Of the places of burial.

To those that entered into the sepulchral cave, and carried the bier, there was first a floor, where they stood, and set down the bier, in order to their letting it down into the sepulchre: on this and the other side, there was a cave, or a hollowed place, deeper than the floor by four cubits, into which they let down the corpse, divers coffins being there prepared for divers corpses. "R. Simeon saith, The hollow of the cave consists of six cubits, and eight cubits, and it opens thirteen sepulchres within it, four on this side and four on that, and three before them, and one on the right hand of the door, and another on the left. And the floor within the entrance into the cave consists of a square, according to the dimensions of the bier, and of them that bear it: and from it, it opens two caves, one on this side, and another on that. R. Simeon saith, Four at the four sides of it. Rabban Simeon Ben Gamaliel saith, The whole is made according to the condition of the ground."

These things are handled by the Gemarists and Glossers very curiously and very largely, whom you may consult. From these things now spoken, you may more plainly understand many matters which are related of the sepulchre of our Saviour. Such as these:

Mark 16:5: "The women, entering into the sepulchre, saw a young man sitting on the right hand": in the very floor, immediately after the entrance into the sepulchre.

Luke 24:3: "Going in they found not his body," &c. Verse 5: "While they bowed down their faces to the earth, Peter ran to the sepulchre, and, when he had stooped down, he saw the linen-clothes"; that is, the women, and Peter after them, standing in the floor, bow down their faces, and look downward into the place where the sepulchres themselves were (the cave of the graves), which, as we said before, was four cubits deeper than the floor.

John 20:5: "The disciple whom Jesus loved came first to the sepulchre; and when he had stooped down" (standing in the floor, that he might look into the burying-place), "saw the linen clothes lie; yet went he not in. But Peter went in," &c.; that is, from the floor he went down into the cave itself, where the rows of the graves were (in which, nevertheless, no corpses had been as yet laid, besides the body of Jesus): thither also after Peter, John goes down. And verse 11: "But Mary, weeping, stood at the sepulchre without: and while she wept, she stooped down to the sepulchre, and saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and another at the feet, where the body of Christ had lain."

"She stood at the sepulchre without"; that is, within the cave, on the floor, but without that deeper cave, where the very graves were, or the places for the bodies: bowing herself, to look down thither, she saw two angels at the head and foot of that coffin wherein the body of Christ had been laid.