Mark 15.40-47: Jesus’s internment.

Meanwhile, women were watching from far away, among them Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of little Jacob and Yosi, and Salomé. When in the Galilee, these women were following and serving Jesus. Along with many others, they went with him to Jerusalem.

Evening was coming, and it was Preparation (which is the day before Sabbath). Joseph of Ramatha, a respected senator, who was himself awaiting God’s Kingdom, came, having the nerve to enter Pilate’s headquarters and request Jesus’s body. Pilate wondered if Jesus was dead yet. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had died already. Finding out from the centurion, he gave the corpse to Joseph.

Joseph had bought linen. After taking Jesus down, he wrapped him in the linen and put him in a sepulcher cut from rock. He rolled a stone over the sepulcher’s door.

Mary of Magdala and Mary, Yosi’s mother, saw where he was placed.

—

We tend to say Jesus was buried, but technically he was interred: He was put in a tomb. (I rendered it “sepulcher” mainly ’cause the church later built over it is called the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.) Joseph, a senator who was actually one of Jesus’s students, made sure to get Jesus into the ground before Sabbath began.

The women.

Certain women watched Jesus’s death and internment. Some Christians refer to these women as Jesus’s disciples—his female disciples. Other Christians absolutely won’t call them that, and insist Jesus had no such thing as women disciples. I say he did, and they were.

See, in Jesus’s culture, you were expected to teach your children the Law, both sons and daughters. That’s why women were permitted in synagogue: They had to know the Law themselves, and they had to know enough to pass down to their own kids. But beyond that, they weren’t expected to know anything other than their trade. Reading, writing, math, farming, cooking, weaving, basic economics: That’s stuff everyone needs to know. Philosophy, science, politics, rhetoric, geometry: These were all considered man stuff.

The way around this ridiculous chauvinism? Simple: Hang around your sons’ rabbi. Ostensibly it’s to be a helpful parent, show your appreciation for the teacher, pay his expenses, and meet his needs. But really it’s to get your own education. When he taught a lesson, you learned it same as the boys. Often learn it even better, ’cause you had maturity and could see its practical use.

Rabbis knew this was going on. And some of them, like Jesus, were all for it. Frankly, those “helpers” who weren’t taking advantage of his available wisdom, were simply foolish—and Jesus wouldn’t let ’em interfere with the women who were learning from him.

So yeah, officially Jesus had no women disciples. But in reality, all these women were totally his disciples. They followed him around, same as his recognized students. They paid attention. After his resurrection, they formed the core of his church. Those who insist they weren’t his disciples—not really—are as dense as the people of Jesus’s day, who had eyes to see but didn’t wanna.

The other gospels fill in some of the blanks as to who these women are.

Mary of Magdala, who’s always listed first because she became the first person to see Jesus alive, and possibly because she was oldest. She had followed Jesus ever since he threw seven demons out of her.

Mary #2, elsewhere called “the other Mary,” was the mother of “little Jacob,” or James the Less, one of his Twelve, and Yosi, who wasn’t in the Twelve but may have been a student of Jesus anyway. Mary was also Jesus’s aunt, the wife of his father’s brother, Clopas Alphaeus.

Salomé was the mother of James and John, two more of the Twelve. Meaning she was the wife of Zavdi, and also Jesus’s aunt; his mother’s sister.

Mary of Nazareth, Jesus’s mom, doesn’t show up in the Synoptics. But John states she was also there, and had spoken to Jesus at the cross as he was dying.

Other women, who weren’t necessarily in Jerusalem, are mentioned in Luke. There’s Joanna, wife of Chuza, who worked for Herod; Susanna; and “many others.” Some were women whom Jesus had cured of disease and demons. Others were family members of both Jesus and his students—which makes sense; they’d be concerned for their kids’ well-being, and thrilled they were all following Messiah.

And, at Jesus’s death, they’d be crushed that the man in whom they’d put so many hopes, was seemingly destroyed.

Joseph of Ramatha.

Despite how it looks in some of the gospels, not all the members of the Judean senate wanted Jesus dead. Two are singled out in John: Nikodemos—who’d held his own private meeting with Jesus to suss him out —and Joseph of Ramatha (Greek Arimathaía).

