miraculous cure, and for the possibility of explaining the origin of
the anecdote, is to be obtained by a closer examination of the Old
Testament narrative already mentioned, 1 Kings xiii. 1 ff.. A prophet
out of Judah threatened Jeroboam, while offering incense on his
idolatrous altar, with the destruction of the altar and the overthrow
of his false worship; the king with outstretched hand commanded that
this prophet of evil should be seized, when suddenly his hand dried up
so that he could not draw it again towards him, and the altar was rent.
On the entreaty of the king, however, the prophet besought Jehovah for
the restoration of the hand, and its full use was again granted. [1348]
Paulus also refers to this narrative in the same connexion, but only
for the purpose of applying to it his natural method of explanation; he
observes that Jeroboam’s anger may have produced a transient convulsive
rigidity of the muscles and so forth, in the hand just stretched out
with such impetuosity. But who does not see that we have here a legend
designed to glorify the monotheistic order of prophets, and to hold up
to infamy the Israelitish idolatry in the person of its founder
Jeroboam? The man of God denounces on the idolatrous altar quick and
miraculous destruction; the idolatrous king impiously stretches forth
his hand against the man of God; the hand is paralyzed, the idolatrous
altar falls asunder into the dust, and only on the intercession of the
prophet is the king restored. Who can argue about the miraculous and
the natural in what is so evidently a mythus? And who can fail to
perceive in our evangelical narrative an imitation of this Old
Testament legend, except that agreeably to the spirit of Christianity
the withering of the hand appears, not as a retributive miracle, but as
a natural disease, and only its cure is ascribed to Jesus; whence also
the outstretching of the hand is not, as in the case of Jeroboam, the
criminal cause of the infliction, continued as a punishment, and the
drawing of it back again a sign of cure; but, on the contrary, the hand
which had previously been drawn inwards, owing to disease, can after
the completion of the cure be again extended. That, in other instances,
about that period, the power of working cures of this kind was in the
East ascribed to the favourites of the gods, may be seen from a
narrative already adduced, in which, together with the cure of
blindness, the restoration of a diseased hand is attributed to
Vespasian. [1349]
But this curative miracle does not appear independently and as an
object by itself: the history of it hinges on the fact that the cure
was wrought on the Sabbath, and the point of the whole lies in the
words by which Jesus vindicates his activity in healing on the Sabbath
against the Pharisees. In Luke and Mark this defence consists in the
question, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil,
to save life or to destroy it? in Matthew, in a part of this question,
together with the aphorism on saving the sheep which might fall into
the pit on the sabbath. Luke, who has not this saying on the present
occasion, places it (varied by the substitution of ὄνος ἢ βοῦς, an ass
or an ox for πρόβατον sheep, and of φρέαρ, well or pit for βόθυνος,
ditch) in connexion with the cure of an ὑδρωπικὸς a man who had the
dropsy (xiv. 5); a narrative which has in general a striking similarity
to the one under consideration. Jesus takes food in the house of one of
the chief Pharisees, where, as in the other instance in the synagogue,
he is watched (here, ἦσαν παρατηρούμενοι, there, παρετήρουν). A
dropsical person is present; as, there, a man with a withered hand. In
the synagogue, according to Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus, εἰ ἔξεστι
τοῖς σάββασι θεραπεύειν; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days?
According to Mark and Luke, Jesus asks them whether it be lawful to
save life, etc.: so, here, he asks them, εἰ ἔξεστι τῷ σαββατῷ
θεραπερύειν; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath? whereupon in both
histories the interrogated parties are silent (in that of the withered
hand, Mark: οἱ δέ ἐσιώπων; in that of the dropsical patient, Luke: οἱ
δὲ ἡσύχασαν). Lastly, in both histories we have the saying about the
animal fallen into a pit, in the one as an epilogue to the cure, in the
other (that of Matthew) as a prologue. A natural explanation, which has
not been left untried even with this cure of the dropsy, [1350] seems
more than usually a vain labour, where, as in this case, we have before
us no particular narrative, resting on its own historical basis, but a
mere variation on the theme of the sabbath cures, and the text on the
endangered domestic animal, which might come to one (Matthew) in
connexion with the cure of a withered hand, to another (Luke) with the
cure of a dropsical patient, and to a third in a different connexion
still; for there is yet a third Story of a miraculous cure with which a
similar saying is associated. Luke, namely, narrates (xiii. 10 ff.) the
cure of a woman bowed down by demoniacal influence, as having been
performed by Jesus on the sabbath; when to the indignant remonstrance
of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus replies by asking, whether every
one does not loose his ox or ass from the stall on the sabbath, and
lead him away to watering? a question which is undeniably a variation
of the one given above. So entirely identical does this history appear
with the one last named, that Schleiermacher comes to this conclusion:
since in the second there is no reference to the first, and since
consequently the repetition is not excused by confession, the two
passages Luke xiii. 10, and xiv. 5, cannot have been written one after
the other by the same author. [1351]
Thus we have here, not three different incidents, but only three
different frames in which legend has preserved the memorable and
thoroughly popular aphorism on the domestic animal, to be rescued or
tended on the sabbath. Yet, unless we would deny to Jesus so original
and appropriate an argument, there must lie at the foundation a cure of
some kind actually performed by him on the sabbath; not, however, a
miraculous one. We have seen that Luke unites the saying with the cure
of a demoniacal patient: now it might have been uttered by Jesus on the
occasion of one of those cures of demoniacs of which, under certain
limitations, we have admitted the natural possibility. Or, when Jesus
in cases of illness among his followers applied the usual medicaments
without regard to the sabbath, he may have found this appeal to the
practical sense of men needful for his vindication. Or lastly, if there
be some truth in the opinion of rationalistic commentators that Jesus,
according to the oriental and more particularly the Essene custom,
occupied himself with the cure of the body as well as of the soul, he
may, when complying with a summons to the former work on the sabbath,
have had occasion for such an apology. But in adopting this last
supposition, we must not, with these commentators, seek in the
particular supernatural cures which the gospels narrate, the natural
reality; on the contrary, we must admit that this is totally lost to
us, and that the supernatural has usurped its place. [1352] Further, it
cannot have been cures in general with which that saying of Jesus was
connected; but any service performed by him or his disciples which
might be regarded as a rescuing or preservation of life, and which was
accompanied by external labour, might in his position with respect to
the Pharisaic party, furnish an occasion for such a defence.
Of the two cures on the sabbath narrated in the fourth gospel, one has
already been considered with the cures of the blind; the other (v. 1
ff.) might have been numbered among the cures of paralytics, but as the
patient is not so designated, it was admissible to reserve it for our
present head. In the porches of the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem,
Jesus found a man who, as it subsequently appears, had been lame for
thirty-eight years; this sufferer he enables by a word to stand up and
carry home his bed, but, as it was the sabbath, he thus draws down on
himself the hostility of the Jewish hierarchy. Woolston [1353] and many
later writers have thought to get clear of this history in a singular
manner, by the supposition that Jesus here did not cure a real sufferer
but merely unmasked a hypocrite. [1354] The sole reason which can with
any plausibility be urged in favour of this notion, is that the cured
man points out Jesus to his enemies as the one who had commanded him to
carry his bed on the sabbath (v. 15; comp. 11 ff.), a circumstance
which is only to be explained on the ground that Jesus had enjoined
what was unwelcome. But that notification to the Pharisees might
equally be given, either with a friendly intention, as in the case of
the man born blind (John ix. 11, 25), or at least with the innocent one
of devolving the defence of the alleged violation of the sabbath on a
stronger than himself. [1355] The Evangelist at least gives it as his
opinion that the man was really afflicted, and suffered from a
wearisome disease, when he describes him as having had an infirmity
thirty-eight years, τριάκοντα καὶ ὀκτὼ ἔτη ἔχων ἐν τῇ ἀσθενίᾳ (v. 5):
for the forced interpretation once put on this passage by Paulus,
referring the thirty-eight years to the man’s age, and not to the
duration of his disease, he has not even himself ventured to reproduce.
