Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Firefighter01]

My point is that if Jesus of the Bible performed all those miracles that attracted thousands of loving followers, how come none of the followers or their families and friends ever note where it was? Surely after all that commotion it would be common knowledge where it should be?

The family and friends of Jesus didn't write the Bible. The New Testament was written by four-five important authors ("Mark", "Matthew", Luke, "John", and Paul), none of which knew Jesus when he had been alive. But even if they had, only Luke writes an after-word for his gospel (Acts of the Apostles), and Paul pays very little attention to the event in his epistles. James doesn't mention it at all.

Secondly, we can start from the proposition that we know Jesus was first laid in a tomb in Jerusalem owned by Joseph of Arimathea. We can postulate that Joseph was probably a disciple/follower of Jesus (since the Bible tells us that much), however we can be pretty certain that Joseph was indeed a Jew by the description of his tomb alone. So we know that Jesus was laid in a tomb in Jerusalem immediately following his death from crucifixion, and we also know that his family was from Nazareth, not Jerusalem. Nazareth is much further north along the Jordan. Therefore when the family took possession of the body from Joseph of Arimathea they would have most likely moved the body from Jerusalem to his home town in Nazareth, where the could have been a family tomb filled with ossuaries, or in fact where his remains could have been laid into a family ossuary within a family tomb (yes that's really what used to happen back in those days, look it up). How would you go about finding the final resting place of a person laid within an ossuary containing several other family members? It'd be impossible, you might have a chance if he was laid within his own ossuary, but we don't know that he was, and we don't even know if the was even put in an ossuary or simply buried or placed within a communal tomb. But again, even if he was laid to rest in his own ossuary, we can't know where it is because the family that laid him there did not discuss the location with the disciples.

Thirdly, we can postulate that the followers of Jesus after his death could not possibly have known where the family laid him to rest, by virtue of the fact that they had come to believe that he had been raised. Paul himself believed that Jesus had been raised to the celestial realm, and he says as much in his epistles. Some of the gospel accounts go even further by stating that he was bodily resurrected, which can't have happened if his body was still on earth somewhere rotting away in a tomb or a grave, and therefore the followers of Jesus who had come to believe this couldn't have known where his body was, otherwise they would have know that his body was still here on earth rotting in a grave or a tomb and not raised to the celestial realm. It's important to note that this belief came sometime after Jesus's death, but not a long time after. The reason for this belief is not entirely obvious, but we can postulate that it is probably to do with the fact that Jesus had made grand prophecies to his disciples and they were trying to reconcile them. Whatever the reason, if the remaining followers of Jesus in the late 30's or mid 40's had arrived at this shared belief it means they did not know where the body of Jesus was, and therefore can't communicate it to us in their writings.

Finally, that belief itself was a progression. And to illustrate this, we know that Paul knew the family of Jesus - and probably at least one member of the family of Jesus wrote an epistle that appears in the New Testament (James). James however is completely silent on the death of Jesus, it simply appears that he is continuing Jesus's teachings. Paul was in a better position here, because he knew James and the other family members of Jesus personally. Therefore he would have known where the body was, but do note that he doesn't say Jesus was resurrected - and he didn't believe that Jesus was resurrected in bodily form. The resurrection belief is a later recension of the belief that Paul had which was merely that the spirit-form of Jesus had been raised to the celestial realm after his death. This is consistent with other first-century beliefs of the time, including those within Judaism. And since he believed that Jesus had been raised (albeit without his body), we expect him to care more about the still-living Jesus in the celestial realm than the one that's dead and buried, and therefore remaining silent on the location of the body is entirely consistent with his belief system, and it is also consistent with him wanting to be respectful to the family who probably didn't want disciples of Jesus visiting their family tomb.

Hi Aractus,
Thanks for your comprehensive reply. I know that Jesus's supposed friends and family didn't write the Bible, I was saying that despite all the commotion and supernatural events surrounding the tomb, everyone forgot where he was first buried.  This is very strange, if he was as popular as stated in the Bible and the tomb was already known from its wealthy owner.  Imagine if such a tomb that once contained the body of the son of God was up the road from where you live, would you ever forget its location or keep the location to yourself?  No-one knows the actual authors of the gospels according to scholarly consensus. The Oxford Annotated Bible states on page 1744):

Neither the evangelists nor their first readers engaged in historical analysis. Their aim was to confirm Christian faith (Lk. 1.4; Jn. 20.31). Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings.

I don't know whether James was supposed to be a biological brother of Jesus or just a follower.  How do you know that Paul knew Jesus' family? Paul never talks about meeting Jesus except in apparitions and I've never heard of Paul meeting anyone except for James - which may not have been his real brother.  It sounds like you believe in the Jesus of the Bible, but without the miracles? This sounds strange to me as well if that is the case, as there wouldn't be much left if you stripped him of all the supernatural stuff.  To make it even worse, no-one remembers Jesus' birthplace, whether it was a house or a manger,  the actual house where he grew up as a lad and the whereabouts of his crucifixion.

Compare this to Lourdes, where some schoolkids make up a story about an apparition of Mary and it gets 6 million visits a year!