Jesus The Final Day Analysis

“Jesus : The Final Days”, by the noted scholars Dr. Craig Evans and Dr. N. T. Wright, comprises of three chapters that are actually condensed versions of essays from their lectures for the “Symposium on Church and Academy”, at Crichton College, Memphis, Tennessee. The objective of these three essays is to attempt to crush flimsy claims and doubts surrounding Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection by evaluating the aforesaid topics in the light of historical evidence and the political and social circumstances of the time. The first two chapters titled “The Shout of Death” and “The Silence of Burial” is by Evans and deals with the death and burial of Jesus. The third chapter “The Surprise of Resurrection” by Wright discusses the resurrection.
Since both the author’s intention is to prove the reliability of the concerned stories told in the Gospels, they have based their research on a lot of ancient materials and sources. In “The Shout of Death”, Evans
The reason being that, some people found an empty tomb when his resurrection was announced. In “The Silence of Burial”, Evans refutes this notion by examining the essential requirement of burial in the Jewish custom while also extracting proof of such practices from ancient literature and archaeological evidence. He further goes on to say that criminals who were executed were also entitled to a proper burial except that they were not allowed to be buried in the family tomb. According to the Gospels, Jesus’ body was buried in a tomb that belonged to a council named Arimathea or Joseph. Joseph wrapped Jesus’ body in a linen cloth, laid it in the tomb then rolled a large stone to block the tomb’s entrance. Three women saw where the body was buried. On returning to the tomb three days later, they found that the stone had been removed and the body of Jesus missing. The conclusion thus drawn is that, Jesus was indeed placed in a tomb according to Jewish