[1356] On this view of the incident it is also impossible to explain
what Jesus says to the cured man on a subsequent meeting (v. 14):
Behold thou art made whole; sin no more lest a worse thing come unto
thee. Even Paulus is compelled by these words to admit that the man had
a real infirmity, though only a trifling one:—in other words he is
compelled to admit the inadequacy of the idea on which his explanation
of the incident is based, so that here again we retain a miracle, and
that not of the smallest.
In relation to the historical credibility of the narrative, it may
certainly be held remarkable that so important a sanative institution
as Bethesda is described to be by John, is not mentioned either by
Josephus or the rabbins, especially if the popular belief connected a
miraculous cure with this pool: [1357] but this affords nothing
decisive. It is true that in the description of the pool there lies a
fabulous popular notion, which appears also to have been received by
the writer (for even if v. 4 be spurious, something similar is
contained in the words κίνησις τοῦ ὕδατος, v. 3, and ταραχθῇ, v. 7).
But this proves nothing against the truth of the narrative, since even
an eye-witness and a disciple of Jesus may have shared a vulgar error.
To make credible, however, such a fact as that a man who had been lame
eight-and-thirty years, so that he was unable to walk, and completely
bed-ridden, should have been perfectly cured by a word, the supposition
of psychological influence will not suffice, for the man had no
knowledge whatever of Jesus, v. 13; nor will any physical analogy, such
as magnetism and the like, serve the purpose: but if such a result
really happened, we must exalt that by which it happened above all the
limits of the human and the natural. On the other hand, it ought never
to have been thought a difficulty [1358] that from among the multitude
of the infirm waiting in the porches of the pool, Jesus selected one
only as the object of his curative power, since the cure of him whose
sufferings had been of the longest duration was not only particularly
adapted, but also sufficient, to glorify the miraculous power of the
Messiah. Nevertheless, it is this very trait which suggests a suspicion
that the narrative has a mythical character. On a great theatre of
disease, crowded with all kinds of sufferers, Jesus, the exalted and
miraculously gifted physician, appears and selects the one who is
afflicted with the most obstinate malady, that by his restoration he
may present the most brilliant proof of his miraculous power. We have
already remarked that the fourth gospel, instead of extending the
curative agency of Jesus over large masses and to a great variety of
diseases, as the synoptical gospels do, concentrates it on a few cases
which proportionately gain in intensity: thus here, in the narrative of
the cure of a man who had been lame thirty-eight years, it has far
surpassed all the synoptical accounts of cures performed on persons
with diseased limbs, among whom the longest sufferer is described in
Luke xiii. 11, only as a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity
eighteen years. Without doubt the fourth Evangelist had received some
intimation (though, as we have gathered from other parts of his
history, it was far from precise) of cures of this nature performed by
Jesus, especially of that wrought on the paralytic, Matt. ix. 2 ff.
parall., for the address to the patient, and the result of the cure are
in this narrative in John almost verbally the same as in that case,
especially according to Mark’s account. [1359] There is even a vestige
in this history of John, of the circumstance that in the synoptical
narrative the cure appears in the light of a forgiveness of sins: for
as Jesus in the latter consoles the patient, before the cure, with the
assurance, thy sins are forgiven thee, so in the former, he warns him,
after the cure, in the words, sin no more, etc. For the rest, this
highly embellished history of a miraculous cure was represented as
happening on the sabbath, probably because the command to take up the
bed which it contained appeared the most suitable occasion for the
reproach of violating the sabbath.
§ 100.
RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the
dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one
belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.
The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the
resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with
the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;
23–26; Mark v. 22 ff.; Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise
designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary.
Matthew introduces the father generally as ἄρχων εἷς a certain ruler,
without any name; the two others as a ruler of the synagogue named
Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years
old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father;
particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference
is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of
his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to
life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while
yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to
avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him,
people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had
in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain.
The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described,
for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took
with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some
theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so
important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among
other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler
(Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark
and Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus. [1360] But that, as Storr
supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not
only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions,
healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which
does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr,
that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at
different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists
narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to
their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of
Matthew ἄρτι ἐτελεύτησε mean, as Kuinöl maintains, [1361] est morti
proxima, nor can that of Mark, ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Luke ἀπέθνησκε,
imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according
to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father
as something new. [1362]
Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the
accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of
superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient
towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity
which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness; [1363]
while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that
the first gospel had not an apostolic origin. [1364] Now that Mark and
Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and
also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will
just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual
favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have
before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For
example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica
in the tradition of John Malala; [1365] the Canaanitish woman that of
Justa in the Clementine Homilies: [1366] and the two thieves crucified
with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel of Nicodemus.
[1367] Luke’s μονογενὴς (one only daughter) only serves to make the
scene more touching, and the ἐτῶν δώδεκα twelve years of age, he, and
after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with
the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is
spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as
only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who
have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to
the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation
serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the
death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in
Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of
the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus
appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but
subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There,
where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to
life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the
contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he
actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the
interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of
awaking the dead is presupposed by the father to belong to Jesus, the
extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where
the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and
when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the
description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where
the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse
accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus,
having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for
the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that
there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But
Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with
the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for
this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of
spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment
to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the
event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the
exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded
parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have
been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that
the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of
Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land,
represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so
that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the
incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most
favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which
Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists,
namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the
hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time
uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no
weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus,
if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some
such words as ἡ παῖς ἐγείρον, maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most
remote narrator might imagine, and to regard the ταλιθὰ κοῦμι of Mark
as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original
source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated
these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting
the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing
its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to the
ἐφφαθὰ in the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall
willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who
originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three
confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it,
also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of
Schleiermacher is equal. [1368]
In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks
with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has
on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not
really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only
rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher,
but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the
strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation
of the dead. [1369] The last-named commentator attaches especial
importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the
words οὐκ ἀπέθανε, is not dead, are followed by ἀλλὰ καθεύδει, but
sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be
interpreted to mean merely, she is not dead, since I have resolved to
restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this
addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in
the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the
declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus, John xi. 14, Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,
Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in
question, οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον, the damsel is not dead. But Jesus
had before said of Lazarus, αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον, this
sickness is not unto death (v. 4), and Λάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,
our friend Lazarus sleepeth (v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also,
who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and
affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence
Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus
in our passage as follows: puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire
existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew
subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say, νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται, the dead are
raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by
Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind. [1370]
But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this
view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases
conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to
death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the
Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death
is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a
merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the
father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus
were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the
girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still
ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having
seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the
eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to
the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been
rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge
of the true state of the case in a supernatural way: [1371] to admit
which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return
to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions, ἐκράτησε τῆς
χειρὸς αὐτῆς, he took her by the hand, and ἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον, the maid
arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and
are still more inseparably linked by the words εὐθέως and παραχρῆμα in
the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and
Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were
applied. [1372] Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly
maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the
life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand,
furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to
life.
In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the
natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the
declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless,
the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes
mainly on the circumstance that Jesus speaks to the young man lying in
the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person,
but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of
hearing. [1373] But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ
will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they
could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do (John
v. 28; comp. 1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much.
Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a
certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only
in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even
to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the
possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of
burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent
corpse might easily be carried to the grave; [1374] but all by which it
is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a
tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any
intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession,
and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to
be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two
processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus,
met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each
other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which
makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier.
Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had
learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached
the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he
intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,
Weep not. [1375] But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be,
who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave,
should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her
either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting
grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence
unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be
supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes
every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the
bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the
natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some
sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a
previous application of medicaments, [1376] spoke the words, which
helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those
intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the
strong words: νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι, Young man, I say unto thee
arise! resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker
than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus
were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not
first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience
receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude
lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According
to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result;
but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to
himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and
if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light,
in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so
far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge
that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation
of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as
a miracle. [1377]
In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar to John
(chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being
carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here
one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural
explanation; but the arduousness of the task has only stimulated the
ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their
conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the
rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the
rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the
evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of
explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system,
which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions
after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical
explanation.
The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in
the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man
who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this
possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom
of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert.
From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to
let pass so easily, [1378] namely, that from the messenger whom the
sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had
obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and
the answer which he gave to the messenger, This sickness is not unto
death (v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had
drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease
was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly
accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after
the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that
supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of
urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two
days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has
quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain
knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then
plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the
natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more
conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger, [1379] after the
lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in
the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of
a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the
omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging
us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus
in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany,
said to the disciples, Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him
out of sleep (κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain
by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the
statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that
the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here
as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of
giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive
assurance that he yet lived. [1380] From this point of view, it is also
a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15) I am glad for
your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe (ἵνα
πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared
lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken
their faith in him; but, as Gabler [1381] has remarked, πιστεύω cannot
mean merely the negative: not to lose faith, which would rather have
been expressed by a phrase such as: ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν, that
your faith fail not (see Luke xxii. 32); and moreover we nowhere find
that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was
incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend,
in his presence.
From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is
somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that
Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.), Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt
ask of God, he will give it thee, ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ
τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that
Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the
assurance of Jesus which follows, Thy brother shall rise again,
ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last
day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems
retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the
general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of
her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that
he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the
expression which Martha there uses is not πιστεύω but οἶδα, and the
turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to
be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more
unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated
by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not
indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too
late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s
change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her
first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held
very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very
hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained
by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had
expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided
promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with
an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the
last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding
reply. [1382] But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet
more indefinite one (v. 25 f.), I am the resurrection and the life, is
thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was
yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he
consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah,
would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a
life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken
confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have
altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is
apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he
says to Martha, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou
shouldst see the glory of God? evidently alluding to v. 23, in which
therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was
going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he
again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v.
25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the
object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of
thought. [1383]
When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her
weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural
interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he
were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have
approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious
of being able to call him again living from the grave in the next
moment? In this view the words ἐνεβριμήσατο (v. 33) and ἐμβριμώμενος
(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by
the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears
(ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifies
fremere in aliquem or in se, and by the analogy of its use in the New
Testament, where it appears only in the sense of increpare aliquem
(Matt. ix. 30; Mark i. 43, xiv. 5), ἐμβριμᾶσθαι is determined to imply
an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the
dative of another person, but with τῷ πνεύματι and ἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be
understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be
very appropriate in v. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the
foregoing observation of the Jews, Could not this man, who opened the
eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?
there lies an intimation that they were scandalized, the prior conduct
of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ.
But where the word ἐμβριμᾶσθαι is first used v. 33, the general weeping
seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than
an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of
faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus
then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation
against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy,
not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that
the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among
themselves, Behold, how he loved him! appears to be rather against than
for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of
his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the
narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an
opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the
interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particular the Jews
in this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the
words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus
is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his
part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;
[1384] but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ
of John’s gospel. He who gave to the βασιλικὸς, when preferring the
inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son,
the rebuke, Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he
who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the
sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question, Doth this
offend you? and Will ye also go away? (vi. 61, 67); he who repulsed his
own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the
want of wine, with the harsh reply, What have I to do with thee, Woman?
(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not
comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves
desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this
kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage,
and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here
exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural
explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this
particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a
momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite
reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection. [1385] And how
could the words of the Jews v. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators
think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform
something extraordinary for him? The Jews did not express the hope that
he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps
have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had
previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the
Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were
excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and
especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to
appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.
Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus
commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave, Κύριε,
ἤδη ὄζει (v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really
commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was
impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of
time since the burial. [1386] But more weight must be attached to the
words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in
having the tomb opened (v. 40): Said I not unto thee that if thou
wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God? How could he say
this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate
Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally
that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a
glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation
of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one
who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life?
and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the
observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of
decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn
with certainty the meaning of the words τὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦ in our
present passage we need only refer to v. 4, where Jesus had said that
the sickness of Lazarus was not unto death, πρὸς θάνατον, but for the
glory of God, ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the
antithesis, not unto death, clearly shows that the δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ
signifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is,
since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could
not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a
superior assurance that it would be fulfilled. [1387] After the opening
of the grave, and before he says to the dead man, Come forth! he thanks
the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the
rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did
not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into
the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was
not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the
character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common
it is in this gospel, as for example in the expression glorify thy son,
to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just
begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is
especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that
it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it
further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus
the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to
life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the
thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising
result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from
the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and
how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else
discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is
conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a
dead body lying in a dark cavern; how precipitate was he, if without
having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his
conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed
corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the
notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his
prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his
divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only
discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural
possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four
days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the
particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of
interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the
strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of
warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the
cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest
degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of
improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts
the result must remain irreconcilable. [1388]
These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural
interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize
them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that
they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been added ex eventu by
the narrator. Paulus himself found the words ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν (v. 11)
quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the
narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifying
perhaps, which Jesus had inserted. [1389] This expedient has been more
extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of
Paulus as to the above expression, but already in v. 4, he is inclined
to lay the words ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ for the glory of God, to the
account of the Evangelist: again v. 15, he conjectures that in the
words χαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ, I am glad for
your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is
a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue;
lastly, even in relation to the words of Martha v. 22, ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν
οἶδα κ.τ.λ. he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the
writer. [1390] By the adoption of this expedient, the natural
interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the
difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its
application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant
passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not
admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the
incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is
confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the
above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this
narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire
event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little
short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what
we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with
the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the
various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to
reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event
as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical
narrative; or, if we find it incredible as such, deny that the
narrative has an historical character.
In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all
the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the
kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been
ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then,
of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of
the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of
consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from
which the life has actually departed. This progression in the
marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We
have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental
derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond
the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action,
might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere
word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady
appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more
inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons
the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in
nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in
periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent
benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet
more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the
mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this
point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous
power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in
the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be
stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and
consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the
miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from
him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred
on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper
sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a
man, we must confess to be beyond our power.
But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections,
there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it
seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was
wanting in the preceding. [1391] The daughter of Jairus is restored to
life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain,
when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly,
Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a
word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the
powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the
imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried
out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had
been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest
manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of
the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become
more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.
[1392] With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the
difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when
the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of
inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the
resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather
be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some
remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being
carried to the grave; and again, in this, rather than in the case of
one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is
supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this
supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.
But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question,
each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and
externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal
improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and
therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second.
