A special difficulty is here caused by the computation of the hours.

According to all the synoptists the darkness prevailed from the sixth

hour until the ninth hour, ἀπὸ ἕκτης ὥρας ἕως ὥρας ἐννάτης (in our

reckoning, from twelve at midday to three in the afternoon); according

to Matthew and Mark, it was about the ninth hour that Jesus complained

of being forsaken by God, and shortly after yielded up the ghost;

according to Mark it was the third hour ὥρα τρίτη (nine in the morning)

when Jesus was crucified (v. 25). On the other hand, John says (xix.

14) that it was about the sixth hour (when according to Mark Jesus had

already hung three hours on the cross) that Pilate first sat in

judgment over him. Unless we are to suppose that the sun-dial went

backward, as in the time of Hezekiah, this is a contradiction which is

not to be removed by a violent alteration of the reading, nor by

appealing to the ὡσεὶ (about) in John, or to the inability of the

disciples to take note of the hours under such afflictive

circumstances; at the utmost it might perhaps be cancelled if it were

possible to prove that the fourth gospel throughout proceeds upon

another mode of reckoning time than that used by the synoptists. [1987]

CHAPTER IV.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

§ 133.

PRODIGIES ATTENDANT ON THE DEATH OF JESUS.

According to the evangelical accounts, the death of Jesus was

accompanied by extraordinary phenomena. Three hours before, we are

told, a darkness diffused itself, and lasted until Jesus expired (Matt.

xxvii. 45 parall.); in the moment of his death the veil of the temple

was torn asunder from the top to the bottom, the earth quaked, the

rocks were rent, the graves were opened, and many bodies of departed

saints arose, entered into the city, and appeared to many (Matt. v. 51

ff. parall.). These details are very unequally distributed among the

Evangelists: the first alone has them all; the second and third merely

the darkness and the rending of the veil: while the fourth knows

nothing of all these marvels.

We will examine them singly according to their order. The darkness

σκότος which is said to have arisen while Jesus hung on the cross,

cannot have been an ordinary eclipse of the sun, caused by the

interposition of the moon between his disc and the earth, [1988] since

it happened during the Passover, and consequently about the time of the

full moon. The gospels however do not directly use the terms ἔκλειψις

τοῦ ἡλίου (eclipse of the sun), the two first speaking only of darkness

σκότος in general; and though the third adds with somewhat more

particularity: καὶ ἐσκοτίσθη ὁ ἥλιος, and the sun was darkened, still

this might be said of any species of widely extended obscuration. Hence

it was an explanation which lay near at hand to refer this darkness to

an atmospheric, instead of an astronomical cause, and to suppose that

it proceeded from obscuring vapours in the air, such as are especially

wont to precede earthquakes. [1989] That such obscurations of the

atmosphere may be diffused over whole countries, is true; but not only

is the statement that the one in question extended ἐπὶ πᾶσαν or ὅλεν

τὴν γην, i.e., according to the most natural explanation, over the

entire globe, to be subtracted as an exaggeration of the narrator:

[1990] but also the presupposition, evident in the whole tenor of their

representation, that the darkness had a supernatural cause, appears

destitute of foundation from the want of any adequate object for such a

miracle. Since then, with these accessory features the event does not

in itself at once carry the conviction of its credibility, it is

natural to inquire if it have any extrinsic confirmation. The fathers

of the church appeal in its support to the testimony of heathen

writers, among whom Phlegon especially in his χρονικοῖς is alleged to

have noticed the above darkness: [1991] but on comparing the passage

preserved by Eusebius, which is apparently the one of Phlegon alluded

to, we find that it determines merely the Olympiad, scarcely the year,

and in no case the season and day of this darkness. [1992] More modern

apologists appeal to similar cases in ancient history, of which

Wetstein in particular has made a copious collection. He adduces from

Greek and Roman writers the notices of the eclipses of the sun which

occurred at the disappearance of Romulus, the death of Cæsar, [1993]

and similar events; he cites declarations which contain the idea that

eclipses of the sun betoken the fall of kingdoms and the death of

kings; lastly he points to Old Testament passages (Isa. l. 3; Joel iii.

20; Amos viii. 9; comp. Jer. xv. 9) and rabbinical dicta, in which

either the obscuring of the light of day is described as the mourning

garb of God, [1994] or the death of great teachers compared with the

sinking of the sun at mid-day, [1995] or the opinion advanced that at

the death of exalted hierarchical personages, if the last honours are

not paid to them, the sun is wont to be darkened. [1996] But these

parallels, instead of being supports to the credibility of the

evangelical narrative, are so many premises to the conclusion, that we

have here also nothing more than the mythical offspring of universally

prevalent ideas,—a Christian legend, which would make all nature put on

the weeds of mourning to solemnize the tragic death of the Messiah.

[1997]

The second prodigy is the rending of the veil of the temple, doubtless

the inner veil before the Holy of Holies, since the word ‏פָּרֹכֶת‎, used

to designate this, is generally rendered in the LXX. by καταπέτασμα. It

was thought possible to interpret this rending of the veil also as a

natural event, by regarding it as an effect of the earthquake. But, as

Lightfoot has already justly observed, it is more conceivable that an

earthquake should rend stationary fixed bodies such as the rocks

subsequently mentioned, than that it should tear a pliant, loosely hung

curtain. Hence Paulus supposes that the veil of the temple was

stretched and fastened not only above but also below and at the sides.

But first, this is a mere conjecture: and secondly, if the earthquake

shook the walls of the temple so violently, as to tear a veil which

even though stretched, was still pliant: such a convulsion would rather

have caused a part of the building to fall, as is said to have been the

case in the Gospel of the Hebrews: [1998] unless it be chosen to add,

with Kuinöl, the conjecture that the veil was tender from age, and

might therefore be torn by a slight concussion. That our narrators had

no such causes in their minds is proved by the fact that the second and

third Evangelists are silent concerning the earthquake, and that the

first does not mention it until after the rending of the veil. Thus if

this event really happened we must regard it as a miracle. Now the

object of the divine Providence in effecting such a miracle could only

have been this: to produce in the Jewish cotemporaries of Jesus a deep

impression of the importance of his death, and to furnish the first

promulgators of the gospel with a fact to which they might appeal in

support of their cause. But, as Schleiermacher has shown, nowhere else

in the New Testament, either in the apostolic epistles or in the Acts,

or even in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in connexion with the subject of

which it could scarcely fail to be suggested, is this event mentioned:

on the contrary, with the exception of this bare synoptical notice,

every trace of it is lost; which could scarcely have been the case if

it had really formed a ground of apostolical argument. Thus the divine

purpose in ordaining this miracle must have totally failed; or, since

this is inconceivable, it cannot have been ordained for this object—in

other words, since neither any other object of the miracle, nor yet a

mode in which the event might happen naturally can be discovered, it

cannot have happened at all. In another way, certainly, a peculiar

relation of Jesus to the veil of the temple is treated of in the

Epistle to the Hebrews. While before Christ, only the priests had

access into the holy place, and into the Holy of Holies only the high

priest might enter once in the year with the blood of atonement; Christ

as the eternal high priest, entered by his own blood into the holy

place within the veil, into the Holy of Holies in heaven, whereby he

became the forerunner, πρόδρομος, of Christians, and opened access to

them also, founding an eternal redemption, αἰώνιον λύτρωσιν (vi. 19 f.,

ix. 6, 12, x. 19 f.). Even Paulus finds in these metaphors so close an

affinity to our narrative, that he thinks it possible to number the

latter among those fables which according to Henke’s definitions are to

be derived e figurato genere dicendi; [1999] at least the event, even

if it really happened, must have been especially important to the

Christians on account of its symbolical significance, as interpreted by

the images in the Epistle to the Hebrews: namely, that by Christ’s

death the veil of the Jewish worship was rent asunder, and access to

God opened to all by means of worship in the Spirit. But if, as has

been shown, the historical probability of the event in question is

extremely weak, and on the other hand, the causes which might lead to

the formation of such a narrative without historical foundation very

powerful; it is more consistent, with Schleiermacher, entirely to

renounce the incident as historical, on the ground that so soon as it

began to be the practice to represent the office of Christ under the

images which reign throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews, nay, in the

very earliest dawn of this kind of doctrine, on the first reception of

the Gentiles, who were left free from the burthen of Jewish

observances, and who thus remained without participation in the Jewish

sacrifices, such representations must have entered into the Christian

hymns (and the evangelical narratives). [2000]

On the succeeding particulars of the earthquake and the rending of the

rocks, we can only pronounce a judgment in connexion with those already

examined. An earthquake by which rocks are disparted, is not

unprecedented as a natural phenomenon: but it also not seldom occurs as

a poetical or mythical embellishment of the death of a distinguished

man; as, for example, on the death of Cæsar, Virgil is not content with

eclipsing the sun, but also makes the Alps tremble with unwonted

commotion. [2001] Now as we have only been able to view the prodigies

previously mentioned in the latter light, and as, besides, the

historical validity of the one before us is weakened by the fact that

it rests solely on the testimony of Matthew; we must pronounce upon

this also in the words of Fritzsche: Messiæ obitum atrocibus ostentis,

quibus, quantus vir quummaxime exspirâsset, orbi terrarum indicaretur,

illustrem esse oportebat. [2002]

The last miraculous sign at the death of Jesus, likewise peculiar to

the first Evangelist, is the opening of the graves, the resurrection of

many dead persons, and their appearance in Jerusalem. To render this

incident conceivable is a matter of unusual difficulty. It is neither

in itself clear how it is supposed to have fared with these ancient

Hebrew saints, ἁγίοις, [2003] after their resurrection; [2004] nor is

anything satisfactory to be discovered concerning a possible object for

so extraordinary a dispensation. [2005] Purely in the resuscitated

themselves the object cannot apparently have lain, for had it been so,

there is no conceivable ground why they should be all awaked precisely

in the moment of the death of Jesus, and not each at the period

prescribed by the course of his own development. But if the conviction

of others was the object, this was still less attained than in the

miracle of the rending of the veil, for not only is any appeal to the

apparition of the saints totally wanting in the apostolic epistles and

discourses, but also among the Evangelists, Matthew is the only one by

whom it is recorded. A special difficulty arises from the position

which the determination of time: after his resurrection, μετὰ τὴν

ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ, occupies between the apparently consecutive stages of

the event. For if we connect these words with what precedes, and thus

suppose that at the moment of the death of Jesus, the deceased saints

were only reanimated, and did not come out of their graves until after

his resurrection,—this would have been a torment for the damned rather

than a guerdon for the holy; if, on the contrary, we unite that

determination of time to what follows, and thus interpret the

Evangelist’s meaning to be, that the resuscitated saints did indeed

come out of their graves immediately on their being reanimated at the

moment that Jesus died, but did not go into the city until after his

resurrection,—any reason for the latter particular is sought in vain.

It is but an inartificial way of avoiding these difficulties to

pronounce the whole passage an interpolation, without any critical

grounds for such a decision. [2006] A more dexterous course is pursued

by the rationalistic expositors, when they endeavour to subtract the

miraculous from the event, and by this means indirectly to remove the

other difficulties. Here, as in relation to the rending of the veil,

the earthquake is regarded as the chief agent: this, it is said, laid

open several tombs, particularly those of some prophets, which were

found empty, because the bodies had either been removed by the shock,

or become decomposed, or fallen a prey to wild beasts. After the

resurrection of Jesus, those who were friendly to him in Jerusalem

being filled with thoughts of resurrection from the dead, these

thoughts, together with the circumstance of the graves being found

empty, excited in them dreams and visions in which they believed that

they beheld the pious ancestors who had been interred in those graves.

[2007] But the fact of the graves being found empty would scarcely,

even united with the news of the resurrection of Jesus, have sufficed

to produce such visions, unless there had previously prevailed among

the Jews the expectation that the Messiah would recall to life the

departed saints of Israel. If however this expectation existed, it

would more probably give birth to the legend of a resurrection of the

saints coincident with the death of Jesus than to dreams; whence Hase

wisely discards the supposition of dreams, and attempts to find a

sufficient explanation of the narrative in the emptiness of the graves

on the one hand, and the above Jewish expectation on the other. [2008]

But on a nearer view it appears that if once this Jewish idea existed

there needed no real opening of the graves in order to give rise to

such a mythus: accordingly Schneckenburger has left the emptiness of

the graves out of his calculation. [2009] When, however, he yet speaks

of visionary appearances which were seen by the adherents of Jesus in

Jerusalem, under the excitement produced by his resurrection, he is not

less inconsequent than Hase, when he omits the dreams and yet retains

the laying open of the graves; for these two particulars being

connected as cause and effect, if one of them be renounced as

unhistorical so also must the other.

In opposition to this view it is remarked, not without an appearance of

reason, that the above Jewish expectation does not suffice to explain

the origin of such a mythus. [2010] The actual expectation may be more

correctly stated thus. From the epistles of Paul (1 Thess. iv. 16;

comp. 1 Cor. xv. 22 f.) and more decidedly from the Apocalypse (xx. 4

f.), we gather that the first Christians anticipated, as a concomitant

of the return of Christ, a resurrection of the saints, who would

thenceforth reign with Christ a thousand years; only at the end of this

period, it was thought, would the rest of the dead arise, and from this

second resurrection the former was distinguished as the first

resurrection ἡ ἀνάστασις ἑ πρώτη, or the resurrection of the just τῶν

δικαίων (Luke xiv. 14?), in place of which Justin has the holy

resurrection ἡ ἁγία ἀνάστασις. [2011] But this is the Christianized

form of the Jewish idea; for the latter referred, not to the return,

but to the first advent of the Messiah, and to a resurrection of

Israelites only. [2012] Now in the statement of Matthew likewise, that

resurrection is assigned to the first appearance of the Messiah; for

what reason, however, it is there connected with his death, there is

certainly no indication in the Jewish expectation taken in and by

itself, while in the modification introduced by the adherents of Jesus

there would appear rather to have lain an inducement to unite the

resurrection of the saints with his own; especially as the connecting

of it with his death seems to be in contradiction with the primitive

Christian idea elsewhere expressed, that Jesus was the first-begotten

from the dead, πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν (Col. i. 18; Rev. i. 5), the

first fruits of them that sleep, ἀπαρχὴ τῶν κεκοιμημένων (1 Cor. xv.

