What do we know about Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus (see John 19:38–42)?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 2008.

We don't exactly know who Joseph of Arimathea was. We are told by Matthew and Luke that he was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Luke 23:51 tells us also that he had not agreed with the sentence which the Sanhedrin had passed on Christ. That is to say, he had not agreed to Christ being crucified. Because he was a councillor, and therefore of high standing in the Jewish community, he was able to go personally to Pilate and ask to be allowed to bury the body of Jesus, and Pilate allowed him to do so.

We are also told in the Gospels that Joseph was a very rich man, and we can see that from the fact that he, in conjunction with Nicodemus, brought a very, very large amount of spices with which to embalm the body of Jesus. The amount of spices was, as I say, very large, and some people have supposed that this is an exaggeration on the part of the author of the Fourth Gospel; but that is not so. It was customary for very wealthy Jews to honour people of rank, like kings and princes, with very large amounts of spices at their burial. The large amount of spices which Joseph and Nicodemus brought shows their enormous respect for Christ. By this time, they were probably both believers.

When it says that they buried him according to the custom of the Jews, this was in the providence of God; for otherwise the soldiers, when they took down the bodies, would have cast them all together into some unnamed hole in the ground. If they had done that, the evidence for the resurrection of Christ would then have been put in doubt; whereas, since he was buried by himself in a tomb, the tomb was found empty three days later. The body had gone—Jesus had risen from the dead.

We know somewhat more about Nicodemus. He too was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was also a teacher of the law, that is, a rabbi; and he was a member of the famous Gurion family. His personal names seem to have been Naqqai, which is an abbreviated form of Nicodemus, and Buni. He also, like his family, was very rich.

It is noticeable that it was they, and not the eleven apostles or other disciples, who buried the Lord. The eleven would not have had the standing in society which would have enabled them to approach Pilate the governor; nor would they have had the spices in their homes sufficient to bring out and bury Christ immediately after his crucifixion. Some of the women who saw where he was buried went home and, after the Sabbath Day—that is after the next day—they were able to buy some spices and they brought them in order to embalm the body of the Lord Jesus. But it was too late, of course; because by that time he had risen from the dead.

Yours sincerely in Christ,