As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain,
the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with
this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the
young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never
be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the
joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising
the youth. [1393] This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that
it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the
dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For
the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas,
is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the
Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing
the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the
evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are
incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a
consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from
the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the
restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen
supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual
awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These
resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether
from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was
led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these
insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other
generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of
Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it
should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died,
and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was
positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their
deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life,
legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to
narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to
which she was not under the same control.
The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only
rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but
the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to
itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable
extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When
Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request
of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he
remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward
Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not
because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been
already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That
indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by
the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then
occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was
not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty
to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a
succouring friend, to his higher call as a teacher. [1394] But he might
here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone;
he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in
that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus,
whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will
at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a
cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be
listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay
is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a
conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has
remarked, in the declaration of Jesus, v. 15, that he is glad he was
not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of
strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his
friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly
allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he
might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen
on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus;
but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view,
when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to
perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his
disciples; [1395] since, according to expressions, such as ἵνα δοξασθῇ
ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ. (v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of
spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though
principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke
exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest
friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously; [1396] and De
Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings
about or increases his miracles. [1397] The former, as we have seen,
concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained
Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De
Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If
then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus
cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in
denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus:
nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia, [1398] from this
incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone
conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the
fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.
The alleged conduct of the disciples also, v. 12 f., is such as to
excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the
three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a
mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus, he sleeps, I will
awake him, κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν think that he referred to a
natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep;
hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here
sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the
maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep
expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth
Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by
many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to
speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of
Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile
in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that
figure of speech. [1399]
The observation of the Jews, v. 37, is scarcely conceivable,
presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead.
The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw
the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must
surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to
refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before
them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous,
and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is
certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus,
since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could
those events remain unknown in the capital, [1400] especially as we are
are expressly told that the fame of them went abroad into all that
land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about.
To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and
as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the
point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for
that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is
evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which
he had last narrated.
A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the
mouth of Jesus, v. 41 f. After thanking the Father for hearing his
prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard
him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the
sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his
divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and
afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist
only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words
such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would
have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his
prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive
for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank
the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure
beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks
were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the
Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and
thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these
reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by
itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted
that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy
with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of
Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have
been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of
the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own
impulse, and on his own behalf. [1401] But, here, scarcely has he begun
to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of
his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold
accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even
revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of
others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of
view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any
impression on the hearers, unless they suppose the speaker’s whole soul
to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this
addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the
true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he
uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could
only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the
readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons,
needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith
which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty;
because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and
more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father
and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the
hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value
restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration
cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to
a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic,
who has hence proposed to throw v. 42 out of the text, as an
unauthenticated addition by a latter hand. [1402] But as this judgment
is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not
have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only
lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding, v. 41; and
to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.
[1403] Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by
the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security
that it is so only with these? In a gospel in which we have already
detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a
narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the
difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse
does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not
belong to the class of historical compositions. [1404]
As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three
narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only
the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is
the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each
related by one Evangelist only: [1405] and as it is far less easy to
understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the
resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth
at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.
That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel
alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the
resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that
narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect. [1406] Even viewed
generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought,
as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as
they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been
too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance;
especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to
narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less
importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two,
inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining
resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first
Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving
more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to
have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather than that of the
daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was
a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give
only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others;
Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as
early as iii. 7, or 20, leaped from Luke vi. 12 (17) to Matt. xii. 15;
and only at iv. 35 (21 ff.) returns to Luke viii. 22 (16 ff.); [1407]
thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But
now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth,
if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first
gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an
apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than
the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his
disciples, μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account
which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot
have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of
Jesus; [1408] lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely
disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of
the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the
apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much
occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second
order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they
might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events
which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places,
could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception
of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most
important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and
collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a
later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially
connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such
histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in
the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures,
and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot:
instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of
the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming
everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original
locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories,
both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most
widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the
substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the
locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the
accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since
then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it
really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and
hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this
author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it
did not really happen.
But this ground of doubt falls with incomparably greater weight, on the
narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus in the fourth gospel. If the
authors or collectors of the three first gospels knew of this, they
could not, for more than one reason, avoid introducing it into their
writings. For, first, of all the resuscitations effected by Jesus, nay,
of all his miracles, this resurrection of Lazarus, if not the most
wonderful, is yet the one in which the marvellous presents itself the
most obviously and strikingly, and which therefore, if its historical
reality can be established, is a pre-eminently strong proof of the
extraordinary endowments of Jesus as a divine messenger; [1409] whence
the Evangelists, although they had related one or two other instances
of the kind, could not think it superfluous to add this also. But,
secondly, the resurrection of Lazarus had, according to the
representation of John, a direct influence in the development of the
fate of Jesus; for we learn from xi. 47 ff., that the increased resort
to Jesus, and the credit which this event procured him, led to that
consultation of the Sanhedrim in which the sanguinary counsel of
Caiaphas was given and approved. Thus the event had a double
importance—pragmatical as well as dogmatical; consequently, the
synoptical writers could not have failed to narrate it, had it been
within their knowledge. Nevertheless, theologians have found out all
sorts of reasons why those Evangelists, even had the fact been known to
them, should refrain from its narration. Some have been of opinion that
at the time of the composition of the three first gospels, the history
was still in every mouth, so that to make a written record of it was
superfluous; [1410] others, on the contrary, have conjectured that it
was thought desirable to guard against its further publication, lest
danger should accrue to Lazarus and his family, the former of whom,
according to John xii. 10, was persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy on
account of the miracle which had been preformed in him; a caution for
which there was no necessity at the later period at which John wrote
his gospel. [1411] It is plain that these two reasons nullify each
other, and neither of them is in itself worthy of a serious refutation;
yet as similar modes of evading a difficulty are still more frequently
resorted to than might be supposed, we ought not to think some
animadversion on them altogether thrown away. The proposition, that the
resurrection of Lazarus was not recorded by the synoptists because it
was generally known in their circle, proves too much; since on this
rule, precisely the most important events in the life of Jesus, his
baptism, death, and resurrection, must have remained unwritten.
Moreover, writings, which like our gospels, originate in a religious
community, do not serve merely to make known the unknown; it is their
office also to preserve what is already known. In opposition to the
other explanation, it has been remarked by others, that the publication
of this history among those who were not natives of Palestine, as was
the case with those for whom Mark and Luke wrote, could have done no
injury to Lazarus; and even the author of the first gospel, admitting
that he wrote in and for Palestine, could hardly have withheld a fact
in which the glory of Christ was so peculiarly manifested, merely out
of consideration to Lazarus, who, supposing the more improbable case
that he was yet living at the time of the composition of the first
gospel, ought not, Christian as he doubtless was, to refuse to suffer
for the name of Christ; and the same observation would apply to his
family. The most dangerous time for Lazarus according to John xii. 10,
was that immediately after his resurrection, and a narrative which
appeared so long after, could scarcely have heightened or renewed this
danger; besides, in the neighbourhood of Bethany and Jerusalem whence
danger was threatened to Lazarus, the event must have been so
well-known and remembered that nothing was to be risked by its
publication. [1412]
It appears then that the resurrection of Lazarus, since it is not
narrated by the synoptists, cannot have been known to them; and the
question arises, how was this ignorance possible? Hase gives the
mysterious answer, that the reason of this omission lies hid in the
common relations under which the synoptists in general were silent
concerning all the earlier incidents in Judæa; but this leaves it
uncertain, at least so far as the expressions go, whether we ought to
decide to the disadvantage of the fourth gospel or of its predecessors.