20). But we do not know whether this idea was universal, and if some

thought it due to the messianic dignity of Jesus to regard him as the

first who rose from the dead, there are obvious motives which might in

other cases lead to the representation that already at the death of

Jesus there was a resurrection of saints. First there was an external

motive: among the prodigies at the death of Jesus an earthquake is

mentioned, and in describing its violence it was natural to add to the

rending of the rocks another feature which appears elsewhere in

accounts of violent earthquakes, [2013] namely, the opening of the

graves: here then was an inviting hinge for the resurrection of the

saints. But there was also an internal motive: according to the ideas

early developed in the Christian community, the death of Jesus was the

specially efficacious point in the work of redemption, and in

particular the descent into Hades connected with it (1 Pet. iii. 19 f.)

was the means of delivering the previously deceased from this abode;

[2014] hence from these ideas there might result an inducement to

represent the bonds of the grave as having been burst asunder for the

ancient saints precisely in the moment of the death of Jesus. Besides,

by this position, yet more decidedly than by a connexion with the

resurrection of Jesus, the resuscitation of the righteous was assigned

to the first appearance of the Messiah, in accordance with the Jewish

idea, which might very naturally be echoed in such a narrative, in the

Judaizing circles of primitive Christendom; while at the same time Paul

and also the author of the Apocalypse already assigned the first

resurrection to the second and still future advent of the Messiah. It

was then apparently with reference to this more developed idea, that

the words after his resurrection were added as a restriction, probably

by the author of the first gospel himself.

The synoptists conclude their description of the events at the death of

Jesus, with an account of the impression which they made more

immediately on the Roman centurion whose office it was to watch the

crucifixion. According to Luke (v. 47) this impression was produced by

τὸ γενόμενον (what was done), i.e., since he had beforehand mentioned

the darkness, by the departure of Jesus with an audible prayer, that

being the particular which he had last noticed; indeed Mark, as if

expounding Luke, represents the exclamation: truly this man was the Son

of God as being called forth from the centurion by the circumstance

that Jesus so cried out, and gave up the ghost, οὕτω κράξας ἐξέπνευσεν

(v. 39). Now in Luke, who gives a prayer as the last utterance of

Jesus, it is possible to conceive that this edifying end might impress

the centurion with a favourable opinion of Jesus: but how the fact of

his expiring with a loud cry could lead to the inference that he was

the Son of God, will in no way appear. Matthew however gives the most

suitable relation to the words of the centurion, when he represents

them as being called forth by the earthquake and the other prodigies

which accompanied the death of Jesus: were it not that the historical

reality of this speech of the centurion must stand or fall with its

alleged causes. In Matthew and Mark this officer expresses the

conviction that Jesus is in truth the Son of God, in Luke, that he is a

righteous man. The Evangelists in citing the former expression

evidently intend to convey the idea that a Gentile bore witness to the

Messiahship of Jesus; but in this specifically Jewish sense the words

cannot well have been understood by the Roman soldier: we might rather

suppose that he regarded Jesus as a son of God in the heathen sense, or

as an innocent man unjustly put to death, were it not that the

credibility of the whole synoptical account of the events which

signalized the death of Jesus being shaken, this, which forms the top

stone as it were, must also be of doubtful security; especially when we

look at the narrative of Luke, who besides the impression on the

centurion adds that on the rest of the spectators, and makes them

return to the city with repentance and mourning—a trait which appears

to represent, not so probably what the Jews actually felt and did, as

what in the opinion of the Christians they ought to have felt and done.

§ 134.

THE WOUND BY A SPEAR IN THE SIDE OF JESUS.

While the synoptists represent Jesus as hanging on the cross from the

ὥρα ἐννάτη, i.e. three in the afternoon, when he expired, until the

ὀψία, i.e. probably about six in the evening, without anything further

happening to him: the fourth Evangelist interposes a remarkable

episode. According to him, the Jews, in order to prevent the

desecration of the coming sabbath, which was a peculiarly hallowed one,

by the continued exposure of the bodies on the cross, besought the

Procurator that their legs might be broken and that they might

forthwith be carried away. The soldiers, to whom this task was

committed, executed it on the two criminals crucified with Jesus; but

when they perceived in the latter the signs of life having already

become extinct, they held such a measure superfluous in his case, and

contented themselves with thrusting a spear into his side, whereupon

there came forth blood and water (xix. 31–37).

This event is ordinarily regarded as the chief voucher for the reality

of the death of Jesus, and in relation to it the proof to be drawn from

the synoptists is held inadequate. According to the reckoning which

gives the longest space of time, that of Mark, Jesus hung on the cross

from the third to the ninth hour, that is, six hours, before he died;

if, as to many it has appeared probable, in the two other synoptists

the commencement of the darkness at the sixth hour marks also the

commencement of the crucifixion, Jesus, according to them, hung only

three hours living on the cross; and if we presuppose in John the

ordinary Jewish mode of reckoning the hours, and attribute to him the

same opinion as to the period of the death of Jesus, it follows, since

he makes Pilate pronounce judgment on him only about the sixth hour,

that Jesus must have died after hanging on the cross not much more than

two hours. But crucifixion does not in other cases kill thus speedily.

This may be inferred from the nature of the punishment, which does not

consist in the infliction of severe wounds so as to cause a rapid loss

of blood, but rather in the stretching of the limbs, so as to produce a

gradual rigidity; moreover it is evident from the statements of the

Evangelists themselves, for according to them Jesus, immediately before

the moment which they regard as the last, had yet strength to utter a

loud cry, and the two thieves crucified with him were still alive after

that time; lastly, this opinion is supported by examples of individuals

whose life has lasted for several days on the cross, and who have only

at length expired from hunger and similar causes. [2015] Hence fathers

of the church and older theologians advanced the opinion, that the

death of Jesus, which would not have ensued so quickly in a natural

way, was accelerated supernaturally, either by himself or by God;

[2016] physicians and more modern theologians have appealed to the

accumulated corporeal and spiritual sufferings of Jesus on the evening

of the night prior to his crucifixion; [2017] but they also for the

most part leave open the possibility that what appeared to the

Evangelists the supervention of death itself, was only a swoon produced

by the stoppage of the circulation, and that the wound with the spear

in the side first consummated the death of Jesus.

But concerning this wound itself, the place, the instrument, and the

manner of its infliction—concerning its object and effects, there has

always been a great diversity of opinion. The instrument is called by

the Evangelist a λόνχη, which may equally signify either the light

javelin or the heavy lance; so that we are left in uncertainty as to

the extent of the wound. The manner in which the wound was inflicted he

describes by the verb νύσσειν, which sometimes denotes a mortal wound,

sometimes a slight scratch, nay, even a thrust which does not so much

as draw blood; hence we are ignorant of the depth of the wound: though

since Jesus, after the resurrection, makes Thomas lay only his fingers

in the print of the nails, but, in or even merely on the wound in the

side, his hand (John xx. 27), the stroke of the spear seems to have

made a considerable wound. But the question turns mainly on the place

in which the wound was made. This John describes as the πλευρὰ side,

and certainly if the spear entered the left side between the ribs and

penetrated into the heart, death must inevitably have ensued: but the

above expression may just as properly imply the right side as the left,

and in either side any spot from the shoulder to the hip. Most of these

points indeed would be at once decided, if the object of the soldier

had been to kill Jesus, supposing he should not be already dead; in

this case he would doubtless have pierced Jesus in the most fatal

place, and as deeply as possible, or rather, have broken his legs, as

was done to the two thieves: but since he treated Jesus otherwise than

his fellow sufferers, it is evident that in relation to him he had a

different object, namely, in the first place to ascertain by this

stroke of the spear, whether death had really taken place—a conclusion

which he believed might securely be drawn from the flowing of blood and

water out of the wound.

But this result of the wound is in fact the subject on which there is

the least unanimity. The fathers of the Church, on the ground that

blood no longer flows from corpses, regarded the blood and water, αἷμα

καὶ ὕδωρ, which flowed from the corpse of Jesus as a miracle, a sign of

his superhuman nature. [2018] More modern theologians, founding on the

same experience, have interpreted the expression as a hendiadys,

implying that the blood still flowed, and that this was a sign that

death had not yet, or not until now taken place. [2019] As, however,

blood is itself a fluid, the water ὕδωρ added to the blood αἷμα cannot

signify merely the fluid state of the latter, but must denote a

peculiar admixture which the blood flowing from the side of Jesus

contained. To explain this to themselves, and at the same time obtain

the most infallible proof of death, others have fallen on the idea that

the water mixed with the blood came out of the pericardium, which had

been pierced by the spear, and in which, especially in such as die

under severe anguish, a quantity of fluid is said to be accumulated.

[2020] But—besides that the piercing of the pericardium is a mere

supposition—on the one hand, the quantity of such fluid, where no

dropsy exists, is so trifling, that its emission would not be

perceptible; and on the other hand, it is only a single small spot in

front of the breast where the pericardium can be so struck that an

emission outward is possible: in all other cases, whatever was emitted

would be poured into the cavity of the thorax. [2021] Without doubt the

idea which was present in the Evangelist’s mind was rather the fact,

which may be observed in every instance of blood-letting, that the

blood, so soon as it has ceased to take part in the vital process,

begins to divide itself into placenta and serum; and he intended by

representing this separation as having already taken place in the blood

of Jesus, to adduce a proof of his real death. [2022] But whether this

outflow of blood and water in perceptible separation be a possible

proof of death,—whether Hase and Winer be right when they maintain that

on deep incisions in corpses the blood sometimes flows in this

decomposed state; or the fathers, when they deem this so unprecedented

that it must be regarded as a miracle in Jesus,—this is another

question. A distinguished anatomist has explained the state of the fact

to me in the following manner: [2023] Ordinarily, within an hour after

death the blood begins to coagulate in the vessels, and consequently no

longer to flow on incisions; only by way of exception in certain

species of death, as nervous fevers, or suffocation, does the blood

retain its fluidity in the corpse. Now if it be chosen to place the

death on the cross under the category of suffocation—which, however,

from the length of time that crucified persons have often remained

alive, and in relation to Jesus especially, from his being said to have

spoken to the last, appears impracticable; or if it be supposed that

the wound in the side followed so quickly on the instant of death that

it found the blood still fluid,—a supposition which is discordant with

the narratives, for they state Jesus to have been already dead at three

in the afternoon, while the bodies must have been taken away only at

six in the evening: then, if the spear struck one of the larger blood

vessels, blood would have flowed, but without water; if, however, Jesus

had already been dead about an hour, and his corpse was in the ordinary

state: nothing at all would have flowed. Thus either blood or nothing:

in no case blood and water, because the serum and placenta are not

separated in the vessels of the corpse as in the basin after

blood-letting. Hardly then had the author of this trait in the fourth

gospel himself seen the αἷμα καὶ ὕδωρ flowing out of the side of Jesus,

as a sign that his death had taken place; rather, because after

blood-letting he had seen the above separation take place in the blood

as it lost its vitality, and because he was desirous to show a certain

proof of the death of Jesus, he represented those separate ingredients

as flowing out of his wounded corpse.

The Evangelist assures us, with the most solicitous earnestness, that

this really happened to Jesus, and that his account is trustworthy, as

being founded on personal observation (v. 35). According to some, he

gives this testimony in opposition to docetic Gnostics, who denied the

true corporeality of Jesus: [2024] but wherefore then the mention of

the water? According to others, on account of the noteworthy fulfilment

of two prophecies by that procedure with respect to the body of Jesus.

[2025] But, as Lücke himself says, though John does certainly

elsewhere, even in subordinate points, seek a fulfilment of prophecy,

he nowhere attaches to it so extraordinary a weight as he would here

have done according to this supposition. Hence it appears the most

natural supposition that the Evangelist intended by those assurances to

confirm the truth of the death of Jesus, [2026] and that he merely

appended the reference to the fulfilment of Scripture as a secondary

illustrative addition. The absence of an historical indication, that so

early as the period of the composition of the fourth gospel, there

existed a suspicion that the death of Jesus was only apparent, does not

suffice, in the paucity of information at our command concerning that

period, to prove that a suspicion so easy of suggestion had not

actually to be combated in the circle in which the above gospel arose,

and that it may not have given occasion to the adduction of proofs not

only of the resurrection of Jesus, but also of his death. [2027] Even

in the Gospel of Mark a similar effort is visible. When this

Evangelist, in narrating Joseph’s entreaty for the body of Jesus, says:

And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead (v. 44): this suggests the

idea that he lent to Pilate an astonishment which he must have heard

expressed by many of his cotemporaries concerning the rapidity with

which the death of Jesus had ensued; and when he proceeds to state that

the procurator obtained from the centurion certain information that

Jesus had been some time dead, πάλαι ἀπέθανε: it appears as if he

wished, in silencing the doubt of Pilate, to silence that of his

cotemporaries also; but in that case he can have known nothing of a

wound with a spear, and its consequences, otherwise he would not have

left unnoticed this securest warrant of death having really taken

place: so that the representation in John has the appearance of being a

fuller development of a tendency of the legend already visible in Mark.

