The Request of Joseph of Arimathea to be allowed to have the Body of
Jesus.
Scarcely had the commotion which the town had been thrown into begun
to subside in a degree, when the Jews belonging to the Council sent to
Pilate to request that the legs of the criminals might be broken, in
order to put an end to their lives before the Sabbath-day dawned.
Pilate immediately dispatched executioners to Calvary to carry out
their wishes.
Joseph of Arimathea then demanded an audience; he had heard of the
death of Jesus, and he and Nicodemus had determined to bury him in a
new sepulchre which he had made at the end of his garden, not far from
Calvary. Pilate was still filled with anxiety and solicitude, and was
much astonished at seeing a person holding a high position like Joseph
so anxious for leave to give honourable burial to a criminal whom he
had sentenced to be ignominiously crucified. He sent for the centurion
Abenadar, who returned to Jerusalem after he had conferred with the
disciples who were hidden in the caverns, and asked him whether the
King of the Jews was really dead. Abenadar gave Pilate a full account
of the death of our Lord, of his last words, and of the loud cry he
uttered immediately before death, and of the earthquake which had rent
the great chasm in the rock. The only thing at which Pilate expressed
surprise was that the death of Jesus should have taken place so
quickly, as those who were crucified usually lived much longer; but
although he said so little, every word uttered by Joseph increased his
dismay and remorse. He instantly gave Joseph an order, by which he was
authorised to take down the body of the King of the Jews from the
Cross, and to perform the rites of sepulture at once. Pilate appeared
to endeavour, by his readiness in granting this request, to wish to
make up, in a degree, for his previous cruel and unjust conduct, and he
was likewise very glad to do what he was certain would annoy the
priests extremely, as he knew their wish was to have Jesus buried
ignominiously between the two thieves. He dispatched a messenger to
Calvary to see his orders executed. I believe the messenger was
Abenadar, for I saw him assisting in taking Jesus down from the Cross.
When Joseph of Arimathea left Pilate's palace, he instantly rejoined
Nicodemus, who was waiting for him at the house of a pious woman, which
stood opposite to a large street, and was not far from that alley where
Jesus was so shamefully ill-treated when he first commenced carrying
his Cross. The woman was a vendor of aromatic herbs, and Nicodemus had
purchased many perfumes which were necessary for embalming the body of
Jesus from her. She procured the more precious kinds from other places,
and Joseph went away to procure a fine winding-sheet. His servants then
fetched ladders, hammers, pegs, jars of water, and sponges, from a
neighbouring shed, and placed them in a hand-barrow similar to that on
which the disciples of John the Baptist put his body when they carried
it off from the castle of Macherus.