The latest criticism of the gospel of Matthew has cleared up the
ambiguity in Hase’s answer after its usual manner, determining the
nature of those common relations which he vaguely adduces, thus: Every
one of the synoptists, by his ignorance of a history which an apostle
must have known, betrays himself to be no apostle. [1413] But this
renunciation of the apostolic origin of the first gospel, does not by
any means enable us to explain the ignorance of its author and his
compeers of the resurrection of Lazarus. For besides the remarkable
character of the event, its occurrence in the very heart of Judæa, the
great attention excited by it, and its having been witnessed by the
apostles,—all these considerations render it incomprehensible that it
should not have entered into the general tradition, and from thence
into the synoptical gospels. It is argued that these gospels are
founded on Galilean legends, i.e. oral narratives and written notices
by the Galilean friends and companions of Jesus; that these were not
present at the resurrection of Lazarus, and therefore did not include
it in their memoirs; and that the authors of the first gospels,
strictly confining themselves to the Galilean sources of information,
likewise passed over the event. [1414] But there was not such a wall of
partition between Galilee and Judæa, that the fame of an event like the
resurrection of Lazarus could help sounding over from the one to the
other. Even if it did not happen during a feast time, when (John iv.
45) many Galileans might be eye-witnesses, yet the disciples, who were
for the greater part Galileans, were present (v. 16), and must, so soon
as they returned into Galilee after the resurrection of Jesus, have
spread abroad the history throughout this province, or rather, before
this, the Galileans who kept the last passover attended by Jesus, must
have learned the event, the report of which was so rife in the city.
Hence even Lücke finds this explanation of Gabler’s unsatisfactory; and
on his own side attempts to solve the enigma by the observation, that
the original evangelical tradition, which the synoptists followed, did
not represent the history of the Passion mainly in a pragmatical light,
and therefore gave no heed to this event as the secret motive of the
murderous resolve against Jesus, and that only John, who was initiated
into the secret history of the Sanhedrim, was in a condition to supply
this explanatory fact. [1415] This view of the case would certainly
appear to neutralize one reason why the synoptists must have noticed
the event in question, namely, that drawn from its pragmatical
importance; but when it is added, that as a miracle regarded in itself,
apart from its more particular circumstances, it might easily be lost
among the rest of those narratives from which we have in the three
first gospels a partly accidental selection,—we must reply, that the
synoptical selection of miracles appears to be an accidental one only
when that is at once assumed which ought first to be proved: namely,
that the miracles in the fourth gospel are historical: and unless the
selection be casual to a degree inconsistent with the slightest
intelligence in the compilers, such a miracle cannot have been
overlooked. [1416]
It has doubtless been these and similar considerations, which have led
the latest writers on the controversy concerning the first gospel, to
complain of the one-sidedness with which the above question is always
answered to the disadvantage of the synoptists, especially Matthew, as
if it were forgotten that an answer dangerous to the fourth gospel lies
just as near at hand. [1417] For our own part, we are not so greatly
alarmed by the fulminations of Lücke, as to be deterred from the
expression of our opinion on the subject. This theologian, even in his
latest editions, reproaches those who, from the silence of the
synoptical writers, conclude that this narrative is a fiction and the
gospel of John not authentic, with an unparalleled lack of discernment,
and a total want of insight into the mutual relations of our gospels
(that is, into those relations viewed according to the professional
conviction of theologians, which is unshaken even by the often
well-directed attacks of the author of the Probabilia). We,
nevertheless, distinctly declare that we regard the history of the
resurrection of Lazarus, not only as in the highest degree improbable
in itself, but also destitute of external evidence; and this whole
chapter, in connexion with those previously examined, as an indication
of the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel.
If it is thus proved that all the three evangelical histories of
resuscitations are rendered more or less doubtful by negative reasons:
all that is now wanting to us is positive proof, that the tradition of
Jesus having raised the dead might easily be formed without historical
foundation. According to rabbinical, [1418] as well as New Testament
passages (e.g. John v. 28 f., vi. 40, 44; 1 Cor. xv.; 1 Thess. iv. 16),
the resuscitation of the dead was expected of the Messiah at his
coming. Now the παρουσία, the appearance of the Messiah Jesus on earth,
was in the view of the early church broken by his death into two parts;
the first comprised his preparatory appearance, which began with his
human birth, and ended with the resurrection and ascension; the second
was to commence with his future advent on the clouds of heaven, in
order to open the αἰὼν μέλλων, the age to come. As the first appearance
of Jesus had wanted the glory and majesty expected in the Messiah, the
great demonstrations of messianic power, and in particular the general
resurrection of the dead, were assigned to his second, and as yet
future appearance on earth. Nevertheless, as an immediate pledge of
what was to be anticipated, even in the first advent some
fore-splendours of the second must have been visible in single
instances; Jesus must, even in his first advent, by awaking some of the
dead, have guaranteed his authority one day to awake all the dead; he
must, when questioned as to his messiahship, have been able to adduce
among other criteria the fact that the dead were raised up by him
(Matt. xi. 5), and he must have imparted the same power to his
disciples (Matt. xi. 8, comp. Acts ix. 40, xx. 10); but especially as a
close prefiguration of the hour in which all that are in their graves
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth (John v. 28 f.), he must
have cried with a loud voice, Come forth! to one who had lain in the
grave four days (John xi. 17, 43). For the origination of detailed
narratives of single resuscitations, there lay, besides, the most
appropriate types in the Old Testament. The prophets Elijah and Elisha
(1 Kings xvii. 17 ff.; 2 Kings iv. 18 ff.) had awaked the dead, and to
these instances Jewish writings appealed as a type of the messianic
time. [1419] The object of the resuscitation was with both these
prophets a child, but a boy, while in the narrative common to the
synoptists we have a girl; the two prophets revived him while he lay on
the bed, as Jesus does the daughter of Jairus; both entered alone into
the chamber of death, as Jesus excludes all save a few confidential
friends; only, as it is fitting, the Messiah needs not the laborious
manipulations by which the prophets attained their object. Elijah in
particular raised the son of a widow, as Jesus did at Nain; he met the
widow of Zarephath at the gate (but before the death of her son) as
Jesus met the widow of Nain, under the gate of the city (after the
death of her son); lastly, it is in both instances told in the same
words how the miracle-worker restored the son to the mother. [1420]
Even one already laid in his grave, like Lazarus, was restored to life
by the prophet Elisha; with this difference, however, that the prophet
himself had been long dead, and the contact of his bones reanimated a
corpse which was accidentally thrown upon them (2 Kings xiii. 21).
There is yet another point of similarity between the resuscitations of
the dead in the Old Testament and that of Lazarus; it is that Jesus,
while in his former resuscitation he utters the authoritative word
without any preliminary, in that of Lazarus offers a prayer to God, as
Elisha, and more particularly Elijah, are said to have done. While
Paulus extends to these narratives in the Old Testament, the natural
explanation which he has applied to those in the New, theologians of
more enlarged views have long ago remarked, that the resurrections in
the New Testament are nothing more than mythi, which had their origin
in the tendency of the early Christian church, to make her Messiah
agree with the type of the prophets, and with the messianic ideal.
[1421]
§ 101.
ANECDOTES HAVING RELATION TO THE SEA.
As in general, at least according to the representations of the three
first Evangelists the country around the Galilean sea was the chief
theatre of the ministry of Jesus; so a considerable number of his
miracles have an immediate reference to the sea. One of this class, the
miraculous draught of fishes granted to Peter, has already presented
itself for our consideration; besides this, there are the miraculous
stilling of the storm which had arisen on the sea while Jesus slept, in
the three synoptists; Matthew, Mark, and John; the summary of most of
those, the walking of Jesus on the sea, likewise during a storm, in
incidents which the appendix to the fourth gospel places after the
resurrection; and lastly, the anecdote of the coin that was to be
angled for by Peter, in Matthew.