This view of John’s narrative is further confirmed by his citation of

Old Testament passages, as fulfilled in this event. In the stroke of

the spear he sees the fulfilment of Zech. xii. 10 (better translated by

John than by the LXX.), where Jehovah says to the Israelites ‏וְהִבִּיטוּ

אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר דָּקָרוּ‎ they shall look on him whom they have pierced, in the

sense, that they will one day return to him whom they had so grievously

offended. [2028] The word ‏דָּקַר‎, to pierce, understood literally,

expresses an act which appears more capable of being directed against a

man than against Jehovah: this interpretation is supported by the

variation in the reading ‏אֵלָיו‎; and it must have been confirmed by the

succeeding context, which proceeds in the third person thus: and they

shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in

bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.

Hence the Rabbins interpreted this passage of the Messiah ben Joseph,

who would be pierced by the sword in battle, [2029] and the Christians

might refer it, as they did so many passages in Psalms of lamentation,

to their Messiah, at first understanding the piercing either

figuratively or as implying the nailing of the hands (and feet) in

crucifixion (comp. Rev. i. 7); until at last some one, who desired a

more decisive proof of death than crucifixion in itself afforded,

interpreted it as a special piercing with the spear.

If then this trait of the piercing with the spear proceeded from the

combined interests of obtaining a proof of death, and a literal

fulfilment of a prophecy: the rest must be regarded as merely its

preparatory groundwork. The piercing was only needful as a test of

death, if Jesus had to be early taken down from the cross, which

according to Jewish law (Deut. xxi. 22; Josh. viii. 29, x. 26, f.—an

exception occurs in 2 Sam. xxi. 6 ff. [2030]) must in any case be

before night; but in particular in the present instance (a special

circumstance which John alone notes), before the commencement of the

passover. If Jesus died unusually soon, and if the two who were

crucified with him were yet to be taken down at the same time, the

death of the latter must be hastened by violent means. This might be

done likewise by means of a stroke of the spear: but then the piercing,

which in Zech. xii. 10 was predicted specially of the Messiah, would

equally happen to others. Thus in their case it would be better to

choose the breaking of the legs, which would not, indeed,

instantaneously superinduce death, but which yet made it ultimately

certain as a consequence of the mortification produced by the fracture.

It is true that the crurifragium appears nowhere else in connexion with

crucifixion among the Romans, but only as a separate punishment for

slaves, prisoners of war, and the like. [2031] But it was not the less

suitable in a prophetic point of view; for was it not said of the

Paschal lamb with which Jesus was elsewhere also compared (1 Cor. v.

7): not a bone of him shall be broken (Exod. xii. 46)? so that both the

prophecies were fulfilled, the one determining what should happen

exclusively to Jesus, the other what should happen to his

fellow-sufferers, but not to him.

§ 135.

BURIAL OF JESUS.

According to Roman custom the body of Jesus must have remained

suspended until consumed by the weather, birds of prey, and corruption;

[2032] according to the Jewish, it must have been interred in the

dishonourable burying place assigned to the executed: [2033] but the

evangelical accounts inform us that a distinguished adherent of the

deceased begged his body of the procurator, which, agreeably to the

Roman law, [2034] was not refused, but was immediately delivered to him

(Matt. xxvii. 57 parall.). This man, who in all the gospels is named

Joseph, and said to be derived from Arimathea, was according to Matthew

a rich man and a disciple of Jesus, but the latter, as John adds, only

in secret; the two intermediate Evangelists describe him as an

honourable member of the high council, in which character, Luke

remarks, he had not given his voice for the condemnation of Jesus, and

they both represent him as cherishing messianic expectations. That we

have here a personal description gradually developed into more and more

preciseness is evident. In the first gospel Joseph is a disciple of

Jesus—and such must have been the man who under circumstances so

unfavourable did not hesitate to take charge of his body; that,

according to the same gospel, he was a rich man ἄνθρωπος πλούσιος

already reminds us of Isa. liii. 9, where it is said ‏וַיִּתֵּן אֶת־רְשָׁעִים

קִבְרוֹ וְאֶת־עָשִׁיר בְּמֹתָיו‎ which might possibly be understood of a burial

with the rich, and thus become the source at least of this predicate of

Joseph of Arimathea. That he entertained messianic ideas, as Luke and

Mark add, followed of course from his relation to Jesus; that he was a

counsellor, βουλευτὴς, as the same Evangelists declare, is certainly a

new piece of information: but that as such he could not have concurred

in the condemnation of Jesus was again a matter of course; lastly, that

he had hitherto kept his adherence to Jesus a secret, as John observes,

accords with the peculiar position in relation to Jesus which this

Evangelist gives to certain exalted adherents, especially to Nicodemus,

who is subsequently associated with Joseph. Hence it must not be at

once supposed that the additional particulars which each succeeding

Evangelist gives, rest on historical information which he possessed

over and above that of his predecessors.

While the synoptists represent the interment of Jesus as being

performed by Joseph alone, with no other beholders than the women,

John, as we have observed, introduces Nicodemus as an assistant; a

particular, the authenticity of which has been already considered in

connexion with the first appearance of Nicodemus. [2035] This

individual brings spices for the purpose of embalming Jesus; a mixture

of myrrh and aloes, in the quantity of about a hundred pounds. In vain

have commentators laboured to withdraw from the word λίτρα, which John

here uses, the signification of the Latin libra, and to substitute a

smaller weight: [2036] the above surprising quantity is, however,

satisfactorily accounted for by the remark of Olshausen, that the

superfluity was a natural expression of the veneration of those men for

Jesus. In the fourth gospel the two men perform the office of embalming

immediately after the taking down of the body from the cross, winding

it in linen clothes after the Jewish practice; in Luke the women, on

their return home from the grave of Jesus, provide spices and

ointments, in order to commence the embalming after the sabbath (xxiii.

56, xxiv. 1); in Mark they do not buy the sweet spices ἀρώματα until

the sabbath is past (xvi. 1); while in Matthew there is no mention of

an embalming of the body of Jesus, but only of its being wrapped in a

clean linen cloth (xxvii. 59).

Here it has been thought possible to reconcile the difference between

Mark and Luke in relation to the time of the purchase of the spices, by

drawing over one of the two narrators to the side of the other. It

appeared the most easy to accommodate Mark to Luke by the supposition

of an enallage temporum; his verb ἠγόρασαν, they bought, used in

connexion with the day after the sabbath, being taken as the

pluperfect, and understood to imply, in accordance with the statement

of Luke, that the women had the spices in readiness from the evening of

the burial. [2037] But against this reconciliation it has already been

remarked with triumphant indignation by the Fragmentist, that the

aorist, standing between a determination of time and the statement of

an object, cannot possibly signify anything else than what happened at

that time in relation to that object, and thus the words ἠγόρασαν

ἀρώματα, they bought sweet spices, placed between διαγενομένου τοῦ

σαββάτου, The sabbath being past, and ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτὸν,

that they might come and anoint him, can only signify a purchase made

after the sabbath had elapsed. [2038] Hence Michaelis, who undertook to

vindicate the histories of the burial and resurrection from the charge

of contradiction urged by the Fragmentist, betook himself to the

opposite measure, and sought to conform Luke to Mark. When Luke writes:

ὑποστρέψασαι δὲ ἡτοίμασαν ἀρώματα καὶ μύρα, and they returned, and

bought sweet spices and ointments, he does not, we are told, mean that

they had made this purchase immediately after their return, and

consequently on the evening of the burial: on the contrary, by the

addition καὶ τὸ μὲν σάββατον ἡσύχασαν κατὰ τὴν ἐντολὴν, and rested the

sabbath day, according to the commandment, he himself gives us to

understand that it did not happen until the sabbath was past, since

between their return from the grave and the commencement of the sabbath

at six in the evening, there was no time left for the purchase. [2039]

But when Luke places his ἡτοίμασαν (they prepared) between ὑποστρέψασαι

(being returned) and ἡσύχασαν (they rested), this can as little signify

something occurring after the rest of the sabbath, as in Mark the

similarly placed word ἠγόρασαν can signify something which had happened

before the sabbath. Hence more recent theologians have perceived that

each of these two Evangelists must be allowed to retain the direct

sense of his words; nevertheless they have believed it possible to free

both the one and the other from the appearance of error by the

supposition that the spices prepared before the sabbath were not

sufficient, and that the women, agreeably to Mark’s statement, really

bought an additional stock after the sabbath. [2040] But there must

have been an enormous requirement of spices if first the hundred pounds

weight contributed by Nicodemus had not sufficed, and on this account

the women on the evening before the sabbath had laid ready more spices,

and then these too were found insufficient, so that they had to buy yet

more on the morning after the sabbath.

Thus however, in consistency, it is necessary to solve the second

contradiction which exists between the two intermediate Evangelists

unitedly and the fourth, namely, that according to the latter Jesus was

embalmed with a hundred weight of ointment before being laid in the

grave, while according to the former the embalming was deferred until

after the sabbath. But as far as the quantity was concerned, the

hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes were more than enough: that which was

wanting, and had to be supplied after the sabbath, could only relate to

the manner, i.e. that the spices had not yet been applied to the body

in the right way—because the process had been interrupted by the

arrival of the sabbath. [2041] But, if we listen to John, the interment

of Jesus on the evening of his death was performed καθὼς ἔθος ἐστὶ τοῖς

Ἰουδαίοις ἐνταφιάζειν, as the manner of the Jews is to bury, i.e. ritè,

in due form, the corpse being wound in the linen clothes ὀθόνια with

the spices μετὰ τῶν ἀρωμάτων (v. 40), which constituted the whole of

Jewish embalming, so that according to John nothing was wanting in

relation to the manner; [2042] not to mention that if the women, as

Mark and Luke state, bought fresh spices and placed them in readiness,

the embalming of Nicodemus must have been defective as to quantity

also. Thus in the burial of Jesus as narrated by John nothing objective

was wanting: nevertheless, it has been maintained that subjectively, as

regarded the women, it had not been performed, i.e. they were ignorant

that Jesus had already been embalmed by Nicodemus and Joseph. [2043]

One is astonished that such a position can be advanced, since the

synoptists expressly state that the women were present at the interment

of Jesus, and beheld, not merely the place (ποῦ τίθεται, Mark), but

also the manner in which he was interred (ὡς ἐτέθη, Luke).

There is a third divergency relative to this point between Matthew and

the rest of the Evangelists, in so far as the former mentions no

embalming either before or after the sabbath. This divergency, as it

consists merely in the silence of one narrator, has been hitherto

little regarded, and even the Fragmentist admits that the wrapping of

the body in a clean linen cloth, mentioned by Matthew, involves also

the Jewish method of embalming. But in this instance there might easily

be drawn an argument ex silentio. When we read in the narrative of the

anointing at Bethany the declaration of Jesus, that the woman by this

deed had anointed his body for burial (Matt. xxvi. 12 parall.): this

has indeed its significance in all the narratives, but a peculiarly

striking one in Matthew, according to whose subsequent narrative no

anointing took place at the burial of Jesus, [2044] and this fact

appears to be the only sufficient explanation of the special importance

which the Evangelical tradition attached to the action of the woman. If

he who was revered as the Messiah did not, under the pressure of

unfavourable circumstances, receive at his burial the due honour of

embalmment: then must the thoughts of his adherents revert with

peculiar complacency to an event in the latter part of his life, in

which a humble-minded female votary, as if foreboding that this honour

would be denied to him when dead, rendered it to him while yet living.

Viewed in this light the different representation of the anointing in

the other Evangelists would have the appearance of a gradual

development of the legend. In Mark and Luke it still remains, as in

Matthew, that the corpse of Jesus is not really embalmed: but, said the

legend, already outstepping the narrative of the first gospel, the

embalming was designed for him,—this intention was the motive for the

resort of the women to his grave on the morning after the sabbath, and

its execution was only prevented by the resurrection. In the fourth

gospel, on the other hand, this anointing, from being first performed

on him by anticipation while he was yet living, and then intended for

him when dead, resolved itself into an actual embalming of his body

after death: in conjunction with which, however, after the manner of

legendary formations, the reference of the earlier anointing to the

burial of Jesus was left standing.

The body of Jesus, according to all the narrators, was forthwith

deposited in a tomb hewn out of a rock, and closed with a great stone.

Matthew describes this tomb as καινὸν, new; an epithet which Luke and

John more closely determine by stating that no man had yet been laid

therein. We may observe in passing, that there is as much reason for

suspicion with respect to this newness of the grave, as with respect to

the unridden ass in the history of the entrance of Jesus, since here in

the same way as there, the temptation lay irresistibly near, even

without historical grounds, to represent the sacred receptacle of the

body of Jesus as never having been polluted by any corpse. But even in

relation to this tomb the Evangelists exhibit a divergency. According

to Matthew it was the property of Joseph, who had himself caused it to

be hewn in the rock; and the two other synoptists also, since they make

Joseph unhesitatingly dispose of the grave, appear to proceed on the

same presupposition. According to John, on the contrary, Joseph’s right

of property in the grave was not the reason that Jesus was laid there;

but because time pressed, he was deposited in the new sepulchre, which

happened to be in a neighbouring garden. Here again the harmonists have

tried their art on both sides. Matthew was to be brought into agreement

with John by the observation, that a manuscript of his gospel omits the

αὑτοῦ (his own) after μνημείῳ; while an ancient translation read,

instead of ὃ ἐλατόμησεν (which he had hewn),—ὃ ἦν λελατομημένον (which

was hewn): [2045] as if these alterations were not obviously owing

already to harmonizing efforts. Hence the opposite side has been taken,

and it has been remarked that the words of John by no means exclude the

possibility that Joseph may have been the owner of the tomb, since both

reasons—the vicinity, and the fact that the grave belonged to

Joseph—may have co-operated. [2046] But the contrary is rather the

truth: namely, that the vicinity of the grave when alleged as a motive,

excludes the fact of possession: a house in which I should take shelter

from a shower, because it is near, would not be my own; unless indeed I

were the owner of two houses, one near and one more distant, of which

the latter was my proper dwelling: and in like manner a grave, in which

a person lays a relative or friend who does not himself possess one,

because it is near, cannot be his own, unless he possess more than one,

and intend at greater leisure to convey the deceased into the other;

which however in our case, since the near grave was from its newness

adapted above all others for the interment of Jesus, is not easily

conceivable. If according to this the contradiction subsists, there

does not appear in the narratives themselves any ground for decision in

favour of the one or of the other. [2047]

§ 136.

THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE OF JESUS.

On the following day, the Sabbath, [2048] the chief priests and

Pharisees, according to Matthew (xxvii. 62 ff.) came to Pilate, and

with reference to the prediction of Jesus, that he should rise again

after three days, requested him to place a watch by his grave, lest his

disciples should take occasion from the expectation which that

prediction had awakened, to steal his body and then spread a report

that he was risen again. Pilate granted their request, and accordingly

they went away, sealed the stone, and placed the watch before the

grave. The subsequent resurrection of Jesus (we must here anticipate so

far), and the angelic appearances which accompanied it, so terrified

the guards, that they became as dead men, ὡσεὶ νεκροὶ,—forthwith,

however, hastened to the city and gave an account of the event to the

chief priests. The latter after having deliberated on the subject in an

assembly with the elders, bribed the soldiers to pretend that the

disciples had stolen the body by night; whence, the narrator adds, this

report was disseminated, and was persisted in up to his time (xxviii.

4, 11 ff.).

In this narrative, peculiar to the first gospel, critics have found all

kinds of difficulties, which have been exposed with the most acumen by

the author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, and after him by Paulus.

[2049] The difficulties lie first of all in this: that neither the

requisite conditions of the event, nor its necessary consequences, are

presented in the rest of the New Testament history. As regards the

former, it is not to be conceived how the Sanhedrists could obtain the

information, that Jesus was to return to life three days after his

death: since there is no trace of such an idea having existed even

among his disciples. They say: We remember that that deceiver said,

while he was yet alive, etc. If we are to understand from this that

they remembered to have heard him speak to that effect; Jesus,

according to the evangelical accounts, never spoke plainly of his

resurrection in the presence of his enemies; and the figurative

discourses which remained unintelligible to his confidential disciples,

could still less be understood by the Jewish hierarchs, who were less

accustomed to his mode of thought and expression. If, however, the

Sanhedrists merely intend to say, that they had heard from others of

his having given such a promise: this intelligence could only have

proceeded from the disciples; but as these had not, either before or

after the death of Jesus, the slightest anticipation of his

resurrection, they could not have excited such an anticipation in

others;—not to mention that we have been obliged to reject as

unhistorical the whole of the predictions of the resurrection lent to

Jesus in the gospels. Equally incomprehensible with this knowledge on

the part of the enemies of Jesus, is the silence of his friends, the

Apostles and the other Evangelists besides Matthew, concerning a

circumstance so favourable to their cause. It is certainly applying too

modern a standard to the conduct of the disciples to say with the

Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, that they must have entreated from Pilate a

letter under his seal in attestation of the fact that a watch had been

set over the grave: but it must be held surprising that in none of the

apostolic speeches is there anywhere an appeal to so striking a fact,

and that even in the gospels, with the exception of the first, it has

left no discoverable trace. An attempt has been made to explain this

silence from the consideration, that the bribing of the guards by the

Sanhedrim had rendered an appeal to them fruitless: [2050] but truth is

not so readily surrendered to such obvious falsehoods, and at all

events, when the adherents of Jesus had to defend themselves before the

Sanhedrim, the mention of such a fact must have been a powerful weapon.

The cause is already half given up when its advocates retreat to the

position, that the disciples probably did not become acquainted with

the true cause of the event immediately, but only later, when the

soldiers began to betray the secret. [2051] For even if the guards in

the first instance merely set afloat the tale of the theft, and thus

admitted that they had been placed by the grave, the adherents of Jesus

could already construe for themselves the real state of the case, and

might boldly appeal to the guards, who must have been witnesses of

something quite different from the theft of a corpse. But lest we be

told of the invalidity of an argument drawn from the merely negative

fact of silence, there is something positive narrated concerning a part

of the adherents of Jesus, namely, the women, which is not reconcilable

with the fact of a watch being placed at the grave. Not only do the

women who resort to the grave on the morning after the Sabbath, intend

to complete the embalming which they could not hope to be permitted to

do, if they knew that a watch was placed before the grave, and that

this was besides sealed: [2052] but according to Mark their whole

perplexity on their way to the grave turns upon the question, who will

roll away the stone for them from the grave; a clear proof that they

knew nothing of the guards, since these either would not have allowed

them to remove the stone, however light, or if they would have allowed

this, would also have helped them to roll away a heavier one; so that

in any case the difficulty as to the weight of the stone would have

been superfluous. But that the placing of the watch should have

remained unknown to the women is, from the attention which everything

relative to the end of Jesus excited in Jerusalem (Luke xxiv. 18),

highly improbable.

But within the narrative also, every feature is full of difficulties,

for, according to the expression of Paulus, no one of the persons who

appear in it, acts in accordance with his character. That Pilate should

have granted the request of the Jewish magistrates for a watch, I will

not say without hesitation, but so entirely without ridicule, must be

held surprising after his previous conduct; [2053] such minor

particulars might however be merely passed over by Matthew in his

summary mode of recounting the incidents. It is more astonishing that

the guards should have been so easily induced to tell a falsehood which

the severity of Roman discipline made so dangerous, as that they had

failed in their duty by sleeping on their post; especially as, from the

bad understanding which existed between the Sanhedrim and the

procurator, they could not know how far the mediation promised by the

former would avail. But the most inconceivable feature is the alleged

conduct of the Sanhedrim. The difficulty which lies in their going to

the heathen procurator on the Sabbath, defiling themselves by

approaching the grave, and placing a watch, has certainly been

overstrained by the Fragmentist; but their conduct, when the guards,

returning from the grave, apprised them of the resurrection of Jesus,

is truly impossible. They believe the assertion of the soldiers that

Jesus had arisen out of his grave in a miraculous manner. How could the

council, many of whose members were Sadducees, receive this as

credible? Even the Pharisees in the Sanhedrim, though they held in

theory the possibility of a resurrection, would not, with the mean

opinion which they entertained of Jesus, be inclined to believe in his

resurrection; especially as the assertion in the mouth of the guards

sounded just like a falsehood invented to screen a failure in duty. The

real Sanhedrists, on hearing such an assertion from the soldiers, would

have replied with exasperation: You lie! you have slept and allowed him

to be stolen; but you will have to pay dearly for this, when it comes

to be investigated by the procurator. But instead of this, the

Sanhedrists in our gospel speak them fair, and entreat them thus: Tell

a lie, say that you have slept and allowed him to be stolen: moreover,

they pay them richly for the falsehood, and promise to exculpate them

to the procurator. This is evidently spoken entirely on the Christian

presupposition of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus; a

presupposition however which is quite incorrectly attributed to the

members of the Sanhedrim. It is also a difficulty, not merely searched

out by the Fragmentist, but even acknowledged by orthodox expositors,

[2054] that the Sanhedrim, in a regular assembly, and after a formal

consultation, should have resolved to corrupt the soldiers and put a

lie into their mouths. That in this manner a college of seventy men

should have officially decided on suggesting and rewarding the

utterance of a falsehood, is, as Olshausen justly observes, too widely

at variance with the decorum, the sense of propriety, inseparable from

such an assembly. The expedient of supposing that it was merely a

private meeting, since only the chief priests and elders, not the

scribes, are said to have embraced the resolution of bribing the

soldiers, [2055] would involve the singularity, that in this assembly

the scribes were absent, while in the shortly previous interview with

the procurator, where the scribes are represented by the Pharisees who

formed their majority, the elders were wanting: whence it is evident

rather that, it being inconvenient invariably to designate the

Sanhedrim by a full enumeration of its constituent parts, it was not

seldom indicated by the mention of only some or one of these. If it

therefore remains that according to Matthew the high council must in a

formal session have resolved on bribing the guards: such an act of

baseness could only be attributed to the council as such, by the

rancour of the primitive Christians, among whom our anecdote arose.

These difficulties in the present narrative of the first gospel have

been felt to be so pressing, that it has been attempted to remove them

by the supposition of interpolation; [2056] which has lately been

moderated into the opinion, that while the anecdote did not indeed

proceed from the Apostle Matthew himself it was not however added by a

hand otherwise alien to our gospel, but was inserted by the Greek

translator of the Hebrew Matthew. [2057] Against the former supposition

the absence of all critical authority is decisive; the appeal of those

who advance the other opinion to the unapostolic character of the

anecdote, would not warrant its separation from the context of the main

narrative, unless that narrative itself were already proved to be of

apostolic origin; while the anecdote is so far from presenting any want

of connexion with the rest, that, on the contrary, Paulus is right in

his remark that an interpolator (or inserting translator) would

scarcely have given himself the trouble to distribute his interpolation

in three different places (xxvii. 62–66; xxviii. 4, 11–15), but would

have compressed it into one passage, or at most two. Neither can the

question be settled so cheaply as Olshausen imagines, when he concludes

that the entire narrative is apostolic and correct, save that the

Evangelist erred in representing the corruption of the guards as being

resolved on in full council, whereas the affair was probably managed in

secret by Caiaphas alone: as if this assembly of the council were the

sole difficulty of the narrative, and as if, when errors had insinuated

themselves in relation to this particular, they might not extend to

others also. [2058]

Paulus correctly points out how Matthew himself, by the statement: and

this saying is commonly reported among the Jews to this day,—indicates

a calumnious Jewish report as the source of his narrative. But when

this theologian expresses the opinion that the Jews themselves

propagated the story, that they had placed a watch at the grave of

Jesus, but that the guards had permitted his body to be stolen: this is

as perverted a view as that of Hase, when he conjectures that the

report in question proceeded first of all from the friends of Jesus,

and was afterwards modified by his enemies. For as regards the former

supposition, Kuinöl has already correctly remarked, that Matthew merely

designates the assertion respecting the theft of the corpse as a Jewish

report, not the entire narrative of the placing of a watch; neither is

there any reason to be conceived why the Jews should have fabricated

such a report as that a watch was set at the grave of Jesus: Paulus

says, it was hoped thereby to render the assertion that the body of

Jesus was stolen by his disciples more easy of acceptation with the

credulous: but those must indeed have been very credulous who did not

observe, that the placing of the watch was the very thing to render a

furtive removal of the body of Jesus improbable. Paulus appears to

represent the matter to himself thus: the Jews wished to obtain

witnesses as it were to the accusation of a theft, and for this purpose

fabricated the story of the guard being placed by the grave. But that

the guards with open eyes quietly beheld the disciples of Jesus carry

away his body, no one could credit: while, if they saw nothing of this,

because they slept, they gave no testimony, since they could then only

by inference arrive at the conclusion, that the body might have been

stolen: a conclusion which could be drawn just as well without them.

Thus in no way can the watch have belonged to the Jewish basis of the

present narrative; but the report disseminated among the Jews

consisted, as the text also says, merely in the assertion that the

disciples had stolen the body. As the Christians wished to oppose this

calumny, there was formed among them the legend of a watch placed at

the grave of Jesus, and now they could boldly confront their slanderers

with the question: how can the body have been carried away, since you

placed a watch at the grave and sealed the stone? And because, as we

have ourselves proved in the course of our inquiry, a legend is not

fully convicted of groundlessness until it has been shown how it could

arise even without historical grounds: it was attempted on the side of

the Christians, in showing what was supposed to be the true state of

the case, to expose also the origin of the false legend, by deriving

the falsehood propagated among the Jews from the contrivance of the

Sanhedrim, and their corruption of the guards. Thus the truth is

precisely the reverse of what Hase says, namely, that the legend

probably arose among the friends of Jesus and was modified by his

enemies:—the friends first had an inducement to the fiction of the

watch, when the enemies had already spoken of a theft. [2059]

§ 137.

FIRST TIDINGS OF THE RESURRECTION.

That the first news of the grave of Jesus being opened and empty on the

second morning after his burial, came to the disciples by the mouth of

women, is unanimously stated by the four Evangelists: but in all the

more particular circumstances they diverge from each other, in a way

which has presented the richest material for the polemic of the

Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, and on the other hand has given abundant work

to the harmonists and apologists, without there having been hitherto

any successful attempt at a satisfactory mediation between the two

parties. [2060]

Leaving behind the difference which is connected with the divergencies

in the history of the burial, as to the object of the women in

resorting to the grave,—namely, that according to the two intermediate

Evangelists they intended to embalm the body of Jesus, according to the

two others merely to pay a visit to the grave,—we find, first, a very

complicated divergency relative to the number of the women who made

this visit. Luke merely speaks indefinitely of many women; not alone

those whom he describes xxiii. 55, as having come with Jesus from

Galilee, and of whom he mentions by name, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and

Mary the mother of James, but also certain others with them, τινὲς σὺν

αὐταῖς (xxiv. 1). Mark has merely three women; two of those whom Luke

also names, but as the third, Salome instead of Joanna (xvi. 1).

