinguished council member, Joseph of Arimathea likely had servants at his disposal, so he simply dispatched one to the market place to buy the burial cloth while he went to see Pilate. Again, plausible, but Mark says nothing about the presence of servants.
Finally, a hardened skeptic, determined to deny Jesus a tomb burial, could just as easily retort with unsupported assumptions in the other direction. Not only did Joseph of Arimathea not have servants, he may have been lame in one leg, so he had to lurch slowly from street to street in search of a linen vendor, jostled by the crowds every painful step of the way. Took him two hours! Again, plausible, because a lame leg is not a supernatural event.
Alas, hardened skeptics, devout believers, and reasonable, opened minded secularists (ahem) all have the same problem: we cannot jump into a time machine, go back to the day of crucifixion, and take out our stop watches to prove who is right. Thus, our ability to persuade each other is likely low, as our debates will inevitably devolve into to an endless game of plausibility ping-pong. That said, I do believe that if one ran this thought experiment a thousand times, varying the assumptions about distances, task difficulties, crowds, and so on, then I think Joseph of Arimathea would fail in his mission in most cases. It is much easier to conceive of reasonable additional delays, large and small, that would eat away at the time and make burial by sundown impossible, rather than circumstances that speeds things up.
Notes
[1] United States Catholic Conference, Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York, NY: Random House, 1994), p. 56.
[2] For a site geared toward Holy Sepulchre pilgrims, see The Church of the Holy Sepulchre website.
[3] For a site geared toward Garden Tomb pilgrims, see The Garden Tomb website. For a Mormon dissection of the Holy Sepulchre vs. Garden Tomb debate, see Jeffrey R. Chadwick, “Revisiting Golgotha and the Garden Tomb.” Religious Educator Vol. 4, No. 1 (2003): 13-48.
[4] All New Testament quotes in this essay are from the New American Bible Revised Edition.
[5] Jodi Magness, Jerusalem Through the Ages: From Its Beginnings to the Crusades (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. 292-441 [chapters 8-11].
[6] See: Bart Ehrman, “Why Romans Crucified People and Who was Crucifixion Reserved For?” (May 1, 2022). Bart Ehrman Blog. The Bart Ehrman Blog. <https://ehrmanblog.org/why-romans-crucified-people>. See also: Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), p. 146.
[7] Magness, Jerusalem Through the Ages, p. 452.
[8] Joshua Schachterle, “When did Jesus Die? Unveiling the Month & Year of His Crucifixion” (January 9, 2024). Bart Ehrman Blog. The Bart Ehrman Blog. <https://www.bartehrman.com/when-did-jesus-die/>.
[9] Helen K. Bond, “Dating the Death of Jesus: Memory and the Religious Imagination.” New Testament Studies Vol. 59, No. 4 (October 2013): 461-475, p. 466.
[10] Though it’s not itself a scholarly source, the Wikipedia entry for “Proleptic Gregorian Calendar” (citing scholarly sources) includes a table showing that the proleptic Gregorian dates are ahead by two days for Julian calendar dates between March 3, 4 and March 1, 100, which would cover all possible crucifixion dates. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proleptic_Gregorian_calendar>.
[11] To find the daylight hours for Jerusalem for April 5, 2025, go to the Time and Date website and from the “Sun, Moon, & Space” drop-down menu, select “Sun Calendar,” then search locations by country, then city.
[12] Karlo Broussard, “The Timing of Jesus’ Death” (April 8, 2020). Catholic Answers website. <https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-timing-of-jesus-death>.
[13] Magnus, Jerusalem Through the Ages, p. 236.
[14] Magnus, Jerusalem Through the Ages, p. 195.
[15] Magnus, Jerusalem Through the Ages, p. 224.
[16] Steven Shisley, “Jesus and the Cross” (January 26, 2025). Biblical Archeology Society website. <https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/crucifixion/jesus-and-the-cross>.
[17] See the Wikipedia entry for Descent from the Cross. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_the_Cross>.
[18] See “The Peak of the Church of Jerusalem” (n.d.). Jerusalem Patriarchate Official Website. <https://en.jerusalem-patriarchate.info/history/the-peak-of-the-church-of-jerusalem/>.
[19] Yamit Rachman-Schrire, “Christ’s Unction and the Material Realization of a Stone in Jerusalem” (pp. 216-229) in Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500 ed. Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, & Bianca Kuhnel (London, UK: Routledge, 2017), p. 216.