The first-named narrative (Matt. viii. 23 ff. parall.) is intended,
according to the Evangelist’s own words, to represent Jesus to us as
him whom the winds and the sea obey, οἱ ἄνεμοι καὶ ἡ θάλασσα
ὑπακούουσιν. Thus, to follow out the gradation in the miraculous which
has been hitherto observed, it is here presupposed, not merely that
Jesus could act on the human mind and living body in a psychological
and magnetic manner; or with a revivifying power on the human organism
when it was forsaken by vitality; nay, not merely as in the history of
the draught of fishes earlier examined, that he could act immediately
with determinative power, on irrational yet animated existences, but
that he could act thus even on inanimate nature. The possibility of
finding a point of union between the alleged supernatural agency of
Jesus, and the natural order of phenomena, here absolutely ceases:
here, at the latest, there is an end to miracles in the wider and now
more favoured sense; and we come to those which must be taken in the
narrowest sense, or to the miracle proper. The purely supranaturalistic
view is therefore the first to suggest itself. Olshausen has justly
felt, that such a power over external nature is not essentially
connected with the destination of Jesus for the human race and for the
salvation of man; whence he was led to place the natural phenomenon
which is here controlled by Jesus in a relation to sin, and therefore
to the office of Jesus. Storms, he says, are the spasms and convulsions
of nature, and as such the consequences of sin, the fearful effects of
which are seen even on the physical side of existence. [1422] But it is
only that limited observation of nature which in noting the particular
forgets the general, that can regard storms, tempests, and similar
phenomena (which in connexion with the whole have their necessary place
and beneficial influence) as evils and departure from original law: and
a theory of the world in which it is seriously upheld, that before the
fall there were no storms and tempests, as, on the other hand, no
beasts of prey and poisonous plants, partakes—one does not know whether
to say, of the fanatical, or of the childish. But to what purpose, if
the above explanation will not hold, could Jesus be gifted with such a
power over nature? As a means of awakening faith in him, it was
inadequate and superfluous: because Jesus found individual adherents
without any demonstration of a power of this kind, and general
acceptance even this did not procure him. As little can it be regarded
as a type of the original dominion of man over external nature, a
dominion which he is destined to reattain; for the value of this
dominion consists precisely in this, that it is a mediate one, achieved
by the progressive reflection and the united efforts of ages, not an
immediate and magical dominion, which costs no more than a word. Hence
in relation to that part of nature of which we are here speaking the
compass and the steam-vessel are an incomparably truer realization of
man’s dominion over the ocean, than the allaying of the waves by a mere
word. But the subject has another aspect, since the dominion of man
over nature is not merely external and practical, but also immanent or
theoretical, that is, man even when externally he is subjected to the
might of the elements, yet is not internally conquered by them; but, in
the conviction that the powers of physical nature can only destroy in
him that which belongs to his physical existence, is elevated in the
self-certainty of the spirit above the possible destruction of the
body. This spiritual power, it is said, was exhibited by Jesus, for he
slept tranquilly in the midst of the storm, and when awaked by his
trembling disciples, inspired them with courage by his words. But for
courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended: now for Jesus,
supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, danger
could in no degree exist: therefore he could not here give any proof of
this theoretical power.
In both respects the natural explanation would find only the
conceivable and the desirable attributed to Jesus in the evangelical
narrative; namely, on the one hand, an intelligent observation of the
state of the weather, and on the other, exalted courage in the presence
of real peril. When we read that Jesus commanded the winds ἐπιτιμᾷν
τοῖς ἀνέμοις, we are to understand simply that he made some remark on
the storm, or some exclamations at its violence: and his calming of the
sea we are to regard only as a prognostication, founded on the
observation of certain signs, that the storm would soon subside. His
address to the disciples is said to have proceeded, like the celebrated
saying of Cæsar, from the confidence that a man who was to leave an
impress on the world’s history, could not so lightly be cut short in
his career by an accident. That those who were in the ship regarded the
subsidence of the storm as the effect of the words of Jesus, proves
nothing, for Jesus nowhere confirms their inference. [1423] But neither
does he disapprove it, although he must have observed the impression
which, in consequence of that inference, the result had made on the
people; [1424] he must therefore, as Venturini actually supposes, have
designedly refrained from shaking their high opinion of his miraculous
power, in order to attach them to him the more firmly. But, setting
this altogether aside, was it likely that the natural presages of the
storm should have been better understood by Jesus, who had never been
occupied on the sea, than by Peter, James, and John, who had been at
home on it from their youth upwards? [1425]
It remains then that, taking the incident as it is narrated by the
Evangelists, we must regard it as a miracle; but to raise this from an
exegetical result to a real fact, is, according to the above remarks
extremely difficult: whence there arises a suspicion against the
historical character of the narrative. Viewed more nearly however, and
taking Matthew’s account as the basis, there is nothing to object to
the narrative until the middle of v. 26. It might really have happened
that Jesus in one of his frequent passages across the Galilean sea, was
sleeping when a storm arose; that the disciples awaked him with alarm,
while he, calm and self-possessed, said to them, Why are ye fearful, O
ye of little faith? What follows—the commanding of the waves, which
Mark, with his well-known fondness for such authoritative words,
reproduces as if he were giving the exact words of Jesus in a Greek
translation (σιώπα, πεφίμωσο!)—might have been added in the propagation
of the anecdote from one to another. There was an inducement to
attribute to Jesus such a command over the winds and the sea, not only
in the opinion entertained of his person, but also in certain features
of the Old Testament history. Here, in poetical descriptions of the
passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, Jehovah is designated as
he who rebuked the Red Sea, ἐπετίμησε τῇ ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῇ (Psa. cvi. 9;
LXX. comp. Nahum i. 4), so that it retreated. Now, as the instrument in
this partition of the Red Sea was Moses, it was natural to ascribe to
his great successor, the Messiah, a similar function; accordingly we
actually find from rabbinical passages, that a drying up of the sea was
expected to be wrought by God in the messianic times, doubtless through
the agency of the Messiah, as formerly through that of Moses. [1426]
That instead of drying up the sea Jesus is said only to produce a calm,
may be explained, on the supposition that the storm and the composure
exhibited by Jesus on the occasion were historical, as a consequence of
the mythical having combined itself with this historical element; for,
as according to this, Jesus and his disciples were on board a ship, a
drying up of the sea would have been out of place.
Still it is altogether without any sure precedent, that a mythical
addition should be engrafted on the stem of a real incident, so as to
leave the latter totally unmodified. And there is one feature, even in
the part hitherto assumed to be historical, which, more narrowly
examined, might just as probably have been invented by the legend as
have really happened. That Jesus, before the storm breaks out, is
sleeping, and even when it arises, does not immediately awake, is not
his voluntary deed, but chance; [1427] it is this very chance, however,
which alone gives the scene its full significance, for Jesus sleeping
in the storm is by the contrast which he presents, a not less
emblematical image than Ulysses sleeping when, after so many storms, he
was about to land on his island home. Now that Jesus really slept at
the time that a storm broke out, may indeed have happened by chance in
one case out of ten; but in the nine cases also, when this did not
happen, and Jesus only showed himself calm and courageous during the
storm, I am inclined to think that the legend would so far have
understood her interest, that, as she had represented the contrast of
the tranquillity of Jesus with the raging of the elements to the
intellect, by means of the words of Jesus, so she would depict it for
the imagination, by means of the image of Jesus sleeping in the ship
(or as Mark has it, [1428] on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship).