Matthew has not this third woman, respecting whom the two intermediate

Evangelists differ, but merely the two Maries concerning whom they

agree (xxviii. 1). Lastly, John has only one of these, Mary Magdalene

(xx. 1). The time at which the women go to the grave is likewise not

determined with uniformity; for even if the words of Matthew, In the

end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the

week, ὀψὲ σαββάτων, τῂ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν σαββάτων, make no

difference, [2061] still the addition of Mark: at the rising of the

sun, ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου, are in contradiction with the expressions

when it was yet dark, σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης, in John, and very early in the

morning, ὄρθρου βαθέος, in Luke.—In relation to the circumstances in

which the women first saw the grave there may appear to be a

difference, at least between Matthew and the three other Evangelists.

According to the latter, as they approach and look towards the grave,

they see that the stone has already been rolled away by an unknown

hand: whereas the narrative of the first Evangelist has appeared to

many to imply that the women themselves beheld the stone rolled away by

an angel.—Manifold are the divergencies as to what the women further

saw and learned at the grave. According to Luke they enter into the

grave, find that the body of Jesus is not there, and are hence in

perplexity, until they see standing by them two men in shining

garments, who announce to them his resurrection. In Mark, who also

makes them enter into the grave, they see only one young man in a long

white garment, not standing, but sitting on the right side, who gives

them the same intelligence. In Matthew they receive this information

before they enter into the grave, from the angel, who after rolling

away the stone had sat upon it. Lastly, according to John, Mary

Magdalene, as soon as she sees the stone taken away, and without

witnessing any angelic appearance, runs back into the city.—Moreover

the relation in which the disciples of Jesus are placed with respect to

the first news of his resurrection is a different one in the different

gospels. According to Mark, the women, out of fear, tell no one of the

angelic appearance which they have beheld; according to John, Mary

Magdalene has nothing more to say to John and Peter, to whom she

hastens from the grave, than that Jesus is taken away; according to

Luke, the women report the appearance to the disciples in general, and

not merely to two of them; while according to Matthew, as they were in

the act of hastening to the disciples, Jesus himself met them, and they

were able to communicate this also to the disciples. In the two first

gospels nothing is said of one of the disciples himself going to the

grave on hearing the report of the women; according to Luke, Peter went

thither, found it empty and returned wondering, and from Luke xxiv. 24

it appears that other disciples besides him went thither in a similar

manner; according to the fourth gospel Peter was accompanied by John,

who on this occasion was convinced of the resurrection of Jesus. Luke

says that Peter made his visit to the sepulchre after he had already

been informed by the women of the angelic appearance; but in the fourth

gospel the two disciples go to the grave before Mary Magdalene can have

told them of such an appearance; it was only when she had proceeded a

second time to the grave with the two disciples, and when they had

returned home again, that, stooping into the sepulchre, she saw,

according to this gospel, two angels in white, sitting, the one at the

head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain, by

whom she was asked, why she wept? and on turning round she beheld Jesus

himself; a particular of which there is a fragmentary notice in Mark v.

9, with the additional remark, that she communicated this news to his

former companions.

It has been thought possible to reconcile the greater part of these

divergencies by supposing, instead of one scene variously described, a

multiplicity of different scenes; for which purpose the ordinary

grammatical and other artifices of the harmonists were pressed into the

service. That Mark might not contradict the σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης while it

was yet dark of John, the apologists did not scruple to translate the

words ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου by orituro sole; [2062] the contradiction

between Matthew and the rest, when the former appears to say that the

women saw the stone rolled away by the angel, seemed to be more easy of

solution, not indeed by supposing, with Michaelis, [2063] that καὶ ἰδοὺ

(and behold!) denotes a recurrence to a previous event, and that

ἀπεκύλισε has the signification of a pluperfect (an expedient which has

been justly combated by modern criticism in opposition to Lessing, who

was inclined to admit it); [2064] but by understanding the ἦλθε v. 1 to

express a yet unfinished progress of the women towards the grave, in

which case the καὶ ἰδοὺ and what follows may, in accordance with its

proper meaning, relate something that happened after the departure of

the women from their home, but before their arrival at the grave.

[2065] In relation to the number and the visit of the women, it was in

the first place urged that even according to John, although he mentions

only Mary Magdalene by name,—several women must have accompanied her to

the grave, since he makes her say after her return to the two

disciples: we know not where they have laid him; [2066] a plural, which

certainly intimates the presence of other but unspecified persons, with

whom Mary Magdalene, whether at the grave itself or on her return, had

conversed on the subject before she came to the Apostles. Thus, it is

said, Mary Magdalene went to the grave with the other women, more or

fewer of whom are mentioned by the other Evangelists. As however she

returned without having, like the other women, seen an angel, it is

supposed that she ran back alone as soon as she saw the stone rolled

away: which is accounted for by her impetuous temperament, she having

been formerly a demoniac. [2067] While she hastened back to the city,

the other women saw the appearances of which the synoptists speak.—To

all it is maintained, the angels appeared within the grave; for the

statement in Matthew that one sat outside on the stone, is only a

pluperfect: when the women came he had already withdrawn into the

sepulchre, and accordingly, after their conversation with him, the

women are described as departing from the sepulchre, ἐξελθοῦσαι ἐκ τοῦ

μνημείου (v. 8): [2068] in which observation it is only overlooked that

between the first address of the angel and the above expression, there

stands his invitation to the women to come with him into the grave and

see the place where Jesus had lain. In relation to the difference that

according to the two first Evangelists the women see only one angel,

according to the third, two, even Calvin resorts to the miserable

expedient of supposing a synecdoche, namely that all the Evangelists

certainly knew of two angels, but Matthew and Mark mention only the one

who acted as speaker. Others make different women see different

appearances: some, of whom Matthew and Mark speak, seeing only one

angel; the others, to whom Luke refers, and who came earlier or perhaps

later than the above, seeing two; [2069] but Luke makes the same two

Maries who, according to his predecessors, had seen only one angel,

narrate to the Apostles an appearance of two angels. It is also said

that the women returned in separate groups, so that Jesus might meet

those of whom Matthew speaks without being seen by those of Luke; and

though those of Mark at first tell no one from fear, the rest, and they

themselves afterwards, might communicate what they had seen to the

disciples. [2070]—On hearing the report brought by several women,

Peter, according to Luke, straightway goes to the grave, finds it empty

and turns away wondering. But according to the hypothesis which we are

now detailing, Mary Magdalene had run back a considerable time before

the other women, and had brought with her to the grave Peter and John.

Thus Peter, first on hearing the imperfect intelligence of Mary

Magdalene that the grave was empty, must have gone thither with John;

and subsequently, on the account of the angelic appearance brought by

the other women, he must have gone a second time alone: in which case

it would be particularly surprising that while his companion arrived at

a belief in the resurrection of Jesus on the very first visit, he

himself had not attained further than wonder even on the second.

Besides, as the Fragmentist has already ably shown, the narrative in

the third gospel of the visit of Peter alone, and that in the fourth of

the visit of Peter and John, are so strikingly similar even in words,

[2071] that the majority of commentators regard them as referring to a

single visit, Luke having only omitted to notice the companion of

Peter: in support of which opinion they can appeal to Luke xxiv. 24.

But if the visit of the two Apostles, occasioned by the return of Mary

Magdalene, be one and the same with that occasioned by the return of

the other women, then the return of the women is also not a double one;

if however they returned in company with each other, we have a

contradiction. After the two Apostles are returned without having seen

an angel, Mary, who remains behind, as she looks into the grave, all at

once sees two. What a strange playing at hide and seek must there have

been on the part of the angels, according to the harmonistic

combination of these narratives! First only one shows himself to one

group of women, to another group two show themselves; both forthwith

conceal themselves from the disciples; but after their departure both

again become visible. To remove these intermissions Paulus has placed

the appearance presented to Mary Magdalene before the arrival of the

two disciples: but by this violent transposition of the order chosen by

the narrator, he has only confessed the impossibility of thus

incorporating the various Evangelists with each other. Hereupon, as

Mary Magdalene raises herself from looking into the grave and turns

round, she sees Jesus standing behind her. According to Matthew, Jesus

appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, when they had already

set out on their way to the city, consequently when they were at some

distance from the grave. Thus Jesus would have first appeared to Mary

Magdalene alone, close to the grave, and a second time when she was on

her way from thence, in the company of another woman. In order to avoid

the want of purpose attaching to the repetition of an appearance of

Jesus after so short an interval, commentators have here called in the

above supposition, that Mary Magdalene had previously separated herself

from the women of whom Matthew speaks: [2072] but in that case, since

Matthew has besides Mary Magdalene only the other Mary, it would have

been only one woman to whom Jesus appeared on the way from the grave:

whereas Matthew throughout speaks of several (ἀπήντησεν αὐταῖς).

To escape from this restless running to and fro of the disciples and

the women, this phantasmagoric appearance, disappearance, and

reappearance of the angels, and the useless repetition of the

appearances of Jesus before the same person, which result from this

harmonistic method, we must consider each Evangelist by himself: we

then obtain from each a quiet picture with simple dignified features;

one visit of the women to the grave, or according to John, two; one

angelic appearance; one appearance of Jesus, according to John and

Matthew; and one visit to the grave by one or two of the disciples,

according to Luke and John.

But with the above difficulties of the harmonistic method of

incorporation as to the substance, there is associated a difficulty as

to form, in the question, how comes it, under the presuppositions of

this mode of viewing the gospels, that from the entire series of

occurrences, each narrator has selected a separate portion for

himself,—that of the many visits and appearances not one Evangelist

relates all, and scarcely one the same as his neighbour, but for the

most part each has chosen only one for representation, and each again a

different one? The most plausible answer to this question has been

given by Griesbach in a special treatise on this subject. [2073] He

supposes that each Evangelist recounts the resurrection of Jesus in the

manner in which it first, became known to him: John received the first

information from Mary Magdalene, and hence he narrates only what he

learned from her; to Matthew (for without doubt the disciples, as

strangers visiting the feast, resided in different quarters of the

city), the first news was communicated by those women to whom Jesus

himself appeared on their way from the grave, and hence he relates only

what these had experienced. But here this explanation already founders

on the facts, that in Matthew, of the women who see Jesus on their way

homeward, Mary Magdalene is one; and that in John, Mary Magdalene,

after her second visit to the grave, in which Jesus appeared to her, no

longer went to John and Peter alone, but to the disciples in general,

and communicated to them the appearance she had seen and the commission

she had received: so that Matthew in any case must also have known of

the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. [2074] Further, when,

according to this hypothesis, Mark narrates the history of the

resurrection as he had learned it in the house of his mother who lived

in Jerusalem (Acts xii. 12); Luke, as he had received it from Joanna,

whom he alone mentions: we cannot but wonder at the tenacity with

which, according to this, each must have clung to the narrative which

he had happened first to receive, since the resurrection of Jesus must

have been the subject of all others on which there was the most lively

interchange of narratives among his adherents, so that the ideas

concerning the first tidings of the event must have found their level.

To remove these difficulties, Griesbach has further supposed, that the

disciples had it in their intention to compare the discordant accounts

of the women and reduce them to order; when, however, the resuscitated

Jesus himself appeared in the midst of them, they neglected this,

because they now no longer founded their faith on the assertions of the

women, but on the appearances which they had themselves witnessed: but

the more the information of the women fell into the background, the

less conceivable is it, how in the sequel each could so obstinately

cling to what this or that woman had chanced first to communicate to

him.

If then the plan of incorporation will not lead to the desired end,

[2075] we must try that of selection, and inquire whether we must not

adhere to one of the four accounts, as pre-eminently apostolic, and by

this rectify the others; in which inquiry here as elsewhere, from the

essential equality of the external evidence, only the internal

character of the separate narratives can decide.

From the number of those accounts concerning the first intelligence of

the resurrection of Jesus which have any claim to the rank of

autoptical testimonies, modern criticism has excluded that of the first

gospel; [2076] and we cannot, as in other instances, complain of this

disfavour as an injustice. For in many respects the narrative of the

first gospel here betrays itself to have been carried a step farther in

traditional development than that of the other gospels. First, that the

miraculous opening of the grave is seen by the women—if indeed Matthew

intends to say this—could scarcely, had it really been the case, have

been so entirely lost from remembrance as it is in the other

Evangelists, but might very well be formed gradually in tradition;

further, that the rolling away of the stone was effected by the angel,

evidently rests only on the combination of one who did not know any

better means of answering the question, how the great stone was removed

from the grave, and the guards taken out of the way, than to use for

both purposes the angel presented to him in the current narratives of

the appearance witnessed by the women; to which he added the earthquake

as a further embellishment of the scene. But besides this, there is in

the narrative of Matthew yet another trait, which has anything but an

historical aspect. After the angel has already announced the

resurrection of Jesus to the women, and charged them to deliver to the

disciples the message that they should go into Galilee, where they

would see the risen one: Jesus himself meets them and repeats the

message which they are to deliver to the disciples. This is a singular

superfluity. Jesus had nothing to add to the purport of the message

which the angel had given to the women; hence he could only wish to

confirm it and render it more authentic. But to the women it needed no

further confirmation, for they were already filled with great joy by

the tidings of the angel, and thus were believing; while for the

disciples even that confirmation did not suffice, for they remained

incredulous even to the account of those who assured them that they had

seen Jesus, until they had seen him themselves. Thus it appears that

two different narrations, as to the first news of the resurrection,

have here become entangled with each other; the one representing

angels, the other Jesus himself, as the medium by which the women were

informed of the event and sent with a message to the disciples:—the

latter evidently the later tradition.

