Rich people rarely showed up among Jesus' disciples, especially when pressure became serious (19:24; 26:18). Yet Joseph here is a disciple of Jesus, a model to be imitated, one of the few rich men who squeezed through a needle's eye by God's grace (19:23-24). The Romans normally preferred for the bodies of condemned criminals to rot on crosses (Petr. Sat. 112), but Jewish custom prohibited this final indignity (Deut 21:23; compare m. Sanhedrin 6:5-6), and the Romans sometimes surrendered a corpse to friends or relatives who sought permission to bury it (Philo Flaccus 83-84). But unless Joseph already held special favor before Pilate (compare Jos. Life 420-21), which is unlikely, only a courageous ally would identify himself before the governor as "friend" or patron of one condemned for conspiracy against Rome.

Matthew explicitly notes the use of Joseph's own family tomb, fulfilling Isaiah 53:12. To bury Jesus in his own tomb (Mt 27:60) fits the situation of haste and location, but also suggests a special love normally reserved for family members or those equally esteemed (compare 1 Kings 13:30-31). Archaeological evidence for the tombs in this area may suggest that the tomb belonged to a person of material substance (Craig 1995:148).

Most Judean burial sites were private family tombs scattered around Jerusalem and elsewhere (Safrai 1974-1976b:779-80). Often these were caves with an opening covered by a large stone rolled in a groove; such stones could not be removed from within (Reicke 1974:187; Yamauchi 1972:112). Because Joseph was well-to-do, he probably owned a more ornate tomb, whose disk-shaped stone would be too large (a yard in diameter) for a single man to move even from outside (Lane 1974:581).