Jews felt obligated to ensure pre-nightfall burial of any corpse
• …In fact, even crucified corpses were to buried before nightfall.
• …It was seen as a common decency commanded by God.1
All contemporaries, even Gentiles, deemed burial a necessary thing.1
• …Diodorus Siculus 20.84.3
• …Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.2.52
• …Chariton Chaereas and Callirhoe 4.1.3
• …Pausanius Description of Greece 1.32.5
• …Philostratus Heroikos 3333
• …Plutarch Nicias 6.5-6
• …Sophicles Antigone 43-48
• …Cf. Pint. Solon 21.1
• …Most contemporaries in general felt this way.2
Jews felt non-burial was not just bad, but an absolute horror.
• …Philo’s Joseph 22-27 says, “nothing has ever happened more intolerable than this”1
• …Hebrew Bible: Ecclesiastes 6:3
• …Midrash Rabbah: Ecclesiastes Rabbah (Kohelet Rabbah) 3:2
• …Josephus Jewish Wars 5:514
• …Jubilees 23:23
• …Sibylline Oracles 3.643
• …It was regarded as a curse from God.2
• …Cf.Semahot 13:13