The pre-eminence in originality denied to the narrative of Matthew, is

here as elsewhere awarded to that of John. Traits so characteristic,

says Lücke, as that on the visit to the grave the other disciple went

faster than Peter and came to the spot before him, attest the

authenticity of the gospel even to the most sceptical. But the matter

has yet another aspect. It has been already remarked, at an earlier

point of our inquiry, that this particular belongs to the effort, which

the fourth gospel exhibits in a peculiar manner, to place John above

Peter. [2077] We may now discuss the point with more particularity, by

comparing the account in Luke already mentioned of the visit of Peter

to the grave, with the account in the fourth gospel of the visit of the

two disciples. According to Luke (xxiv. 12), Peter runs to the grave:

according to John (xx. 3 ff.), Peter and the favourite disciple go

together, but so that the latter runs faster, and comes first to the

grave. In the third gospel, Peter stoops down, looks into the

sepulchre, and sees the linen clothes: in the fourth, John does this,

and sees the same. In the third gospel, nothing is said of an entering

into the grave: but the fourth makes Peter enter first, and look more

closely at the linen clothes, then John also, and the latter with the

result that he begins to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. [2078]

That in these two narratives we have one and the same incident, has

been above shown probable from their similarity even in the

expressions. Thus the only question is: which is the original

narrative, the one nearest to the fact? If that of John: then must his

name have been gradually lost out of the narrative in the course of

tradition, and the visit to the grave ascribed to Peter only; which,

since the importance of Peter threw all others into the shade, is

easily conceivable. We might rest contented with this conclusion,

regarding these two parallel narratives by themselves: but in connexion

with the whole suspicious position which the fourth gospel assigns to

John in relation to Peter, the contrary relation of the two narratives

must here again be held the more probable. As in the entrance into the

high priest’s palace, so in the visit to the grave of Jesus, only in

the fourth gospel is John given as a companion to Peter; as in the

former case it is he who gains an entrance for Peter, so in the latter

he runs before him and casts the first glance into the grave, a

circumstance which is repeatedly mentioned. That afterwards Peter is

the first to enter into the grave, is only an apparent advantage, which

is allowed him out of deference to the common idea of his position: for

after him John also enters, and with a result of which Peter could not

boast, namely, that he believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and thus

was the first who attained to that degree of faith. From this effort to

make John the first-born among the believers in the resurrection of

Jesus may also be explained the divergency, that according to the

narrative of the fourth gospel alone, Mary Magdalene hastens back to

the two disciples before she has yet seen an angel. For had she

beforehand witnessed an angelic appearance, which she would not any

more than the women in Matthew have mistrusted, she would have been the

first believer, and would have won the precedence of John in this

respect; but this is avoided by representing her as coming to the two

disciples immediately after perceiving the emptiness of the grave, and

under the disquietude excited in her by this circumstance. This

presupposition serves also to explain why the fourth gospel makes the

woman returning from the grave go, not to the disciples in general, but

only to Peter and John. As, namely, the intelligence which, according

to the original narrative, was brought to all the disciples,

occasioned, according to Luke, only Peter to go to the grave, and as

moreover, according to Mark (v. 7), the message of the women was

destined more especially for Peter: the idea might easily be formed,

that the news came to this disciple alone, with whom the object of the

fourth Evangelist would then require that he should associate John.

Only after the two disciples had come to the grave, and his John had

attained faith, could the author of the fourth gospel introduce the

appearances of the angel and of Jesus himself, which were said to have

been granted to the women. That instead of these collectively he names

only Mary Magdalene—although as has been earlier remarked, he xx. 2

presupposes at least a subsequent meeting between her and other

women—this might certainly, under other circumstances, be regarded as

the original representation, whence the synoptical one arose by a

process of generalization: but it might just as well be the case that

the other women, being less known, were eclipsed by Mary Magdalene. The

description of the scene between her and Jesus, with the

non-recognition of him at the first moment, etc., certainly does honour

to the ingenuity and pathos of the author; [2079] but here also there

is an unhistorical superfluity similar to that in Matthew. For here the

angels have not, as in the other Evangelists, to announce the

resurrection to Mary Magdalene, and to make a disclosure to her; but

they merely ask her, Why weepest thou? whereupon she complains to them

of the disappearance of the body of Jesus, but, without waiting for any

further explanation, turns round and sees Jesus standing. Thus as in

Matthew the appearance of Jesus, since it is not represented as the

principal and effective one, is a superfluous addition to that of the

angel: so here the angelic appearance is an idle, ostentatious

introduction to the appearance of Jesus.

If we turn to the third account, that of Mark, to ascertain whether he

may not perhaps be the nearest to the fact: we find it so incoherent,

and composed of materials so little capable of being fitted together,

that such a relation is not to be thought of. After it has been already

narrated that early in the morning of the day succeeding the Sabbath

the women came to the grave of Jesus, and were informed by an angel of

his resurrection, but out of fear said nothing to any one of the

appearance which they had seen (xvi. 1–8): at v. 9, as if nothing had

previously been said either of the resurrection or of the time at which

it happened, the narrator proceeds: Now when Jesus was risen early the

first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom

he had cast seven devils, ἀναστὰς δὲ πρωὶ πρώτῃ σαββάτων ἐφάνη πρῶτον

Μαρίᾳ τῇ Μαγδαληνῇ. This statement also does not suit the foregoing

narrative, because this is not formed on the supposition of an

appearance specially intended for Mary Magdalene: on the contrary, as

she is said to be informed by an angel of the resurrection of Jesus,

together with two other women, Jesus could not have appeared to her

beforehand; while afterwards, on her way to the city, she was in

company with the other women, when, according to Matthew, they were all

actually met by Jesus. Whether on this account we are to regard the end

of the gospel of Mark, from v. 9, as a later addition, [2080] is indeed

doubtful, from the want of decisive critical grounds, and still more

from the abruptness of the conclusion ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ, for they were

afraid, which the gospel would then present: but in any case we have

here a narrative which the author, without any clear idea of the state

of the fact and the succession of the events, hastily compiled out of

the heterogeneous elements of the current legend, which he knew not how

to manage.

In the narrative of Luke there would be no special difficulty: but it

has a suspicious element in common with the others, namely, the angelic

appearance, and moreover, in a twofold form. What had the angels to do

in this scene? Matthew tells us: to roll away the stone from the grave;

on which it has already been remarked by Celsus, that according to the

orthodox presupposition, the Son of God could find no such aid

necessary for this purpose: [2081] he might indeed find it suitable and

becoming. In Mark and Luke the angels appear more as having to impart

information and commissions to the women: but as, according to Matthew

and John, Jesus himself appeared immediately after, and repeated those

commissions, the delivery of them by angels was superfluous. Hence,

nothing remains but to say: the angels belonged to the embellishment of

the great scene, as celestial attendants who had to open to the Messiah

the door by which he meant to issue forth; as a guard of honour on the

spot from which the once dead had just departed with recovered life.

But here occurs the question: does this species of pomp exist in the

real court of God, or only in the childish conception formed of it by

antiquity?

Hence commentators have laboured in various ways to transform the

angels in the history of the resurrection into natural appearances.

Setting out from the account of the first gospel in which the angel is

said to have a form or countenance like lightning, ἰδέα ὡς ἀστραπὴ, and

to effect the rolling away of the stone and the prostration of the

guards, while an earthquake is connected with his appearance: it no

longer lay far out of the way to think of a flash of lightning, which

struck the stone with force sufficient to shatter it, and cast the

guards to the earth; or of an earthquake which, accompanied by flames

bursting out of the ground, produced the same effect; in which case the

flames and the overwhelming force of the phenomenon were taken by the

watching soldiers for an angel. [2082] But partly the circumstance that

the angel seated himself on the stone after it had been rolled away,

partly, and still more decidedly, the statement that he spoke to the

women, renders this hypothesis insufficient. Hence an effort has been

made to complete it by the supposition that the sublime thought, Jesus

is risen! which on the discovery that the grave was empty began to

arise in the women and gradually to subdue their first doubts, was

ascribed by them, after the oriental mode of thought and language, to

an angel. [2083] But how comes it that in all the gospels the angels

are represented as clothed in white, shining garments? Is that too an

oriental figure of speech? The oriental may indeed describe a good

thought which occurs to him as being whispered to him by an angel: but

to depict the clothing and aspect of this angel, passes the bounds of

the merely figurative even among orientals. In the description of the

first gospel the supposed lightning might be called to aid, in the

conjecture that the effect thereby produced on the senses of the women

was ascribed by them to an angel, which, with reference to that

lightning, they depicted as one clothed in shining garments. But,

according to the other Evangelists, the rolling away of the stone, ex

hypothesi by the lightning, was not seen by the women; on the contrary,

when they went or looked into the grave, the white forms appeared to

them in a perfectly tranquil position. According to this, it must have

been something within the grave which suggested to them the idea of

white-robed angels. Now in the grave, according to Luke and John, there

lay the white linen clothes in which the body of Jesus had been wrapt:

these, which were recognized simply as such by the more composed and

courageous men, might, it is said, by timid and excited women, in the

dark grave and by the deceptive morning twilight, be easily mistaken

for angels. [2084] But how should the women, who must have expected to

find in the grave a corpse enveloped in white, be prompted by the sight

of these clothes to a thought so strange, and which then lay so remote

from their anticipations, as that they might be an angel who would

announce to them the resurrection of their deceased master? It has been

thought in another quarter quite superfluous here to advance so many

ingenious conjectures as to what the angels may have been, since, among

the four narratives, two expressly tell us what they were: namely,

natural men, Mark calling his angel a young man, νεανίσκον, Luke his

two angels, two men, ἄνδρας δύο. [2085] Whom then are we to suppose

these men to have been? Here again the door is opened for the

supposition of secret colleagues of Jesus, who must have been unknown

even to the two disciples:—these men seen at the grave may have been

the same who met him in the so-called Transfiguration, perhaps Essenes,

white being worn by this sect,—or whatever else of the like conjectures

the antiquated pragmatism of a Bahrdt or Venturini has to offer. Or

will it rather be chosen to suppose a purely accidental meeting? or,

lastly, with Paulus, to leave the matter in an obscurity, from the

midst of which, so soon as it is endeavoured to clear it up by definite

thoughts, the two forms of the secret colleagues invariably present

themselves? A correct discernment will here also rather recognize the

forms of the Jewish popular conception, by which the primitive

Christian tradition held it necessary to glorify the resurrection of

its Messiah: a recognition, which at once solves in the most simple

manner the differences in the number and modes of appearance of those

celestial beings. [2086]

Herewith, however, it is at the same time acknowledged that we can

succeed no better with the plan of selection than with that of

incorporation; but must rather confess, that in all the evangelical

accounts of these first tidings of the resurrection, we have before us

nothing more than traditional reports. [2087]

§ 138.

APPEARANCES OF THE RISEN JESUS IN GALILEE AND IN JUDEA, INCLUDING THOSE

MENTIONED BY PAUL AND BY APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS.

The most important of all the differences in the history of the

resurrection turns upon the question, what locality did Jesus design to

be the chief theatre of his appearances after the resurrection? The two

first gospels make Jesus, before his death, when retiring to the Mount

of Olives, utter this promise to his disciples: After I am risen again

I will go before you into Galilee (Matt. xxvi. 32; Mark xiv. 28); the

same assurance is given to the women by the angels on the morning of

the resurrection, with the addition: there shall ye see him (Matt.

xxviii. 7; Mark xvi. 7); and in Matthew, besides all this, Jesus in his

own person commissions the women to say to the disciples: that they go

into Galilee, and there shall they see me (xxviii. 10). In Matthew the

journey of the disciples into Galilee, with the appearance of Jesus

which they there witnessed (the only one to the disciples recorded by

this Evangelist), is actually narrated in the sequel. Mark, after

describing the amazement into which the women were thrown by the

angelic appearance, breaks off in the enigmatical manner already

mentioned, and appends some appearances of Jesus, which,—as the first

happens immediately after the resurrection, and therefore necessarily

in Jerusalem, and no change of place is mentioned before the succeeding

ones, while the earlier direction to go into Galilee is lost sight

of,—must all be regarded as appearances in and around Jerusalem. John

knows nothing of a direction to the disciples to go into Galilee, and

makes Jesus show himself to the disciples on the evening of the day of

resurrection, and again eight days after, in Jerusalem; the concluding

chapter, however, which forms an appendix to his gospel, describes an

appearance by the Sea of Galilee. In Luke, on the other hand, not only

is there no trace of an appearance in Galilee, Jerusalem with its

environs being made the sole theatre of the appearances of Christ which

this gospel relates; but there is also put into the mouth of Jesus

when, on the evening after the resurrection, he appears to the

assembled disciples in Jerusalem, the injunction: tarry ye in the city

of Jerusalem (in the Acts i. 4, more definitely expressed by the

negative, that they should not depart from Jerusalem), until ye be

endued with power from on high (xxiv. 49). Here two questions

inevitably arise: 1st, how can Jesus have directed the disciples to

journey into Galilee, and yet at the same time have commanded them to

remain in Jerusalem until Pentecost? and 2ndly, how could he refer them

to a promised appearance in Galilee, when he had the intention of

showing himself to them that very day in and near Jerusalem?

