Mark 15:42 Now when evening had already come, since it was the day of preparation (that is, the day before the Sabbath), 15:43 Joseph of Arimathea, a highly regarded member of the council, who was himself looking forward to the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 15:44 Pilate was surprised that he was already dead. He called the centurion and asked him if he had been dead for some time. 15:45 When Pilate was informed by the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.

15:46 After Joseph bought a linen cloth and took down the body, he wrapped it in the linen and placed it in a tomb cut out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone across the entrance of the tomb. 15:47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was placed.

From time to time, sceptics have expressed doubt that the body of Jesus would have been laid to rest in a rock tomb.  As the body of a condemned criminal, it would have been thrown into a shallow grave and the remains devoured by wild animals.

In this account, there is no empty tomb, because the body was never in the tomb in the first place!

Sceptics, such as Crossan and Erhman, think it probable that Jesus’ body was deposed in a shallow mass grave, and left subject to the ravages of rotting under the hot sun, or being torn apart and the bone dispersed by wild dogs.  But, if this were the case, it is odd that Mark, having made many allusions to Psa 22 in the narrative about the crucifixion (see above) did not do the same when writing about the burial (Psa 22:16, 20) would have fitted well).  And, if Mark (or his sources) was keen to write a narrative that was shaped by OT allusions, he could equally have had Isa 53:12 in mind, with is reference to being buried ‘with the wicked’.  The fact that Mark does not do any of this is evidence that Jesus’ burial was contrary to expectation.  Something similar can be said of the Evangelists’ record of the resurrection: it has all the immediacy of eye-witness testimony, and nothing of the artfulness of ‘creative imagination’ prompted by OT expectations.  See this.

Chris Sinkinson cites the following:

‘Philosopher John Hick came to doubt not only the resurrection of Jesus, but even the burial of his crucified body. Hick suggested that as a criminal the remains of Jesus would have been discarded with the refuse and burned. Marianne Sawicki imagines that the body would have been buried in a ‘limed pit.’ Peter Kirby in The Case Against the Empty Tomb (2002) argues that a proper burial for Jesus was unlikely because the Romans discarded those executed and the Jews would have considered his corpse unclean. In 1994, Time magazine noted that theologian John Dominic Crossan believed that the body of Jesus would have been buried in a shallow grave and eaten by wild dogs.’

Helen K. Bond (The Historical Jesus: a Guide for the Perplexed, ch. 12) suggests that

‘Joseph’s intervention clearly shows that he expected no deputation from either Jesus’ family or his disciples. Nor is there any hint of cooperation between Joseph and Jesus’ followers in the actual burial itself. Jesus had none of the trappings of a normal Jewish burial: no washing and anointing, no funeral procession, no ‘gathering to the fathers’ in a family grave, no eulogies and no period of formal mourning. From start to finish, the burial was ignominious and dishonourable.’

The same author notes that

‘scholars commonly note the increasingly dignified burial given to Jesus in the gospels. In Mark he is laid in a rock-hewn tomb (Mk 15.46), in Luke and John it becomes a new rock-hewn tomb (Lk 23.53, Jn 19.41), and in Matthew he is put to rest in Joseph’s own unused tomb (Mt 27.60).’

According to Bond,

‘Joseph of Arimathaea, too, is gradually Christianised by the tradition, moving from Mark’s pious member of the council (Mk 15.43) to a fully-fledged Christian (Mt 27.57, Jn 19.38-42).’

In The Historical Jesus: a Guide for the Perplexed Bond elaborates:

‘Who exactly was Joseph? In Mark, he is a respected member of the council who was ‘looking for the kingdom of God’ (Mk 15:43). He acted bravely in asking for the body of Jesus (Mk 15:43), but there is no indication that he was particularly favourably disposed towards Jesus. Later Gospels struggled with Joseph’s role: Luke makes him a ‘good and upright man’ who had dissented from the council’s purpose and action (Lk 23:50–51), while Matthew makes him a wealthy disciple (Mt 27:57) and John casts him as a secret disciple who, with Nicodemus, gave Jesus a regal burial (Jn 19:38–42). The implication in Mark, however, is that Joseph is a pious Jew who, in accordance with the command of Deut 21:22, oversaw Jesus’ interment. Quite probably, he had been specially appointed by the Jerusalem leadership to dispose of the bodies of executed criminals.’

