“At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.”- John 19:41 As a literary device, this description of the burial place of Jesus Christ is effective; it offers a contrast between the site of Jesus’s death at the crucifixion site of Calvary (also called Golgotha, both derived from the Latin for “place of the skull”) and a fertile garden, brimming with life. It also provides a cyclical shape to the final chapter of the Christ narrative, which begins with his arrest in the...