The first contradiction which presents itself more immediately between

Matthew and Luke, has by no one been more pointedly exhibited than by

the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist. If, he writes, it be true, as Luke says,

that Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem on the day of his

resurrection, and commanded them to remain there, and not to depart

thence until Pentecost: then is it false that he commanded them within

the same period to journey into Galilee, that he might appear to them

there, and vice versâ. [2088] The harmonists indeed affected to regard

this objection as unimportant, and only remarked briefly, that the

injunction to remain in a city was not equivalent to an arrest, and did

not exclude walks and excursions in the neighbourhood; and that Jesus

merely forbade the removal of residence from Jerusalem, and the going

out into all the world to preach the gospel, before the given term

should arrive. [2089] But the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee is not

a mere walk, but the longest expedition which the Jew could make within

the limits of his own country; as little was it an excursion for the

apostles, but rather a return to their home: while what Jesus intended

to prohibit to the disciples in that injunction cannot have been the

going out into all the world to preach the gospel, since they would

have no impulse to do this before the outpouring of the Spirit; nor can

it have been the removal of residence from Jerusalem, since they were

there only as strangers visiting at the feast: rather Jesus must have

meant to deter them from that very journey which it was the most

natural for them to take, i.e. from the return to their native province

Galilee, after the expiration of the feast days. Besides this—and even

Michaelis confesses himself obliged to wonder here—if Luke does not

mean by that prohibition of Jesus to exclude the journey into Galilee,

why is it that he alludes to this by no single word? and in like

manner, if Matthew knew that his direction to go into Galilee was

consistent with the command to remain in the metropolis, why has he

omitted the latter, together with the appearances in Jerusalem? This is

certainly a plain proof that the accounts of the two Evangelists are

based on a different idea as to the theatre on which the risen Jesus

appeared.

In this exigency of having to reconcile two contradictory commands

given on the same day, the comparison with the Acts presented a welcome

help by indicating a distinction of the times. Here, namely, the

command of Jesus that the disciples should not leave Jerusalem is

placed in his last appearance, forty days after the resurrection, and

immediately before the ascension: at the close of the gospel of Luke it

is likewise in the last interview, terminating in the ascension, that

the above command is given. Now though from the summary representation

of the gospel taken by itself, it must be believed that all occurred on

the very day of the resurrection: we nevertheless see, it is said, from

the history of the Acts by the same author, that between v. 43 and 44

in the last chapter of his gospel we must interpose the forty days from

the resurrection to the ascension. Herewith, then, the apparent

contradiction between these two commands vanishes: for one who in the

first instance indeed enjoins a journey into Galilee, may very well

forty days later, after this journey has been made, and the parties are

once more in the metropolis, now forbid any further removal from

thence. [2090] But as the dread of admitting a contradiction between

different New Testament authors is no ground for departing from the

natural interpretation of their expressions: so neither can this be

justified by the apprehension that the same author may in different

writings contradict himself; since if the one were written somewhat

later than the other, the author may in the interim have been on many

points otherwise informed, than when he composed his first work. That

this was actually the case with Luke in relation to that part of the

life of Jesus which followed his resurrection, we shall have reason to

be convinced when we come to the history of the ascension: and this

conclusion removes all ground for interposing nearly five weeks between

the ἔφαγεν, v. 43, and εἶπε δὲ, v. 44, in defiance of their obviously

immediate connexion; at the same time, however, it does away with the

possibility of reconciling the opposite commands of Jesus in Matthew

and Luke by a distinction of times.

Meanwhile, even admitting that this contradiction might be in some way

or other removed, still, even without that express command which Luke

mentions, the mere facts as narrated by him and his predecessor and

successor, remain irreconcilable with the injunction which Jesus gives

to the disciples in Matthew. For, asks the Fragmentist, if the

disciples collectively twice saw him, spoke with him, touched him, and

ate with him, in Jerusalem; how can it be that they must have had to

take the long journey into Galilee in order to see him? [2091] The

harmonists, it is true, boldly reply: when Jesus causes his disciples

to be told that they will see him in Galilee, it is by no means said

that they will see him nowhere else, still less that they will not see

him in Jerusalem. [2092] But, the Fragmentist might rejoin, after his

manner: as little as one who says to me, go to Rome, there you shall

see the Pope, can mean that the Pope will indeed first come through my

present place of residence, so as to be seen by me here, but afterwards

I must yet go to Rome, in order to see him again there: so little would

the angel in Matthew and Mark, if he had had any anticipation of the

appearance in Jerusalem on the very same day, have said to the

disciples: go into Galilee, there will Jesus show himself to you; but

rather: be comforted, you shall yet see him here in Jerusalem before

evening. Wherefore the reference to the more remote event, when there

was one of the same kind close at hand? wherefore an appointment by

means of the women, for the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, if the

latter foresaw that he should on the same day personally speak with the

disciples? With reason does the latest criticism insist on what Lessing

had previously urged; [2093] namely, that no rational person would make

an appointment with his friends through a third party for a joyful

reunion at a distant place, if he were certain of seeing them

repeatedly on the same day in their present locality. [2094] If thus

the angel and Jesus himself, when they in the morning by means of the

women directed the disciples to go into Galilee, cannot yet have known

that he would show himself to them on the evening of the same day in

and near Jerusalem: he must in the morning have still held the

intention of going immediately into Galilee, but in the course of the

day have embraced another purpose. According to Paulus, [2095] an

indication of such an original intention is found in Luke, in the

travelling of Jesus towards Emmaus, which lay in the direction of

Galilee; while the reason for the alteration of plan is supposed by the

same expositor, with whom in this instance Olshausen agrees, [2096] to

have been the belief of the disciples, as more particularly manifested

to Jesus on occasion of the journey to Emmaus. How so erroneous a

calculation on the part of Jesus can consist with the orthodox view of

his person, is Olshausen’s care; but even regarding him in a purely

human character, there appears no sufficient reason for such a change

of mind. Especially after Jesus had been recognised by the two

disciples going to Emmaus, he might be certain that the testimony of

the men would so accredit the assertion of the women, as to lead the

disciples with at least a glimmering ray of faith and hope into

Galilee. But in general, if a change of mind and a diversity of plan in

Jesus before and after that change, really existed: why does no one

Evangelist take any notice of such a retractation? Why does Luke speak

as if he knew nothing of the original plan; Matthew, as if he knew

nothing of a subsequent alteration; John, as if the principal theatre

of the appearances of the risen Jesus had been Jerusalem, and he had

only by way of supplement at length showed himself in Galilee? Lastly,

why does Mark speak so as to make it evident that, having gathered the

original direction to go into Galilee from Matthew, and the succeeding

appearances in Jerusalem and its environs from Luke or elsewhere, he

was unable, nor did he even make the attempt, in any way to reconcile

them; but placed them together as he found them, rough hewn and

contradictory.

According to this we must agree with the latest criticism of the gospel

of Matthew, in acknowledging the contradiction between it and the rest

in relation to the locality of the appearances of Jesus after the

resurrection: but, it must be asked, can we also approve the verdict of

this criticism when it at once renounces the representation of the

first gospel in favour of that of the other Evangelists. [2097] If,

setting aside all presuppositions as to the apostolic origin of this or

that gospel, we put the question: which of the two divergent accounts

is the best adapted to be regarded as a traditional modification and

development of the other? we can here refer, not merely to the general

nature of the accounts, but also to a single point at which the two

touch each other in a characteristic manner. This is the address of the

angel to the women, in which according to all the synoptists Galilee is

mentioned, but in a different way. In Matthew the angel, as has been

already noticed, says of Jesus: he goeth before you into Galilee,—lo, I

have told you (xxviii. 7), προάγει ὑμᾶς ἐις τὴν Γαλιλαίαν—ἰδοὺ εἶπον

ὑμῖν. In Mark he says the same, except that instead of the latter

addition, by which in Matthew the angel seeks to impress his own words

on the women, he has the expression: as he said unto you, καθὼς εἶπεν

ὑμῖν, with which he refers to the earlier prediction of Jesus

concerning this circumstance. If we first compare these two

representations: the confirmatory I have told you, εἶπον ὑμῖν, might

easily appear superfluous and nugatory; while on the other hand the

reference to the earlier prediction of Jesus by he said, εἶπεν, might

seem more appropriate, and on this the conjecture might be founded that

perhaps Mark has here the correct and original phrase, Matthew a

variation not unaccompanied by a misunderstanding. [2098] But if we

include the account of Luke in the comparison, we find here, as in

Mark, the words: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in

Galilee, μνήσθητε, ὡς ἐλάλησεν ὑμῖν ἔτι ὢν ἐν τῇ Γαλιλαίᾳ, a reference

to an earlier prediction of Jesus, not however referring to Galilee,

but delivered in Galilee. Here the question occurs: is it more probable

that Galilee, from being the designation of the locality in which the

prophecy of the resurrection was uttered, should at a later period be

erroneously converted into a designation of the locality where the

risen one would appear; or the contrary? In order to decide this, we

must ascertain in which of the two positions the mention of Galilee is

the more intrinsically suited to the context. Now that on the

announcement of the resurrection it was an important point whether and

where the risen Jesus was to be seen, is self-evident; it was of less

moment, in referring to an earlier prediction, to specify where this

prediction was uttered. Hence from this comparison of the passages it

might already be held more probable that it was originally said, the

angels directed the disciples to go into Galilee, there to see the

risen one (Matt.); but afterwards, when the narratives of the

appearances of Jesus in Judea had gradually supplanted those in

Galilee, a different turn was given to the mention of Galilee in the

address of the angel, so as to make it imply that already in Galilee

Jesus had predicted his resurrection (Luke); whereupon Mark appears to

have taken a middle course, since he with Luke refers the εἶπον

(changed into εἶπεν) to Jesus, but with Matthew retains Galilee as the

theatre, not of the earlier prediction of Jesus, but of the coming

appearance.

If we next take into consideration the general character of the two

narratives and the nature of the case, there exist the same objections

to the supposition that Jesus after his resurrection appeared several

times to his disciples in and near Jerusalem, but that the remembrance

of this fact was lost, and the same arguments in favour of the opposite

supposition, as we have respectively applied to the analogous

alternatives in relation to the various journeys to the feasts and

Judæan residences of Jesus. [2099] That the appearances of the risen

Jesus in Jerusalem should undesignedly, that is, by a total

obliteration of them from the minds of individuals, have sunk into

oblivion in Galilee, where according to this presupposition the

tradition of Matthew was formed, is difficult to conceive, both from

the pre-eminent importance of these appearances, which, as for example

those before the assembled eleven and before Thomas, involved the

surest attestations of the reality of his resurrection, and also from

the organizing influence of the community in Jerusalem; while that the

Judæan appearances of Jesus were indeed known in Galilee, but

intentionally suppressed by the author of the first gospel, in order to

preserve the honour for his province alone, would presuppose an

exclusivism, an opposition of the Galilean Christians to the church at

Jerusalem, of which we have not the slightest historical trace. The

other contrary possibility, that perhaps originally only Galilean

appearances of the risen Jesus were known, but that tradition gradually

added appearances in Judea and Jerusalem, and that at length these

completely supplanted the former, may on many grounds be heightened

into a probability. First, as respects the time, the tidings of the

resurrection of Jesus were the more striking, the more immediately his

appearances followed on his burial and resurrection: if however he

first appeared in Galilee, such an immediate sequence of the events

could not exist; further, it was a natural idea that the resurrection

of Jesus must have been attested by appearances in the place where he

died; lastly, the objection that Jesus after his pretended resurrection

only appeared to his own friends, and in a corner of Galilee, was in

some degree repelled when it could be alleged that on the contrary, he

walked as one arisen from the dead in the metropolis, in the midst of

his furious enemies, though indeed he was neither to be taken nor seen

by them. But when once several appearances of Jesus were laid in Judea

and Jerusalem, the appearances in Galilee lost their importance, and

might thenceforth either be appended in a subordinate position, as in

the fourth gospel, or even be entirely overlooked, as in the third.

This result, drawn from the possible mode of legendary formation, not

being opposed, as in the inquiry concerning the theatre of the ministry

of the living Jesus, by a contrary one drawn from the circumstances and

designs of Jesus: we may, in contradiction to the criticism of the day,

decide in favour of the first gospel, whose account of the appearance

of the risen Jesus recommends itself as the more simple and free from

difficulty. [2100]

As regards the appearances of the risen Jesus taken singly, the first

gospel has two: one on the morning of the resurrection to the women

(xxviii. 9 f.), and one, the time of which is undetermined, before the

disciples in Galilee (xxviii. 16 f.). Mark, in what is indeed a merely

summary statement, enumerates three: the first, to Mary Magdalene on

the morning of the resurrection (xvi. 9 f.); a second, to two disciples

going into the country (xvi. 12); and a third, to the eleven as they

sat at meat, doubtless in Jerusalem (xvi. 14). Luke narrates only two

appearances: that before the disciples going to Emmaus on the day of

the resurrection (xxiv. 13 ff.), and the last, before the eleven and

other disciples in Jerusalem, according to xxiv. 36 ff., on the evening

of the same day, according to the Acts i. 4 ff. forty days later; but

when the travellers to Emmaus, on rejoining the apostles, are greeted

by them, before Jesus has appeared in the midst of them, with the

information: the Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon

(xxiv. 34): here a third appearance is presupposed, which was granted

to Peter alone. John has four such appearances: the first, to Mary

Magdalene at the grave (xx. 14 ff.); the second to the disciples when

the doors were shut (xx. 19 ff.); the third, likewise in Jerusalem,

eight days later, when Thomas was convinced (xx. 26 ff.); the fourth,

of which the time is unspecified, at the Galilean sea (xxi.). But here

we have also to take into consideration a statement of the Apostle

Paul, who 1 Cor. xv. 5 ff., if we deduct the appearance of Christ

granted to himself, enumerates five appearances after the resurrection,

without however giving any precise description of them: one to Cephas;

one to the twelve; one before more than five hundred brethren at once;

one to James; and lastly, one before all the apostles.

