jjramsey

Erm ...

Q is not an extant text, if it existed at all. The only way we know to reconstruct its text is to look at what Matthew and Luke have in common with each other but not with Mark. Given that method of reconstruction, there is no way of knowing whether Q could have had its own Empty Tomb tradition or not.

Dale Allison's book Resurrecting Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk) has a good discussion of the historical issues of the empty tomb. One may not agree with the entirety of its conclusions, but it avoids devolving into apologetics. Allison himself thinks that the evidence is slightly in favor of the empty tomb, but that it is a borderline case.

Loren Rosson III discusses the book here: http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2005...095286885.html

Diogenes the Cynic

Those exceptions were truly exceptional and they were never made for crimes of sedition, treason or insurgency.

Notsri

McCane's book should be of special interest to you, then: he thinks that, in the light of rabbinic data, the gospels actually depict a dishonorable burial.

Regards,
Notsri

Diogenes the Cynic

Erm nothing. Why was Yehohanan crucified? Do you have any evidence that he was executed for sedition?

The fact that this represents the sole example of any remains ever being found of a crucifixion victim from antiquity (from hundreds of thousands of victims alleged in ancient literature) just goes to show how exceedingly rare it was for victims to be buried at all.
If Q had an Empty tomb story, it would have been present in Matthew and Luke. They wouldn't have both simply written variations on Mark. You also have to realize that the burden would be on those who want to assert a pre-Markan origin for the story, not on anyone else to disprove it.

What is Allsion's evidence?

k_smith123

If any one accepts my contention that Joseph of Arimathea is an allegoric representation of Josephus, (see my thread here) they should see something different in the CRI statement quoted above. Simply read the entire statement and fill in “Josephus” where the author, Hank Hanegraaff, says “Joseph of Arimathea”. In particular we should ask: How many skeptics have accepted Christ’s historicity but made literal arguments against Joseph of Arimathea’s involvement in his burial? I don’t know of any, but I do know that many have questioned the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum. Is Mr. Hanegraaff relying more on allegoric interpretation than literal understandings? If so, then he appears to be right from my perspective.

Zeichman

I think it's universally agreed that Q did not contain a passion narrative or empty tomb story. Nor are there any references to the resurrection.

Notsri

I think this inference ultimately amounts to a non sequitur. Crossan makes essentially the same one in Who Killed Jesus?, and I think it has been rightly criticized by certain scholars. McCane, for instance, in the book I mentioned to don, notes:

"The archaeological report states that it was only an accident that caused Yehohanan's remains to be preserved in such a way as to identify him as a crucifixion victim. Only the nail through his ankle provided evidence of crucifixion. And why was the nail still in Yehohanan's ankle? Because the soldiers who had crucified him could not extract it from the cross. When the nail had been driven in, it had struck a knot in the wood, bending back the point of the nail. As any carpenter (or fisherman) knows, it is almost impossible to extract a nail with a point that has been bent back like the barb of a hook. Thus if there had not been a knot strategically located in the wood of Yehohanan's cross, the soldiers would have easily pulled the nail out of the cross. It never would have been buried with Yehohanan, and we would never have known that he had been crucified. It is not surprising, in other words, that we have found the remains of only one crucifixion victim: it is surprising that we have identified even one."

In any event, Josephus (Wars 4.5.2. § 317) takes it for granted that the burial of those crucified was not such an uncommon occurrence among Jews:

"...the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun."

Perhaps this same attitude is also reflected to some extent in the targumic addition to Numbers 24:4, in Targum Neofiti I?

"And the Lord said to Moses: 'Bring all the chiefs of the people and set them up in a Sanhedrin before the Lord and let them become judges. Everyone who is guilty of death they shall crucify on a cross and bury his corpse at sunset.'"

Regards,
Notsri

jjramsey

Wouldn't that depend on what the tomb account said? If it was, say, a thumbnail sketch of something that was already in Mark, that would be a reason to favor Mark. More to the point, if one author had used material of an empty tomb account from Q and the other did not, this material would have been attributed to Matthew or Luke, not Q, since it was not material that both had in common that that wasn't in Mark. For all we know, one of the authors might indeed have borrowed such material, but we have no way of spotting it. My point is that given our rather blunt tools for reconstructing Q, we have no good way of saying what's not in Q. It might have an empty tomb account, or it might not. Since it's not an extant text, we simply cannot say.

I think it can be universally agreed that the known text of Q does not have a passion narrative or empty tomb story. However, this caveat of John P. Meier should be kept in mind:

I quote from the book, which should give you a good idea of the book's tenor as well as Allison's specific reasoning:

dongiovanni1976x

Is this because of Craig Bloomberg's argument that a tradition or story about Joseph of Arimathea would not have developed so quickly? Because I tend to agree with Diogenes b/c I see no references for this Joseph of Arimathea prior to 70 CE (in Mark). Whereas I do lean towards the position of a historical Jesus.

Help me out here...is my position untenable or among the minority?

(that is that a Jew named Jesus was crucified by Pilate for sedition and thrown in a common pit and that Joseph of Arimathea was likely a later tradition to support how simple it is to refute the resurrection if there was no "empty" tomb to point to and all appearances of Jesus after his death were akin to modern day mystical experiences...)

dongiovanni1976x

This seems like an appeal to the age old argument, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". You are not off logically but this appeal tends to skew the burden of doubt. We should assume it is not in Q unless we have a valid reason to believe it might have been in Q.