Mark 15:42-43
He went in boldly unto Pilate
The evening before a sabbath, a member of the council asks an occupying governor for the body of a man his own colleagues have just condemned.
People of the Bible
Joseph of Arimathea
A rich councillor who had kept quiet, and then asked the governor for a body in front of everyone.
All four gospels name him and each adds a detail. Matthew says he was rich. Mark says he was an honourable counsellor who waited for the kingdom of God, and that he went in boldly. Luke says he was a good man and a just, and that he had not consented to the counsel and deed of them, which means he sat in the room where the vote was taken and did not raise his hand. John says he was a disciple, but secretly, for fear of the Jews.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Joseph of Arimathea
- 01
- 02
Luke 23:50-51
He had not consented
Luke goes out of his way to clear him of the verdict. The dissent was silent while it was safe and becomes visible only now.
- 03
Matthew 27:59-60
His own new tomb
He wraps the body in clean linen and puts it in a grave he had cut for himself. The stone he rolls to the door is the one the women will worry about.
- 04
John 19:38
A disciple, but secretly
John names the fear plainly and then records the act anyway, so the reader gets both the cowardice and the end of it in one verse.
Why it matters
Crucified men were normally left or thrown into a common grave, and asking for the body meant declaring an association at the worst possible hour. He goes to Pilate, who is surprised the man is already dead, and he is given the corpse. Then he spends his own new tomb on it, hewn out of rock, wherein never man before was laid, and rolls a stone across the door. The secrecy ends exactly when it costs the most, and the empty tomb the women find is his.
10 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
Matthew 27:57-66; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:38-42
A Stone at the Door
Matthew 27:1-31; Mark 15:1-20; Luke 22:63-23:25; John 18:28-19:16
Behold the Man
Matthew 27:32-56; Mark 15:21-41; Luke 23:26-49; John 19:16-37
It Is Finished
