Which of these accounts are we to believe? According to the first Gospel, there is no embalmment at all; according to the second and third Gospels, the embalmment is undertaken by the women, and not by Joseph and Nicodemus, but is never carried out; according to the fourth Gospel, the embalmment is completed on Friday evening by Joseph and Nicodemus, and not by the women. According to the first Gospel, the burial is completed on Friday evening; according to the second and third, it is only provisional; and according to the fourth, the embalmment is final, but it is doubtful whether the entombment is final or temporary; several critics consider it to have been only provisional.(2) In Mark, the women buy the spices "when the Sabbath was past" [------];(3) in Luke before it has begun;(4) and in Matthew and John they do not buy them at all. In the first and fourth Gospels, the women come after the Sabbath merely to behold the sepulchre,(5) and in the second and third, they bring the spices to complete the burial. {440} Amid these conflicting statements we may suggest one consideration. It is not probable, in a hot climate, that a wounded body, hastily laid in a sepulchre on Friday evening before six o'clock, would be disturbed again on Sunday morning for the purpose of being anointed and embalmed. Corruption would, under the circumstances, already have commenced. Besides, as Keim(l) has pointed out, the last duties to the dead were not forbidden amongst the Jews on the Sabbath, and there is really no reason why any care for the body of the Master which reverence or affection might have dictated should not at once have been bestowed. The enormous amount of myrrh and aloes--"about a hundred pound weight" [------]--brought by Nicodemus has excited much discussion, and adds to the extreme improbability of the story related by the fourth Evangelist.(3) To whatever weight the [------] may be reduced, the quantity specified is very great; and it is a question whether the body thus enveloped "as the manner of the Jews is to bury" could have entered the sepulchre. The practice of embalming the dead, although well known amongst the Jews, and invariable in the case of Kings and noble or very wealthy persons, was by no means generally prevalent In the burial of Gamaliel the elder, chief of the party of the Pharisees, it is stated that over 80 pounds of balsam were burnt in his honour by the proselyte Onkelos;(3) but this quantity, which was considered very {441} remarkable, is totally eclipsed by the provision of Nicodemus.