The narrative in the fragment continues:
21. And then they took out the nails from the hands of the Lord, and laid him upon the earth; and the whole earth quaked, and great fear came [upon them]. 22. Then the sun shone out, and it was found to be the ninth hour. 23. Now the Jews were glad and gave his body to Joseph, that he might bury it, for he had beheld the good works that he did.[97] 24. And he took the Lord and washed him, and wrapped him in linen, and brought him into his own grave, called “Joseph's Garden.”
This passage is full of independent peculiarities. Although none of the canonical Gospels, except Matthew, says anything of an earthquake, and the first Synoptist associates it with the moment when Jesus “gave up the ghost,” Peter narrates that when the body of the Lord was unloosed from the cross, the moment it was laid on the ground the whole earth quaked beneath the awful burden: a representation almost grander than anything in the four Gospels.
The canonical Gospels do not speak of the nails being [pg 077] taken out, and although Peter states that they were removed from the hands, he does not refer to the feet. The fourth is the only canonical Gospel that speaks of the nails at all, and there it is not in connection with the crucifixion, but the subsequent appearance to the disciples and the incredulity of Thomas (xx. 20, 25, 27). Here also, only the marks in the hands are referred to. The difference of the two representations is so great that there can really be no question of dependence, and those who are so eager to claim the use of the fourth Gospel simply because it is the only one that speaks of “nails” (“the print of the nails”) might perhaps consider that the idea of crucifixion and the cross might well be independently associated with a reference to the nails by which the victim was generally attached. In the third Synoptic (xxiv. 39), the inference is inevitable that both hands and feet were supposed to be nailed. When the report, “The Lord is risen,” is brought to the eleven, Jesus is represented as standing in their midst and assuring them that he was not a spirit, by saying: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself”—meaning of course the prints of the nails in both. The statement in Peter that on the occurrence of the earthquake “great fear came [upon them]” (φόβος μέγας ἐγένετο) is not even mentioned in Matthew when he narrates the earthquake, which he represents as occurring when Jesus expired. The expression is characteristic of the author, who uses it elsewhere.
The representation that the sun shone out and that the Jews were glad when they found it was the ninth hour, and that consequently their law, twice quoted by the author, would not be broken, is limited to the fragment; as is also the statement that they gave his body to Joseph that he might bury it, “for he had beheld the good works that he did.” As we have already seen, [pg 078] the canonical Gospels represent Joseph as going to Pilate at this time and begging for the body of Jesus, and it will be remembered that, in Mark (xv. 44), it is said that “Pilate marvelled if he were already dead,” and called the centurion to ascertain the fact before he granted the body. In Peter, the body was of course given in consequence of the previous order, when Pilate asked Herod for it.
Joseph is represented, here, as only washing the body and wrapping it in linen (λαβὼν δὲ τὸν κύριον ἔλουσε καὶ εἴλησε σινδόνι). The first Synoptist (xxvii. 59) says that Joseph took the body and “wrapped it in a clean linen cloth” (ἐνετύλιξεν αὐτὸ [ἐν] σινδόνι καθαρᾷ). Mark similarly describes that (xv. 46), bringing “a linen cloth and taking him down, he wound him in the linen cloth” (καθελὼν αὐτὸν ἐνείλησεν τῇ σινδόνι). The third Synoptist has nearly the same statement and words. The fourth Gospel has a much more elaborate account to give (xix. 38 ff.). Joseph goes to Pilate asking that he may take away the body, and Pilate gives him leave. He comes and takes away the body. “And there came also Nicodemus ... bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen clothes (καὶ ἔδησαν αὐτὸ ὀθονίοις) with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury.” This account is quite different from that in the Synoptics, and equally so from Peter's, which approximates much more nearly to that in the latter.
Peter says that Joseph then “brought him into his own grave, called ‘Joseph's Garden’ ” (εἰσήγαγεν εἰς ἴδιον τάφον καλούμενον Κῆπον Ἰωσήφ). The account of the tomb is much more minute in the canonical Gospels. In Matthew (xxvii. 60), Joseph is said to lay the body “in his own new tomb (μνημείῳ), which he had hewn out [pg 079] in the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb (μνημείου) and departed.” In Mark (xv. 46), he lays him “in a tomb (μνήματι) which had been hewn out of a rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb” (μνημείου). Luke has a new detail to chronicle (xxiii. 53): Joseph lays him “in a tomb (μνηματί) that was hewn in stone, where never man had yet lain.” The first two Synopists, it will be observed, say that Joseph rolls a stone against the entrance to the tomb: but neither Luke nor Peter has this detail, though the former leaves it to be inferred that it had been done, for (xxiv. 2) the women who came on the first day of the week find the stone rolled away from the tomb. In Peter, on the contrary, the stone is rolled against the tomb by the guard and others later, as we shall presently see.
In the fourth Gospel, the account has further and different details, agreeing, however, with the peculiar statement of Luke (xix. 41 f.): “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden (κῆπος), and in the garden a new tomb (μνημεῖον) wherein was never man yet laid. There then, because of the Jews' Preparation (for the tomb [μνημεῖον] was nigh at hand), they laid Jesus.” Some stress has been laid upon the point that both Peter and the fourth Gospel use the word “garden,” and that none of the Synoptics have it, and as these critics seem to go upon the principle that any statement in Peter which happens to be in any canonical Gospel, even although widely different in treatment, must have been derived from that Gospel, and not from any similar written or traditional source, from which that Gospel derived it, they argue that this shows dependence on the fourth Gospel. There is certainly no evidence of dependence here. In Peter, the grave (τάφος) is simply [pg 080] said to be called “Joseph's Garden” (Κήπον Ἰωσηφ),[98] and described as “his own grave.” The fourth Gospel does not identify the garden as Joseph's at all, but says that “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden,” and in it “a tomb” (μνημεῖον), and the reason given for taking the body thither is not that it belonged to Joseph, but that the tomb “was nigh at hand,” and that on account of the Jews' Preparation they laid it there. The whole explanation seems to exclude the idea that the writer knew that it belonged to Joseph. Peter simply contributes a new detail to the common tradition. There is no appearance of his deriving this from our canonical Gospels, from which he differs in substance and in language. Neither Peter nor the Synoptics know anything of the co-operation of Nicodemus.
The narrative in the fragment continues:
25. Then the Jews and the elders and the priests, seeing the evil they had done to themselves, began to beat their breasts (ἤρξαντο κόπτεσθαι) and to say: “Woe for our sins; judgment draweth nigh and the end of Jerusalem.”