According to the first Synoptic, when Joseph took the body, he simply wrapped it "in clean linen" [------] and "laid it in his own new sepulchre, which he hewed in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed."(2) There is no mention of spices or any anointing of the body,(3) and the statement that the women provide for this is not made in this Gospel. According to the writer, the burial is complete, and the sepulchre finally closed. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary come merely "to behold the sepulchre" at the end of the {438} Sabbath.(1) The fourth Evangelist apparently does not know anything of the sepulchre being Joseph's own tomb, and the body is, according to him, although folly embalmed, only laid in the sepulchre in the garden on account of the Sabbath and because it was at hand. We shall refer to this point, which must be noted, further on. There are very striking differences between these two accounts, but the narratives of the second and third Synoptists are still more emphatically contradictory of both. In Mark,(2) we are told that Joseph "bought linen, and took him down and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which had been hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone against the door of the sepulchre." There is no mention here of any embalming performed by Joseph or Nicodemus, nor are any particulars given as to the ownership of the sepulchre, or the reasons for its selection. We are, however, told:(3) "And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices that they might come and anoint him." It is distinctly stated in connection with the entombment, moreover, in agreement with the first Synoptic:(4) "And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where he was laid."(5) According to this account and that of the first Gospel, the women, having remained to the last and seen the body deposited in the sepulchre, knew so little of its having been embalmed by Joseph and Nicodemus, that they actually purchase the spices and come to perform that office themselves. In Luke, the statement is still more specific, in {439} agreement with Mark, and in contradiction to the fourth Gospel. Joseph took down the body "and wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid.... And women who had come with him out of Galilee followed after, and beheld the sepulchre _and how his body was laid_. And they returned and prepared spices and ointments." Upon the first day of the week, the author adds: "they came unto the sepulchre bringing the spices which they had prepared."(1)