I think that Bond’s scepticism has got the better of her.  There is no convincing reasons why these descriptions should be regarded as at variance with one another (note her use of the word ‘struggled’); on the contrary, they are perfectly complementary.

Bond wonders what kind of account of the burial lay behind the ’embellishments’.  She thinks it ‘unlikely’ that a crucified criminal would end up in a rock-hewn tomb, and regards it as more probably that Jesus was buried ‘not in the rich man’s tomb piously envisaged by the evangelists, but in a shallow (though likely individual) pit reserved for criminals.’  She asks:

‘is Mark’s stress that the women noted the precise location of the tomb simply an over-elaborate attempt to dispel the story that the women simply didn’t know exactly where Jesus had been buried?’

I think that Bond’s conjectures as precisely that – conjectures that lack convincing evidence or argument and which fly in the face of the evidence that we have before us, in the form of the eyewitness testimony.

Even Mark Edward, habitually reluctant to accept the historicity of anything in the Gospels unless a parallel can be found elsewhere, admits:

‘It is sometimes thought that Jesus, as a crucifixion victim, would have been denied burial in a tomb. It is argued it would be more historically accurate if he was carelessly thrown in a mass grave. But the placement of Jesus’ body in a tomb is entirely plausible. In 1968 an ossuary with the bones of a Judean man who died in the first century was found, his name inscribed in Hebrew on the stone box. Jehoḥanan, son of Ḥagqol, was crucified. When his ossuary was discovered, the nail remained in his right foot. This was not out of the ordinary.’

See this article.

Edwards quotes Josephus (Judean War):

‘No, [the Idumeans] proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial. But the Judeans used to take so much care of the burial of men that they took down those who were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the sun went down.’

Sinkinson mentions that archaeologists in Cambridgeshire, England, have recently discovered human bones that have been shown to have been those of a man in his  mid-20s who had been crucified by the Romans in the Second Century.  Among various signs of crucifixion, a long nail had been driven through the heel bone.

But here’s the thing: the bones had been laid to rest with care and dignity in a grave.

Further details are given in this article from The Guardian newspaper:

• Although crucifixion was common in the Roman era, osteological evidence is rare, because nails were often not used (the victim was often simply tied to the crossbar).  If nails were used, they were often removed in order to be re-used in some way.
• Victims of crucifixion were often not given formal burials.  But the present case shows that there were exceptions to this general rule.
• The find, in the village of Fenstanton, was unearthed during the excavation of five small Roman cemeteries holding the remains of 40 adults and 5 children.
• This find may be the best-preserved example of Roman-era crucifixion in the world.
• The man is thought to have been aged between 25 and 35 and around 5′ 7″ (average for the time).
• He was crucified between AD130 and AD 360.  Crucifixion for Roman citizens ceased after AD 337, although continued for some time for slaves and in certain other cases.
• His remains were surrounded by 12 iron nails and alongside a timber structure thought to have use to transport his body from the cross to the grave.
• His remains showed additional signs of trauma; his legs had probably been bound or shackled.

Such collections of bones from crucified victims have also been found in Italy, Egypt.

There is no reason to doubt, then, that Jesus’ body was placed in a rock tomb after his death.

So the real question is: Why was the tomb found to be empty three days later?

For a detailed and assessment of the archaeological evidence around crucifixion and burial in the Roman era, see Jesus, the Final Days, by Craig Evans and N.T. Wright (esp. ch. 2, by Evans)