Matthew 27f

This is a long chapter. Who divided these things up anyway? Actually, it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, leader of Catholic England, who divided Scripture into chapters in 1227 in order to make it easier to find passages and stories. The change caught on slowly; the Wycliffe Bible was the first to be divided into chapters, published in 1382. 

 What about verses? The Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament, was divided into verses by Rabbi Nathan of France in 1448. Then Robert Estienne, also of France, divided the Greek New Testament into verses in 1551. The first English Bible published with both chapter and verse divisions was the Geneva Bible in 1560. So, for 60% of the Bible’s history, there were no chapters, and for 75%, no verses. Such divisions are not ordained. 

 What has been the result? To the good, we can now quote chapter and verse so that others can find that exact spot in the Bible. The previous method was to quote the first line of a passage and hope that people could find it to read the rest. That worked if you knew your Bible well enough to find the book where it says: “Ho everyone that thirsts” or “Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry.”

 BTW, completing the circle, we now have software that does exactly that. Put in a phrase and the software will bring up that verse as well as others that have the same words. 

  On the downside, the divisions are not always in a helpful place. Stories are cut in half. Incomplete thoughts are held up as “my verse” which some pretend holds all the truth of the Bible. A single verse is rarely able to stand alone. When I was a student at Bethel College our favorite verse was Amos 4:4: “Come to Bethel and transgress.” You need the whole story, not bits and pieces of the story which you get with verses out of context. 

 Now, let’s finish up Matthew Chapter 27. 

27: 57-58.   When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who also was himself a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 

 Late is the hour of this disciple’s appearance. This reminds us how selective and thus limited the gospels are. By that I mean that Jesus apparently had a great number of followers who are never mentioned in the text because they are not a part of the stories that the gospel writers decided to use. That there were more stories than those that were written down is vouchsafed by Luke (1: 1-4) and John (20: 30-31).

 Matthew says that Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man and a disciple of Jesus. Arimathea is apparently a town, but we cannot be sure of the site. That he was a rich man perhaps is meant to remind us of a verse in the Old Testament. All of Isaiah Chapter 53 links the ‘man of sorrows’ with Jesus, and Verse 9 alludes to Jesus' death among the thieves and his burial among the rich.

 “They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.”  

 It was a gutsy move for this rich man to go to Pilate to ask for the body. On the other hand, Pilate was probably only too glad to get rid of the body and put this troublesome affair behind him. There seemed to be no opposition to Joseph’s request.

 The other gospels. This story appears in all four gospels. Mark and Luke say that Joseph was “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.” John says that Joseph was a disciple of Jesus “though a secret one.” Mark and Luke make the point that Joseph was a member of the ruling council. Luke adds that Joseph did not agree with the plan to engineer Jesus’ murder.  

27: 60-61.  So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

 Matthew, being a good Jew, is sensitive to ritual purity, and so the linen cloth is ‘clean’ and the tomb is ‘new’. The statement that this was a tomb “which he had hewn in the rock” tells us that this was to be Joseph’s own tomb. So, at this point, Joseph has given up quite a bit to be a disciple of Jesus: he lost his dignity by approaching Pilate to request Jesus’ body, he gave up his purity by handling a dead body, and he gave up the preparations he had made for his own burial in a respectable tomb. He did not know that it would become available again.  

 Joseph sealed the tomb as we are meant to understand the term “great rock.” In Greek, this was a megas lithos, from which we get the term ‘megalith’. We apply this term to stones such as those at Stonehenge. 

 Silent witnesses Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (the mother of James and Joses) were still watching over Jesus. 

 The other gospels.  Mark and Luke agree that Joseph wrapped the body in linen (they do not say ‘clean linen’) and that he laid the body in an empty rock-cut tomb. Luke and John add a sense of urgency to Joseph’s behavior. Both say that the Day of Preparation (Friday, the day before the Sabbath) was ending and the Sabbath itself was near. No work may be done on the Sabbath, not even burials. Traditionally, the Sabbath (Saturday, the seventh day of the week) begins at sundown, that is, at 6:00 pm on Friday. It has been a long day, and it is about over, so Joseph has to hurry. 

 John suggests that Joseph had some help. 

 “Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial customs of the Jews” (John 19: 39-40). 

 Nicodemus was introduced in John 3 as “a leader of the Jews.” So, we have two prominent elders of the Jerusalem community sympathetic to Jesus. Were there more? Probably. The gospels tend to lump all the Jews together, and John is especially guilty. When John says ‘the Jews’ opposed Jesus on something, we forget that everyone in the story is a Jew. John usually means by this ‘the leaders of the Jews’. It takes a close read to reveal that there was diversity in the Jewish community at the level of various factions and parties, as well as among individuals. There was some support for Jesus throughout Jewish society. 

27: 62-64.   The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise, his disciples may go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.” 

  ‘The next day’ is the Sabbath, yet the chief priests and Pharisees have work to do. Thinking ahead and anticipating a scam, they want to make sure that the dead body of Jesus stays in the tomb. Ironically, what they did contributed to the believability of the miracle of resurrection. In fact, regardless of this check on deception, still there were those Jews in the next centuries who claimed against this evidence that the body was stolen.   

27: 65-66.  Pilate said to them, “You have a guard (or take a guard) of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can (or as you know how).” So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.

 True to form, Pilate throws the responsibility back on the chief priests and Pharisees. He does give them a guard of soldiers, but he charges the Jewish leaders with the responsibility of making the tomb secure. More work on the Sabbath. 

 Notice that the phrase ‘make it secure’ appears three times in these four verses (62-66). Ben Witherington III says that “this suggests that our author lives in an environment where such criticism of Christian belief might regularly be heard” (Matthew 2006, page 526). Thus, Matthew may be shoring up the counter-argument that Jesus was was not stolen but was resurrected from a secured tomb. 

 In all, this is a remarkable chapter. First for the clarity of the detail about the betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and death of Jesus. Second for the interesting positioning of the other people in the story. The male disciples, who have played such a large part in the majority of the gospel, now either betray Jesus or desert him. The females who were in the background for most of the story suddenly appear as the only reliable disciples. The Romans, who are barely interested in Jesus since he is not a criminal or revolutionary, now end up nailing Jesus to the cross.

Some leaders of the Jews, not all by a long shot, are so concerned about their survival under occupation by the Roman army that they are willing to sacrifice Jesus to hold their position. At the last minute, a door is cracked open to let us see the opposition to the leadership concerning Jesus. 

 Always keep the door open. You never know who might repent or who might already be a secret disciple of Jesus. After all, God keeps the door open.