Eldad Keynan has a new article on the Bible and Interpretation site, about the burials of Jesus. While my book is about The Burial of Jesus in the singular, it does discuss the possibility that there could have been more than one. And my use of the plural in reference to Keynan's article is intentional, and accurate. Keynan suggests that the Gospel of John's depiction of the disciples' initial reaction, assuming that the body had been moved, was correct.
I agree with Keynan about the first burial. Joseph of Arimathea, on behalf of the Jewish ruling council, arranged for Jesus' burial in the Sanhedrin's tomb for the burial of criminals, which is today the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
But as I ask in my book, who would have moved the body to another tomb within the next day or so, and why? I can envisage the disciples wanting to do so, and even trying to do so, to undo the dishonorable burial of Jesus. But the New Testament texts do not give me the impression that they succeeded. And I don't see any clear motive for anyone else to move his body.
Eldad is a friend, and I appreciate his article, and I agree with him about the character of the burial of Jesus after being taken down from the cross. What happened after that is hard to reconstruct, and with respect to some things, we simply do not have the historical evidence we would need in order to reconstruct what happened.
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