Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§18.2 EtResurrexit
such loculi (kokim) tombs have been found within yards of the traditional site of
Jesus' tomb, confirming that the original site was a quarry which facilitated such
burial practice. 39
Why did Jews of the Herodian period develop this distinctive burial practice?
The answer is probably to be found in their beliefs about the prospects for
those who had died. It will hardly be accidental, then, that the belief in future resurrection
of the dead had been developing in the decades before the Herodian period,
particularly in reflection on the Maccabean martyrs. 40 Also that the belief
was shaped very much in terms of physical restoration of the body which had
perished. 41 The obvious deduction, then, is that the practice of secondary burial
was developed with a view to the hoped-for resurrection. 42 Since resurrection
would mean restoration of the physical body, the bones should not be allowed to
disperse and be lost. Rather they should be kept together, so that God would have
them as the framework on which to reconstruct the body. The process had already
been signalled in Ezekiel's great vision: bones coming together, bone to
bone, to be covered by sinews and flesh, and awaiting the breath (ruah/pneuma)
of recreated life (Ezek. 37.7-10). 43 The subsequent rabbinic opinion that in the
reconstruction of the bodies of the dead all that was needed was one small bone
which did not decay (the luz, the tip of the coccyx), 44 presupposes the earlier assumption
that all the bones would be required and the questioning which arose
because many bodies were almost destroyed or buried incomplete.
39. Details and photograph in Murphy-O'Connor, The Holy Land 54-55.
40. See above, § 17.6b.
41. According to 2 Maccabees 7 it is precisely the physical torture and mutilation of the
seven brothers which stimulated the hope of physical restoration: 'an eternal revivification of
life' (7.9), the confidence of the third brother that he would receive back body parts cut off in
torture (7.11), the life and breath (pneuma) received at birth would be given back by the Creator
(7.22-23), the mother is confident that she will 'get back' her sons (7.29). Similarly, in completing
his gory suicide, Razis 'tore out his entrails, took them with both hands and hurled them at
the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again' (14.46).
2 Bar. 50.2 gives the assurance that the form of the resurrected will be as when they died; Sib.
Or. 4.181-82: 'God himself will again fashion the bones and ashes of men and he will raise up
mortals again as they were before'.
42. Pace S. Fine, 'A Note on Ossuary Burial and the Resurrection of the Dead in First-
Century Jerusalem', JJS 51 (2000) 69-76. Crossan and Reed also demur on the point, pointing
out that the Caiaphas ossuary is that of a Sadducee, who would not have believed in resurrection
(Excavating Jesus 237-41, 244). Confronted by the irrevocability of death, however, some
may qualify previously firmly held beliefs.
43. 'The wonder of the dead bones' in Ezekiel 37 provides hope for the coming age in
Sir. 49.10; 4Q385 fragment 2 = 4Q386 fragment 1 = 4Q388 fragment 8; Liv. Pro. 3.12; Sib. Or.
2.221-24.
44. Moore, Judaism 2.385.
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