If then that which may possibly have happened in a single case, must
certainly have been invented by the legend in nine cases; the expositor
must in reason prepare himself for the undeniable possibility, that we
have before us one of the nine cases, instead of that single case.
[1429] If then it be granted that nothing further remains as an
historical foundation for our narrative, than that Jesus exhorted his
disciples to show the firm courage of faith in opposition to the raging
waves of the sea, it is certainly possible that he may once have done
this in a storm at sea; but just as he said: if ye have faith as a
grain of mustard seed, ye may say to this mountain, Be thou removed,
and cast into the sea (Matt. xxi. 21), or to this tree, Be thou plucked
up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea (Luke xvii. 6), and both
shall be done (καὶ ὑπήκουσεν ἂν ὑμῖν, Luke): so he might, not merely on
the sea, but in any situation, make use of the figure, that to him who
has faith, winds and waves shall be obedient at a word (ὅτι καὶ τοῖς
ἀνέμοις ἐπιτάσσει καὶ τῷ ὕδατι, καὶ ὑπακούουσιν αὐτῷ, Luke). If we now
take into account what even Olshausen remarks, and Schneckenburger has
shown, [1430] that the contest of the kingdom of God with the world was
in the early times of Christianity commonly compared to a voyage
through a stormy ocean; we see at once, how easily legend might come to
frame such a narrative as the above, on the suggestions afforded by the
parallel between the Messiah and Moses, the expressions of Jesus, and
the conception of him as the pilot who steers the little vessel of the
kingdom of God through the tumultuous waves of the world. Setting this
aside, however, and viewing the matter only generally, in relation to
the idea of a miracle-worker, we find a similar power over storms and
tempests, ascribed, for example, to Pythagoras. [1431]
We have a more complicated anecdote connected with the sea, wanting in
Luke, but contained in John vi. 16 ff., as well as in Matt. xiv. 22
ff., and Mark vi. 45 ff., where a storm overtakes the disciples when
sailing by night, and Jesus appears to their rescue, walking towards
them on the sea. Here, again, the storm subsides in a marvellous manner
on the entrance of Jesus into the ship; but the peculiar difficulty of
the narrative lies in this, that the body of Jesus appears so entirely
exempt from a law which governs all other human bodies without
exception, namely, the law of gravitation, that he not only does not
sink under the water, but does not even dip into it; on the contrary,
he walks erect on the waves as on firm land. If we are to represent
this to ourselves, we must in some way or other, conceive the body of
Jesus as an ethereal phantom, according to the opinion of the Docetæ; a
conception which the Fathers of the Church condemned as irreligious,
and which we must reject as extravagant. Olshausen indeed says, that in
a superior corporeality, impregnated with the powers of a higher world,
such an appearance need not create surprise: [1432] but these are words
to which we can attach no definite idea. If the spiritual activity of
Jesus which refined and perfected his corporeal nature, instead of
being conceived as that which more and more completely emancipated his
body from the psychical laws of passion and sensuality, is understood
as if by its means the body was exempted from the physical law of
gravity:—this is a materialism of which, as in a former case, it is
difficult to decide whether it be more fantastical or childish. If
Jesus did not sink in the water, he must have been a spectre, and the
disciples in our narrative would not have been wrong in taking him for
one. We must also recollect that on his baptism in the river Jordan,
Jesus did not exhibit this property, but was submerged like an ordinary
man. Now had he at that time also the power of sustaining himself on
the surface of the water, and only refrained from using it? and did he
thus increase or reduce his specific gravity by an act of his will? or
are we to suppose, as Olshausen would perhaps say, that at the time of
his baptism he had not attained so far in the process of subtilizing
his body, as to be freely borne up by the water, and that he only
reached this point at a later period? These are questions which
Olshausen justly calls absurd: nevertheless they serve to open a
glimpse into the abyss of absurdities in which we are involved by the
supranaturalistic interpretation, and particularly by that which this
theologian gives of the narrative before us.
To avoid these, the natural explanation has tried many expedients. The
boldest is that of Paulus, who maintains that the text does not state
that Jesus walked on the water; and that the miracle in this passage is
nothing but a philological mistake, since περιπατεῖν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης
is analogous to the expression στρατοπεδεύειν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης, Exod.
xiv. 2, and signifies to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea,
that is, on the elevated sea-shore. [1433] According to the meaning of
the words taken separately, this explanation is possible: its real
applicability in this particular instance, however, must be determined
by the context. Now this represents the disciples as having rowed
twenty-five or thirty furlongs (John), or as being in the midst of the
sea (Matthew and Mark), and then it is said that Jesus came towards the
ship, and so near that he could speak to them, περιπατῶν ἐπὶ τῆς
θαλάσσης. How could he do this if he remained on the shore? To obviate
this objection, Paulus conjectures that the disciples in that stormy
night probably only skirted the shore; but the words ἐν μέσῳ τῆς
θαλάσσης, in the midst of the sea, though not, we grant, to be
construed with mathematical strictness, yet, even taken according to
the popular mode of speaking, are too decidedly opposed to such a
supposition for it to be worth our further consideration. But this mode
of interpretation encounters a fatal blow in the passage where Matthew
says of Peter, that having come down out of the ship he walked on the
water, καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ πλοίου περιεπάτησεν ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα (v. 29); for as
it is said shortly after that Peter began to sink (καταποντίζεσθαι),
walking merely on the shore cannot have been intended here; and if not
here, neither can it have been intended in the former instance relating
to Jesus, the expressions being substantially the same. [1434]
But if Peter, in his attempt to walk upon the waters, περιπατεῖν ἐπὶ τὰ
ὕδατα, began to sink, may we not still suppose that both he and Jesus
merely swam in the sea, or waded through its shallows? Both these
suppositions have actually been advanced. [1435] But the act of wading
must have been expressed by περιπατεῖν διὰ τῆς θαλάσσης, and had that
of swimming been intended, one or other of the parallel passages would
certainly have substituted the precise expression for the ambiguous
one: besides, it must be alike impossible either to swim from
twenty-five to thirty furlongs in a storm, or to wade to about the
middle of the sea, which certainly was beyond the shallows; a swimmer
could not easily be taken for a spectre; and, lastly, the prayer of
Peter for special permission to imitate Jesus, and his failure in it
from want of faith, point to something supernatural. [1436]
The reasoning on which the natural mode of interpretation rests here,
as elsewhere, has been enunciated by Paulus in connexion with this
passage in a form which reveals its fundamental error in a particularly
happy manner. The question, he says, in such cases is always this:
which is more probable, that the evangelical writer should use an
expression not perfectly exact, or that there should be a departure
from the course of nature? It is evident that the dilemma is falsely
stated, and should rather be put thus: Is it more probable that the
author should express himself inaccurately (rather, in direct
contradiction to the supposed sense), or that he should mean to narrate
a departure from the course of nature? For only what he means to
narrate is the immediate point of inquiry; what really happened is,
even according to the distinction of the judgment of a writer from the
fact that he states, on which Paulus everlastingly insists, an
altogether different question. Because according to our views a
departure from the course of nature cannot have taken place, it by no
means follows, that a writer belonging to the primitive age of
Christianity could not have credited and narrated such a case; [1437]
and therefore to abolish the miraculous, we must not explain it away
from the narrative, but rather inquire whether the narrative itself,
either in whole or in part, must not be excluded from the domain of
history. In relation to this inquiry, first of all, each of our three
accounts has peculiar features which in an historical light are
suspicious.
