What does the Bible say?
The Bible doesn’t provide any direct guidance about what to do with a body after death. Scholars have noted that any reference on cremation in the Bible only points to cultural expectations of body handling after death, and does not reference any religious requirements.
The Bible does not give any revelation or direction for what to do with a loved one who has passed, though the usual way that dead bodies were handled was burial. There was no way of embalming dead bodies, so the custom was to bury the person the very day that they died. There were different types of burials: direct burial in the ground, burial in a crypt above the ground, and burial in ancestral caves.
Some useGenesis 3:19as evidence that the Bible supports cremation. The passage reads, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Corinthians 15:35-55distinguishes between the human and the spiritual body: “It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. They are buried as natural human bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.” Regardless of the final disposition of a body, all souls are raised as spiritual bodies, the Bible says. All bodies are “buried in brokenness,” whether cremated first, or buried in the earth to decay.
Cremation was practiced in the Bible when a body was desecrated. In1 Samuel 31:11-13, cremation is a viable option, and is not seen as interfering with salvation. “And when the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul; All the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the well of Beth Shan, and came to Jabesh, and burnt them there. And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.”
