What does the Bible say about cremation and burial?
The Bible refers to burying people that are both good (Genesis 23:19,20 and 50:4-8; John 19:38-42) and bad (Deuteronomy 21:22,23; Acts 5:9,10). Similarly, the Bible refers to burning (cremating) people as a good act (in 1 Samuel 31:11-13 they burned the bodies and then buried the bones), a bad act (in Joshua 7:24-26 they did essentially the same thing), or somewhere in the middle (Amos 6:9,10). Therefore, the Bible does not express any preference although more of the people in the Bible are buried than cremated. (Still, people may have been buried more often due to following a custom see John 19:40 than fulfilling a requirement of God.) What would happen to someone was unfortunate enough to die in a building fire, and consequently had their ashes spread all over the place? Although there is no Bible passage to support this directly, based on the nature of God as revealed in the Bible, we believe that a person who was cremated this way and had their ashes separated like that should not
