Summary

In Chapter 20, in Pilate’s Palace on Saturday, April 8 AD 30, Pilate realizes that Caiaphas fears Jesus now that the Nazarene is dead and Caiaphas requests that the tomb be sealed for fear that Jesus’s disciples would steal the body to convince people that he rose from the dead. They set a guard at the tomb, but Pilate refuses to give Caiaphas the sign of approval he so desperately desires, walking away silently to further distance himself from the execution.

Three days after Jesus’s death, in Chapter 21, Mary Magdalene and a friend visit Jesus’s tomb to anoint him with spices, knowing it will be a challenge to remove the boulder at the entrance of the tomb, but she finds the stone rolled away and the tomb empty of everything except the linen shroud in which Jesus was buried. “To...