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In whose sepulcher was the body of Jesus placed?
Matthew: Joseph “laid it in his own new tomb which he had hewn out in the rock” ([xxvii, 60]).
John: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jew’s preparation day; for the sepulcher was nigh at hand” ([xix, 41, 42]).
It is evident from John that the sepulcher did not belong to Joseph, but that it was one which happened to be convenient to the place of crucifixion; for, as Strauss justly argues: “The vicinity of the grave, when alleged as a motive, excludes the fact of possession.”