Roll Back the Stone

Byron R. McCane is Professor of Religion and department chair at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina. He is Academic Director of the Sepphoris Excavations in Northern Israel.

• Introduction - death as a fact of life; Jewish death ritual in early Roman Palestine; Q and death in early Roman Galilee; "Where No One Had Yet Been Laid" - the shame of Jesus' burial; is a corpse contagious?; relocating the dead in early Byzantine Palestine; rest in peace or roast in Hell - funerary versus apocalyptic portraits of paradise.

"Byron McCane's study of death and burial in ancient Palestine in the Roman and Byzantine periods successfully bridges the gap between material culture and early Jewish and Christian literature. By drawing upon the ancillary fields of anthropology and sociology, McCane demonstrates how death rituals defined the social boundaries of each of those communities; and from their common burial practices in the Roman period he infers that it was only in the Byzantine period that important differences began to surface between early Judaism and Christianity. This Superbly written work offers a surprisingly intimate engagement with a variety of ancient sources that is sure to turn heads in a new and exciting direction." Eric M. Meyers Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor of Judaic Studies and Archaeology Duke University