Note 48 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

While the synoptists represent the interment of Jesus as being performed by Joseph alone, with no other beholders than the women, John, as we have observed, introduces Nicodemus as an assistant; a particular, the authenticity of which has been already considered in connexion with the first appearance of Nicodemus.48 This individual brings spices for the purpose of embalming Jesus; a mixture of myrrh and aloes, in the quantity of about a hundred pounds. In vain have commentators laboured to withdraw from the word λίτρα, which John here uses, the signification of the Latin libra, and to substitute a smaller weight:49 the above surprising quantity is, however, satisfactorily accounted for by the remark of Olshausen, that the superfluity was a natural expression of the veneration of those men for Jesus. In the fourth gospel the two men perform the office of embalming immediately after the taking down of the body from the cross, winding it in linen clothes after the Jewish practice; in Luke the women, on their return home from the grave of Jesus, provide spices and ointments, in order to commence the embalming after the sabbath (xxiii. 56, xxiv. 1); in Mark they do not buy the sweet spices ἀρώματα until the sabbath is past (xvi. 1); while in Matthew there is no mention of an embalming of the body of Jesus, but only of its being wrapped in a clean linen cloth (xxvii. 59).