The most striking of these features is found in Mark v. 48, where he
says of Jesus that he came walking on the sea towards the disciples,
and would have passed by them, καὶ ἤθελε παρελθεῖν αὐτούς, but that he
was constrained by their anxious cries to take notice of them. With
justice Fritzsche interprets Mark’s meaning to be, that it was the
intention of Jesus, supported by divine power, to walk across the whole
sea as on firm land. But with equal justice Paulus asks, Could anything
have been more useless and extravagant than to perform so singular a
miracle without any eye to witness it? We must not however on this
account, with the latter theologian, interpret the words of Mark as
implying a natural event, namely, that Jesus, being on the land, was
going to pass by the disciples who were sailing in a ship not far from
the shore, for the miraculous interpretation of the passage is
perfectly accordant with the spirit of our Evangelist. Not contented
with the representation of his informant, that Jesus, on this one
occasion, adopted this extraordinary mode of progress with special
reference to his disciples, he aims by the above addition to convey the
idea of walking on the water being so natural and customary with Jesus,
that without any regard to the disciples, whenever a sheet of water lay
in his road, he walked across it as unconcernedly as if it had been dry
land. But such a mode of procedure, if habitual with Jesus, would
presuppose most decidedly a subtilization of his body such as Olshausen
supposes; it would therefore presuppose what is inconceivable. Hence
this particular of Mark’s presents itself as one of the most striking
among those by which the second Evangelist now and then approaches to
the exaggerations of the apocryphal gospels. [1438]
In Matthew, the miracle is in a different manner, not so much
heightened as complicated; for there, not only Jesus, but Peter also
makes an experiment in walking on the sea, not indeed altogether
successful. This trait is rendered suspicious by its intrinsic
character, as well as by the silence of the two other narrators.
Immediately on the word of Jesus, and in virtue of the faith which he
has in the beginning, Peter actually succeeds in walking on the water
for some time, and only when he is assailed by fear and doubt does he
begin to sink. What are we to think of this? Admitting that Jesus, by
means of his etherealized body, could walk on the water, how could he
command Peter, who was not gifted with such a body, to do the same? or
if by a mere word he could give the body of Peter a dispensation from
the law of gravitation, can he have been a man? and if a God, would he
thus lightly cause a suspension of natural laws at the caprice of a
man? or, lastly, are we to suppose that faith has the power
instantaneously to lessen the specific gravity of the body of a
believer? Faith is certainly said to have such a power in the
figurative discourse of Jesus just referred to, according to which the
believer is able to remove mountains and trees into the sea,—and why
not also himself to walk on the sea? The moral that as soon as faith
falters, power ceases, could not be so aptly presented by either of the
two former figures as by the latter, in the following form: as long as
a man has faith he is able to walk unharmed on the unstable sea, but no
sooner does he give way to doubt than he sinks, unless Christ extend to
him a helping hand. The fundamental thought, then, of Matthew’s
episodical narrative is, that Peter was too confident in the firmness
of his faith, that by its sudden failure he incurred great danger, but
was rescued by Jesus; a thought which is actually expressed in Luke
xxii. 31 f., where Jesus says to Simon: Satan hath desired to have you
that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy
faith fail not. These words of Jesus have reference to Peter’s coming
denial; this was the occasion when his faith, on the strength of which
he had just before offered to go with Jesus to prison and to death,
would have wavered, had not the Lord by his intercession, procured him
new strength. If we add to this the above-mentioned habit of the early
Christians to represent the persecuting world under the image of a
turbulent sea, we cannot fail, with one of the latest critics, to
perceive in the description of Peter courageously volunteering to walk
on the sea, soon, however, sinking from faintheartedness, but borne up
by Jesus, an allegorical and mythical representation of that trial of
faith which this disciple who imagined himself so strong, met so
weakly, and which higher assistance alone enabled him to surmount.
[1439]
But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar
features, which betray an unhistorical character. It has ever been a
cross to harmonists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship
was only in the middle of the sea when Jesus reached it: according to
John, it immediately after arrived at the opposite shore; that while,
according to the former, Jesus actually entered into the ship, and the
storm thereupon subsided: according to John, on the contrary, the
disciples did indeed wish to take him into the ship, but their actually
doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate arrival at the
place of disembarkation. It is true that here also abundant methods of
reconciliation have been found. First, the word ἔθελον, they wished,
added to λαβεῖν, to receive, is said to be a mere redundancy of
expression; then, to signify simply the joyfulness of the reception, as
if it had been said, ἐθέλοντες ἔλαβον; then, to describe the first
impression which the recognition of Jesus made on the disciples, his
reception into the ship, which really followed, not being mentioned.
[1440] But the sole reason for such an interpretation lies in the
unauthorized comparison with the synoptical accounts: in the narrative
of John, taken separately, there is no ground for it, nay, it is
excluded. For the succeeding sentence: εὐθέως τὸ πλοῖον ἐγένετο ἐπὶ τῆς
γῆς, εἰς ὑπῆγον, immediately the ship was at the land whither they
went, though it is united, not by δὲ but by καὶ, can nevertheless only
be taken antithetically, in the sense that the reception of Jesus into
the ship, notwithstanding the readiness of the disciples, did not
really take place, because they were already at the shore. In
consideration of this difference, Chrysostom held that there were two
occasions on which Jesus walked on the sea. He says that on the second
occasion, which John narrates, Jesus did not enter into the ship, in
order that the miracle might be greater ἵνα τὸ θᾶυμα μεῖζον ἐργάσηται.
[1441] This view we may transfer to the Evangelist, and say: if Mark
has aggrandized the miracle, by implying that Jesus intended to walk
past the disciples across the entire sea; so John goes yet farther, for
he makes him actually accomplish this design, and without being taken
into the ship, arrive at the opposite shore. [1442] Not only, however,
does the fourth Evangelist seek to aggrandize the miracle before us,
but also to establish and authenticate it more securely. According to
the synoptists, the sole witnesses were the disciples, who saw Jesus
come towards them, walking on the sea: John adds to these few immediate
witnesses, a multitude of mediate ones, namely, the people who were
assembled when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
These, when on the following morning they no longer find Jesus on the
same spot, make the calculation, that Jesus cannot have crossed the sea
by ship, for he did not get into the same boat with the disciples, and
no other boat was there (v. 22); while, that he did not go by land, is
involved in the circumstance that the people when they have forthwith
crossed the sea, find him on the opposite shore (v. 25), whither he
could hardly have arrived by land in the short interval. Thus in the
narrative of the fourth gospel, as all natural means of passage are cut
off from Jesus, there remains for him only a supernatural one, and this
consequence is in fact inferred by the multitude in the astonished
question which they put to Jesus, when they find him on the opposite
shore: Rabbi, when camest thou hither? As this chain of evidence for
the miraculous passage of Jesus depends on the rapid transportation of
the multitude, the Evangelist hastens to procure other boats ἄλλα
πλοιάρια for their service (v. 23). Now the multitude who take ship (v.
22, 26 ff.) are described as the same whom Jesus had miraculously fed,
and these amounted (according to v. 10) to about 5000. If only a fifth,
nay, a tenth of these passed over, there needed for this, as the author
of the Probabilia has justly observed, a whole fleet of ships,
especially if they were fishing boats; but even if we suppose them
vessels of freight, these would not all have been bound for Capernaum,
or have changed their destination for the sake of accommodating the
crowd. This passage of the multitude, therefore, appears only to have
been invented, [1443] on the one hand, to confirm by their evidence the
walking of Jesus on the sea; on the other, as we shall presently see,
to gain an opportunity for making Jesus, who according to the tradition
had gone over to the opposite shore immediately after the
multiplication of the loaves, speak yet further with the multitude on
the subject of this miracle.