{"id":1377,"date":"2006-10-04T02:20:53","date_gmt":"2006-10-04T02:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html"},"modified":"2006-10-04T02:20:53","modified_gmt":"2006-10-04T02:20:53","slug":"cremation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html","title":{"rendered":"Cremation?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of our readers has asked about cremation vs. burial. Tacitus, the Roman leader, once said that the Jews &#8220;bury rather than burn dead bodies&#8221; (<em>Hist<\/em>. 5.5). Not all have agreed with this ancient tradition, though. What do you think? Who has some thoughts about cremating vs. burying our loved ones? What do the pastors think? <!--more|inline--><br \/>\nBoth the ancient Israelites and the early Christians avoided cremation &#8212; in part, no doubt, because it was a common pagan custom.<br \/>\nIn Leviticus, for the body to be burned was an ultimate sanction and abomination (cf. Lev. 20:14; 21:9).<br \/>\nOn the other hand, it must be admitted &#8212; and correct me if I&#8217;m wrong here medically\/physically &#8212; that bodies decompose over time so that, however long it takes for a body to decompose, the cremated body and the buried body eventually end in (roughly) the same condition.<br \/>\nIt must be admitted also that a major reason why both Israelites and Christians did not cremate was to distance themselves from paganism.<br \/>\nEnvironmental and economical issues can be factored into the decision made by individuals (who choose to be cremated) and familes.<br \/>\nIf God can put back together the bodies of the decomposed by burial, he can do the same to the decomposed by cremation.<br \/>\nMy friend, the Zarman, had this comment: &#8220;I lean toward putting me in the dirt; don&#8217;t burn me up.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of our readers has asked about cremation vs. burial. Tacitus, the Roman leader, once said that the Jews &#8220;bury rather than burn dead bodies&#8221; (Hist. 5.5). Not all have agreed with this ancient tradition, though. What do you think? Who has some thoughts about cremating vs. burying our loved ones? What do the pastors&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cremation? - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cremation? - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of our readers has asked about cremation vs. burial. Tacitus, the Roman leader, once said that the Jews &#8220;bury rather than burn dead bodies&#8221; (Hist. 5.5). Not all have agreed with this ancient tradition, though. What do you think? Who has some thoughts about cremating vs. burying our loved ones? What do the pastors&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-10-04T02:20:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Cremation? - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Cremation? - Jesus Creed","og_description":"One of our readers has asked about cremation vs. burial. Tacitus, the Roman leader, once said that the Jews &#8220;bury rather than burn dead bodies&#8221; (Hist. 5.5). Not all have agreed with this ancient tradition, though. What do you think? Who has some thoughts about cremating vs. burying our loved ones? What do the pastors&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2006-10-04T02:20:53+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html","name":"Cremation? - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-10-04T02:20:53+00:00","dateModified":"2006-10-04T02:20:53+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/10\/cremation.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Cremation?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}