In Christian mythology, Joseph was Jesus’s great-uncle, a trader who’d taken teenage Jesus to the Roman province of Britainnia for some reason; and years later returned there to found a church at Glastonbury. And hide the Holy Grail there; and free Ireland from snakes before St. Patrick had to drive them out all over again. (Really, it’s just so Brits can claim their homeland is a little holier.) But since two gospels call Joseph one of Jesus’s students, it’s far more likely Joseph was younger than Jesus. And since Ramatha was an Ephraimite town, not Judahite like Nazareth, it’s likely they weren’t related either.

Joseph was wealthy, hence his senatorial rank. Knowing Romans, he had to bribe his way to Pilate. Mark says he was respected, meaning he may not have received too much grief from his fellow senators for interring Jesus. Mark also says he “was himself awaiting God’s Kingdom,” which is a subtle way of saying, but not saying, he sought a Messiah—and figured Jesus was that Messiah, at least till Jesus died.

The sepulcher.

A lot of Christians like to make a fuss about Jesus’s empty tomb. They don’t realize, because of first-century burial customs, just about every tomb was empty.

What people did back then was take the corpse, wrap it in moist linen strips, and put it in a nice moist cave. There, it would rot quickly; worms and bugs would get into it. Some months later, you’d go back and find nothing but bones, which you’d collect and put in an ossuary, a bone-box, which would be put in a family mausoleum, or taken to a cemetery. It was considered more natural than cremation, and less wasteful than burying the whole body.

Jesus’s sepulcher was in the same place he was crucified, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built atop both the sepulcher and Golgotha. Matthew said it was Joseph’s own sepulcher, cut into the rock. So it wasn’t a mere cave; it was put right where Joseph wanted it, in his garden.

Sepulchers weren’t always fully sealed shut, so the custom was to cover up the decaying smell with something less awful. In Jesus’s case, 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes. There are those who hypothesize Jesus only fainted on the cross, and woke up later in the sepulcher. If so, getting mummy-wrapped with gel-soaked cloth would have suffocated him—if the stone in front of the door couldn’t do the job.

Now, Joseph didn’t have a lot of time to do all this in. He had between the time of Jesus’s death (around 3 p.m.) and sundown (7:07 p.m.) for that’s when Sabbath began, when he could no longer work. Plus it was also Passover, so Joseph would have wanted to be ritually clean, and touching a corpse definitely made you unclean. So he had to get Pilate’s permission to take Jesus, get Jesus off the cross, deal with Jesus’s family, get him wrapped and interred, get himself cleaned up, then be baptized. He had help from Nikodemos, and possibly others. It’s doable in four hours. But it’s a busy four hours.

“Descended into hell.”

The Apostles’ Creed says Jesus “descended into hell.” That’s actually a bad translation of descendit ad inferos/“descended to the afterlife.” Sometimes that’s translated “hades,” and English-speakers just assume “hades” means “hell.” And of course there are the Christian myths about Jesus going to hell to smack the devil around, and rescue any righteous people he found there, for his death had just saved them.

Jesus died, and went where everyone goes when we die: Into the grave, and into the afterlife. He’s human, and experienced death like any human would. He didn’t get any special privileges—like going straight to heaven—just because he’s also God. His body was really dead, his soul was really extinguished, and his spirit was really in the afterlife… till he decided enough was enough, and came back to life.

And his followers were really bummed. Till his execution they were convinced he was Messiah; that he’d overthrow the Romans with a shout, and lead the forces of heaven to claim Jerusalem as his possession. Instead they watched him spend six hours on a cross gasping for life (three, in other gospels), then come to an end, along with their hopes.

Yeah, we know there’s a happy ending coming. Even so, imagine how rough it was for them. It was kind of their own descent into hell: They probably felt stupid for believing in Jesus. They may have thought he tricked them. Or was at least delusional. They may have second-guessed every miracle they’d seen Jesus perform. They may have doubted God’s very existence—some of us aren’t rational at all when we’re grieving.

We get that way when anyone dies. We know intellectually—’cause we’re Christians—this isn’t the end; they’re getting resurrected someday. But like Jesus’s first followers, we have serious doubts. We treat death as so final; we don’t entirely believe Jesus defeated it. We despair. And we shouldn’t. The only difference between their death and Jesus’s, is he was resurrected early.

So when we despair, look at the women, look at Joseph, look at Jesus’s students, and consider where they were on Good Friday. We’re all in the very same place.

Then look at Easter.