The Burial of Jesus: Second Edition Published!

I am happy to finally be able to announce that the second edition of my book The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? has now been released by Patheos Press and is now available for purchase in Kindle format on Amazon.com.

Versions in Nook and iBooks format are planned for the near future.

 The price on Amazon.com is $2.99, and this is indeed a revised and improved edition, and so even if you previously purchased the first edition of The Burial of Jesus you will presumably still have an interest in this one.

 I'll be getting in touch with some other bloggers about reviewing the book, and there will be some op-eds and videos that I'll be writing/recording in the coming days and weeks, on topics that the book touches on. If you are a blogger interested in the possibility of reviewing the book, do get in touch via e-mail or some other means of private messaging to indicate your interest, and let me know your daily pageview statistics.

Articles of Related Interest

Two articles by me of related interest have been published in The Bible and Interpretation. One, on the burial of Jesus and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, is based on material from The Burial of Jesus. The other, on the ending of Mark's Gospel, is also relevant to the subject of that book.

Coming Soon: "Burial of Jesus" in The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception

When the relevant volume of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception becomes available in the not-too-distant future, part of the article on "Burial of Jesus" was contributed by me. I have not read the other sections of the article, and so am looking forward to reading them, in addition to having my own contribution made available.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Mark, when not read through the lens of later Gospels, suggests that Jesus was not given an honorable burial: Jesus is buried in accordance with the Law and placed in "a tomb," without anointing or other niceties that were the norm when someone was buried honorably by their family. The use of a linen shroud may suggest that it was possible to be buried even more dishonorably - but not much (Nahum ben Yehuda has a collection of rabbinic references to burial shrouds).

A new article in The Bible and Interpretation by Eldad Keynan (HT Jim West) the customs of Jewish burial in the time of Jesus are explained. In addition, we get the important information that "the tomb beneath the Holy Sepulcher has no niches but only a shelf, and it is smaller compared to regular family tombs." This leads Keynan to suggest that this was probably the site used by the Jerusalem court for burial of criminals. It was used for preliminary burial, not being intended for final burial.

It is striking that the traditional site for the burial of Jesus (hidden for a while by a temple of Aphrodite) and the details of Mark's Gospel (obscured or even contradicted by later authors) converge in agreement on this point.

Triangulations On The Burial of Jesus

Sabio Lantz has begun blogging through The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith - for which I am very grateful!

He has created a start page for the review, and will link to individual posts reflecting on the book as he reads through it. The first substantive post is called McGrath's Faith.

If you've never visited Sabio's blog Triangulations before, be sure not to miss the list of ingredients in the sidebar!

Review in Interpretation

The latest issue of the journal Interpretation, 63.4 (Oct 2009), includes a review of The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith (on p.426).

If your library has a subscription to either the Gale Group database or Highbeam, you can probably read the review already. If not, you may have to wait until it makes it into other databases or until the print copy gets processed and appears on the shelf.

Spirit Cry review

Cameron Horsburgh at the Spirit Cry blog has written a review of The Burial of Jesus.