Now how shall we make an orderly arrangement of these various

appearances? The right of priority is, in John, and still more

expressly in Mark, claimed for that to Mary Magdalene. The second must

have been the meeting of Jesus with the women returning from the grave,

in Matthew; but as Mary Magdalene was likewise among these, and there

is no indication that she had previously seen Jesus, these two

appearances cannot be regarded as distinct, but rather as one under two

different garbs. Paul, who in the above named passage speaks as if he

meant to enumerate all the appearances of the resuscitated Christ, of

which he knew, omits the one in question; but it may perhaps be said in

explanation of this, that he did not choose to adduce the testimony of

women. As the order in which he enumerates his Christophanies, to judge

from the succession of εἶτα and ἔπειτα and the conclusion with ἔσχατον,

appears to be the order of time: [2101] according to him the appearance

before Cephas was the first that happened before a man. This would

agree well with the representation of Luke, in which the journeyers to

Emmaus, on rejoining the disciples in Jerusalem, are met by them with

the information that Jesus is really arisen and has appeared to Simon,

which might possibly be the case before his interview with those two

disciples. As the next appearance, however, according to Luke, we must

number that last named, which Paul would not mention, perhaps because

he chose to adduce only those which were seen by apostles, and from

among the rest only those which happened before great masses of

witnesses, or more probably, because it was unknown to him. Mark xvi.

12 f. evidently refers to the same appearance; the contradiction, that

while in Luke the assembled disciples meet those coming from Emmaus

with the believing exclamation: the Lord is risen, etc., in Mark the

disciples are said to have remained incredulous even to the account of

those two witnesses, probably proceeds from nothing more than an

exaggeration of Mark, who will not lose his hold of the contrast

between the most convincing appearances of Jesus and the obstinate

unbelief of the disciples. The appearance on the way to Emmaus is in

Luke immediately followed by that in the assembly of the eleven and

others. This is generally held to be identical with the appearance

before the twelve mentioned by Paul, and with that which John narrates

when Jesus on the evening after the resurrection entered while the

doors were closed among the disciples, out of whose number, however,

Thomas was wanting. It is not fair to urge in opposition to this

identification the eleven of Luke, as at variance with the statement of

John that only ten apostles were present, any more than the twelve of

Paul, from which number Judas at least must be deducted; moreover the

similar manner in which the two Evangelists describe the entrance of

Jesus by ἔστη ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν and ἔστη εἰς τὸ μέσον, and the greeting

cited in both instances: εἰρήνη ὑμῖν, appear to indicate the identity

of the two appearances; nevertheless, if we consider that the handling

of the body of Jesus, which in John first happens eight days later, and

the eating of the broiled fish, which John assigns to the still later

appearance in Galilee, are connected by Luke with that scene in

Jerusalem on the day of the resurrection: it is evident that either the

third Evangelist has here compressed several incidents into one, or the

fourth has divided one into several—whichever alternative may be

chosen. This appearance before the apostles in Jerusalem however, as

has been above remarked, according to Matthew could not have happened,

since this Evangelist makes the eleven journey to Galilee in order to

see Jesus. Mark, and Luke in his gospel, annex the ascension to this

appearance, and thus exclude all subsequent ones. As the next

appearance, the apostle Paul has that before five hundred brethren,

which is generally regarded as the same with the one which Matthew

places on a mountain in Galilee: [2102] but at this only the eleven are

stated to have been present, and moreover the discourse of Jesus on the

occasion, consisting principally of official instructions, appears more

suited to this narrow circle. Paul next adduces an appearance to James,

of which there is also an apocryphal account, in the Hebrew gospel of

Jerome, according to which however it must have been the first of all.

[2103] Here there would be space for that appearance in which,

according to the fourth gospel eight days after the resurrection of

Jesus, Thomas was convinced; wherewith Paul would closely agree, if his

expression, to all the apostles, τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν (v. 7), which he

uses in relation to this appearance, were really to be understood of a

full assembly of the eleven in distinction from the earlier one, when

Thomas was not present: which however, as Paul, according to the above

presupposition, had described this also as an appearance before the

twelve, is impossible; on the contrary, the apostle intends as well by

the δώδεκα, twelve, as by οἱ ἀπόστολοι πάντες, all the apostles, the

collective body of apostles (whose proper number was then indeed

incomplete by one man), in opposition to the individuals (Cephas and

James) of whom in each case he had just before spoken, as having

witnessed a Christophany. If however we were nevertheless to regard the

fifth appearance of Jesus according to Paul as identical with the third

in John: it would only be the more clearly evident that the fourth of

Paul, before the five hundred brethren, cannot have been the one in

Galilee recorded by Matthew. For as, in John, the third took place in

Jerusalem, the fourth in Galilee: Jesus and the apostles must in that

case have gone into Galilee after the first appearances in Jerusalem,

and have met on the mountain; then have returned to Jerusalem where

Jesus showed himself to Thomas; then again have proceeded into Galilee

where the appearance by the sea occurred; and lastly, have once more

returned to Jerusalem for the ascension. In order to avoid this useless

journeying backwards and forwards, and yet to be able to combine those

two appearances, Olshausen lays the appearance before Thomas in

Galilee: an inadmissible violence, since not only is there no mention

of a change of place between this and the foregoing, which is by

implication represented as happening in Jerusalem, but the place of

assembly is in both instances described in the same manner; nay the

addition, the doors being shut, will not allow the supposition of any

other locality than Jerusalem, because in Galilee, where there was less

excitement against Jesus from the enmity of the priesthood, there

cannot be supposed to have been the same reason for that precaution, in

the fear of the Jews. Thus, first where the Judean appearances close

with that happening eight days after the resurrection, we should obtain

room to insert the Galilean appearances of Matthew and John. But these

have the peculiar position, that each claims to be the first, and that

of Matthew at the same time the last. [2104] By the tenor of his whole

narrative, and expressly by adding, after the statement that the

disciples went to a mountain in Galilee, the words: where Jesus had

appointed them, οὗ ἐτάξατο αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰ., Matthew marks this appearance

as the one to which Jesus had referred on the morning of the

resurrection, first by the angel, and then in his own person; but no

one concerts a second meeting in a particular place, leaving the first

undetermined: consequently, as an unforeseen earlier meeting is

incompatible with the evangelical idea of Jesus, [2105] that meeting,

since it was the concerted one, was also the first in Galilee. If thus

the appearance at the sea of Tiberias in John, cannot possibly be

placed before that on the mountain in Matthew: so the latter will just

as little suffer the other to follow it, since it is a formal

leave-taking of Jesus from his disciples. Moreover, it would be more

than ever difficult to understand how the appearance in John could be

made out, in accordance with the Evangelist’s own statement, to be the

third φανέρωσις of the risen Christ before his disciples (xxi. 14), if

that of the first gospel must also be supposed to precede it.

Meanwhile, even allowing the priority to the former, this numerical

notice of John remains sufficiently perplexing. We might, it is true,

deduct the appearances before the women, because, though John himself

narrates that to Mary Magdalene, he does not take it into his account;

but if we number that to Cephas as the first, and that on the way to

Emmaus as the second: then this Galilean appearance, as the third,

would fall between the above and that before the eleven on the evening

of the resurrection, which would presuppose a rapidity of locomotion

totally impossible; nay, if that appearance before the assembled eleven

is the same with the one at which, according to John, Thomas was

absent, the third appearance of John would fall before his first.

Perhaps, however, when we consider the expression: showed himself to

his disciples, ἐφανερώθη τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὑτοῦ, we ought to understand

that John only numbers such appearances as happened before several

disciples at once, so that those before Peter and James should be

deducted. In that case, we must number as the first, the appearance to

the two disciples going to Emmaus; as the second, that before the

assembled eleven on the evening of the resurrection: and thus in the

eight days between this and the one before Thomas, the journey into

Galilee would fall somewhat more conveniently,—but also the third

appearance of John would fall before his second. Perhaps, then, the

author of the fourth gospel held the two disciples whom Jesus met on

the way to Emmaus too small a number, to entitle this Christophany to

rank as a φανεροῦσθαι τοῖς μαθηταῖς. On this supposition the entrance

of Jesus among the assembled disciples in the evening would be the

first appearance; hereupon the five hundred brethren to whom Jesus

showed himself at once would surely be numerous enough to be taken into

the reckoning: so that the Galilean appearance of John, that is, his

third, must be inserted after this, but then it would still fall before

that to Thomas and all the apostles, which John enumerates as the

second. Perhaps, however, the appearance of Jesus before the five

hundred is to be placed later, so that after that entrance of Jesus

among the assembled disciples would first follow the scene with Thomas,

after this the appearance at the sea of Galilee, and only then the

sight of Jesus granted to the five hundred. But if the appearance

before Thomas is to be reckoned the same with the fifth in Paul’s

enumeration, this apostle must have reversed the order of his two last

appearances, a transposition for which there was no reason: on the

contrary, it would have been more natural to place last the appearance

before the five hundred brethren, as the most important. Thus nothing

remains but to say: John understood under the word μαθηταῖς merely a

greater or a smaller assembly of the apostles; but among the five

hundred there was no apostle; hence he omitted these also, and thus

correctly numbered the appearance at the sea of Tiberias as the third:

if indeed this could have happened before the one on the mountain in

Galilee, which, we have seen, to be inconceivable. The above expedients

resorted to by way of accommodation are in part ridiculous enough: but

Kern has lately surpassed them all by a suggestion which he advances

with great confidence, namely, that John here intends to number, not

the appearances, but the days on which appearances took place, so that

τοῦτο ἤδη τρίτον ἐφανερώθη ὁ Ἰ. τοῖς μαθηταῖς, this is now the third

time that Jesus showed himself to the disciples, means: now had Jesus

already appeared to his disciples on three separate days: namely, four

times on the day of the resurrection; then once eight days after; and

now again some days later. [2106] Renouncing such expedients, nothing

remains but to acknowledge that the fourth Evangelist numbers only

those appearances of Jesus to his disciples, which he had himself

narrated; and the reason of this can scarcely have been that the rest,

from some cause or other, appeared to him less important, but rather

that he knew nothing of them. [2107] And again, Matthew with his last

Galilean appearance, can have known nothing of the two in Jerusalem

recorded by John; for if in the first of these ten apostles had been

convinced of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, and in the

second Thomas also: it could not have been that at that later

appearance on the mountain in Galilee some of the eleven (for only

these are represented by Matthew as going thither) still doubted (οἱ δὲ

ἐδίστασαν, v. 17). Lastly, if Jesus here delivered to his disciples the

final command to go into all the world teaching and baptizing, and gave

them the promise to be with them until the end of the existing age,

which is manifestly the tone of one who is taking leave: he cannot

subsequently, as is narrated in the introduction to the Acts, have

communicated to them his last commands and taken leave of them at

Jerusalem. According to the conclusion of the gospel of Luke, this

farewell departure on the contrary occurs much earlier than can be

supposed in accordance with Matthew; and in the close of the gospel of

Mark, where Jesus is represented as parting from his disciples in

Jerusalem on the very day of his resurrection, partly the same words

are put into his mouth as, according to Matthew, are spoken in Galilee,

and in any case later than on the day of the resurrection. The fact,

that the two books of the same author, Luke, diverge so widely from

each other in relation to the time during which Jesus appeared to his

disciples after his resurrection, that one determines this time to have

been a single day, the other, forty days, cannot be taken into more

particular consideration until we have reached a farther point of our

inquiry.

Thus the various evangelical writers only agree as to a few of the

appearances of Jesus after his resurrection; the designation of the

locality in one excludes the appearances narrated by the rest; the

determination of time in another leaves no space for the narratives of

his fellow Evangelists; the enumeration of a third is given without any

regard to the events reported by his predecessors; lastly, among

several appearances recounted by various narrators, each claims to be

the last, and yet has nothing in common with the others. Hence nothing

but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that no one of the

narrators knew and presupposed what another records; that each again

had heard a different account of the matter; and that consequently at

an early period, there were current only uncertain and very varied

reports concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus. [2108]

This conclusion, however, does not shake the passage in the first

Epistle to the Corinthians which, (it being undoubtedly genuine,) was

written about the year 59 after Christ, consequently not 30 years after

his resurrection. On this authority we must believe that many members

of the primitive church who were yet living at the time when this

epistle was written, especially the apostles, were convinced that they

had witnessed appearances of the risen Christ. Whether this involves

the admission that some objective reality lay at the foundation of

these appearances, will hereafter become the subject of inquiry;

concerning the present point, the divergencies of the Evangelists,

especially in relation to the locality, the passage of Paul offers

nothing decisive, since he has given no particular description of any

of those appearances.

§ 139.

QUALITY OF THE BODY AND LIFE OF JESUS AFTER THE RESURRECTION.

But how are we to represent to ourselves this continuation of the life

of Jesus after the resurrection, and especially the nature of his body

in this period? In order to answer this question we must once more cast

a glance over the separate narratives of his appearances when risen.

According to Matthew, Jesus on the morning of the resurrection meets

(ἀπήντησεν) the women as they are hastening back from the grave; they

recognize him, embrace his feet in sign of veneration, and he speaks to

them. At the second interview on the Galilean mountain the disciples

see him (ἰδόντες), but some still doubt, and here also Jesus speaks to

them. Of the manner in which he came and went, we have here no precise

information.