Jesus' Life and Times - Holy Week (Saturday)

According to Matthew the "next day, the one after Preparation Day" (in other words, Saturday, the Sabbath), the chief priests and the Pharisees (the latter believed in the resurrection of the dead) were still seething over the fact that two members of the Sanhedrin, the very body that condemned Jesus, had given him an honorable burial. Attempting to regain control over the situation, they went to Pilate, requesting that the tomb be sealed to prevent anyone from stealing Jesus' body and claiming to the people that he has been raised from the dead. But, Pilate put the request back into their court:

The chiefs priests were thus compelled to send some of their own guards—a kind of civil police force normally used to keep order around the Temple—to seal and keep watch over Jesus' tomb:

It would seem, then, the tomb was guarded by a Jewish, not a Roman guard, as many have long presumed! Further proof of this came after the resurrection when, as stated in Matthew (27:11), some of the guards went straight into the city and "reported to the chief priests everything that had happened." These "soldiers," no doubt, were part of the large contingent of Temple "police" the chief priests had at their beck and call, not Roman soldiers who answered only to Pontius Pilate.

That the crucifixion truly took place at all is proved by the fact that the first Christians were unlikely to have invented so degrading and humiliating a fate for their holy man, knowing how it was viewed by the world. As Paul stated in letters to the churches in Corinth and Philippi:

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18).

"And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:8 ).

Around the time of Jesus, it was customary to wrap the dead in linen shrouds and place them in small niches cut in the walls of tombs. About a year later, after the flesh had decayed, the bones were placed in ossuaries—carved limestone boxes—to save space in expensive rock-cut tombs. In actuality, the burial preparations performed on Jesus' body by Joseph and Nicodemus were the first step in the final interment process. If Jesus had not risen, his remains would have been collected and put in an ossuary.

Although thousands of ossuaries have been found in and around Jerusalem, one in particular, in a tomb at Givat ha-Mivtar, 1 1/2 miles north of the Old City, contained the first skeletal remains of a crucifixion ever unearthed from the 1st century AD. The ossuary also contained the bones of a three or four-year-old child with no marks of violence or disease. Two names could be seen on the ossuary. The first was Yohanan, or John, and the second "Yohanan, son of hzqwl." As it stands, the last word is unreadable, but it may be a corruption of Ezekial. It may also be read "the one hanged with knees apart," reading "hzqwl" or "h'qwl." Thus the name of the victim was certainly "John," and his young son (?) was perhaps called "John, son of the hanged."

John/Yohanan was a young man between twenty-four and twenty-eight years old, he stood 5 feet, 5 3/4 inches tall and was of slight build. Both his ankle bones had been pierced by a 7-inch-long nail. The nail-point (right side of photo) had been bent in the shape of a fishhook, probably from hitting a knot while being driven into the upright beam of the cross. It had bits of olive wood from the cross attached; also, fragments of acacia wood were found between the nail head and the heels, indicating that a board—a kind of washer—had been placed over Yohanan's ankles before the nail was driven in to keep his feet in place (illustrated by the model, left).

Additionally, Yohanan's legs had been savagely smashed. This breaking of the legs was a procedure used only in the case of Jewish crucifixions. Elsewhere the victims were left on their crosses and might take up to three or four days to die.