BOOK V Christ, expect His Body to be removed, or did they expect-perhaps in their sorrow even think of His word: 'I rise again'? But what on that holy Sabbath, when the Sanhedrists were thinking of how to make sure of the Dead Christ, were the thoughts of Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus, of Peter and John, of the other disciples, and especially of the loving women who only waited for the first streak of Easter-light to do their last service of love? What were their thoughts of God-what of Christ-what of the Words He had spoken, the Deeds He had wrought, the salvation He had come to bring, and the Kingdom of Heaven which He was to open to all believers? Behind Him had closed the gates of Hades; but upon them rather than upon Him had fallen the shadows of death. Yet they still loved Him—and stronger than death was love. THE MIRACLE OF THE RESURRECTION. 619 CHAPTER XVI. ON THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD. THE history of the Life of Christ upon earth closes with a Miracle as great as that of its inception. It may be said that the one casts light upon the other. If He was what the Gospels represent Him, He must have been born of a pure Virgin, without sin, and He must have risen from the Dead. If the story of His Birth be true, we can believe that of His Resurrection; if that of His Resurrection be true, we can believe that of His Birth. In the nature of things, the latter was incapable of strict historical proof; and, in the nature of things, His Resurrection demanded and was capable of the fullest historical evidence. If such exists, the keystone is given to the arch; the miraculous Birth becomes almost a necessary postulate, and Jesus is the Christ in the full sense of the Gospels. And yet we mark, as another parallel point between the account of the miraculous Birth and that of the Resurrection, the utter absence of details as regards these events themselves. If this circumstance may be taken as indirect evidence that they were not legendary, it also imposes on us the duty of observing the reverent silence so well-befitting the case, and not intruding beyond the path which the Evangelic narrative has opened to us. That path is sufficiently narrow, and in some respects difficult; not, indeed, as to the great event itself, nor as to its leading features, but as to the more minute details. And here, again, our difficulties arise, not so much from any actual disagreement, as from the absence of actual identity. Much of this is owing to the great compression in the various narratives, due partly to the character of the event narrated, partly to the incomplete information possessed by the narrators-of whom only one was strictly an eyewitness, but chiefly to this, that to the different narrators the central point of interest lay in one or the other aspect of the circumstances connected with the Resurrection. Not only St. Matthew,' but also St. Luke, so So Canon Westcott CHAP. BOOK a Acts i. 3 compresses the narrative that the distinction of points of time' is almost effaced. St. Luke seems to crowd into the Easter Evening what himself tells us occupied forty days. His is, so to speak, the pre-eminently Jerusalem account of the evidence of the Resurrection; that of St. Matthew the pre-eminently Galilean account of it. Yet each implies and corroborates the facts of the other. In general we ought to remember, that the Evangelists, and afterwards St. Paul, are not so much concerned to narrate the whole history of the Resurrection as to furnish the evidence for it. And here what is distinctive in each is also characteristic of his special view-point. St. Matthew describes the impression of the full evidence of that Easter morning on friend and foe, and then hurries us from the Jerusalem stained with Christ's Blood back to the sweet Lake and the blessed Mount where first He spake. It is, as if he longed to realise the Risen Christ in the scenes where he had learned to know Him. St. Mark, who is much more brief, gives not only a mere summary, but, if one might use the expression, tells it as from the bosom of the Acts xii. 12 Jerusalem family, from the house of his mother Mary. St. Luke seems to have made most full inquiry as to all the facts of the Resurrection, and his narrative might almost be inscribed: Easter Day in Jerusalem.' St. John paints such scenes-during the whole forty days, whether in Jerusalem or Galilee-as were most significant and teachful of this threefold lesson of his Gospel: that Jesus was the Christ, that He was the Son of God, and that, believing, we have life in His Name. Lastly, St. Paul-as one born out of due time-produces the testimony of the principal witnesses to the fact, in a kind of ascending climax. And this the more effectively, that he is evidently aware of the difficulties and the import of the question, and has taken pains to make himself acquainted with all the facts of the case. c 1 Cor. xv. 4-8 The reader who is desirous of further studying this point is referred to the admirable analysis by Canon Westcott in his notes prefatory to St. John xx. At the same time I must respectfully express dissent from his arrangement of some of the events connected with the Resurrection (u. s., p. 288 a). 2 I may here state that I accept the genuineness of the concluding portion of St. Mark (xvi. 9-20). If, on internal grounds, it must be admitted that it reads like a postscript; on the other hand, without it the section would read like a mutilated document. This is not the place to discuss the grounds on which I have accepted the genuineness 6 of these verses. The reader may here be referred to Canon Cook's Revised Version of the first three Gospels,' pp. 120125, but especially to the masterly and exhaustive work by Dean Burgon on The last twelve verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark.' At the same time I would venture to say, that Dean Burgon has, in my opinion, not attached sufficient importance to the adverse impression made by the verses in question on the ground of internal evidence (see his chapter on the subject, pp. 136–190). It must be confessed, that, whichever view we may ultimately adopt, the subject is beset with considerable difficulties. THE EXPECTATION OF THE DISCIPLES. The question is of such importance, alike in itself and as regards this whole history, that a discussion, however brief and even imperfect, preliminary to the consideration of the Evangelic narrations, seems necessary. 621 CHAP. XVI What thoughts concerning the Dead Christ filled the minds of Joseph of Arimathæa, of Nicodemus, and of the other disciples of Jesus, as well as of the Apostles and of the pious women? They believed Him to be dead, and they did not expect Him to rise again. from the dead—at least, in our accepted sense of it. Of this there is abundant evidence from the moment of His Death, in the burialspices brought by Nicodemus, in those prepared by the women (both of which were intended as against corruption), in the sorrow of the women at the empty tomb, in their supposition that the Body had been removed, in the perplexity and bearing of the Apostles, in the doubts of so many, and indeed in the express statement: For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.' And the notice in St. Matthew's Gospel, that the Sanhe- St. John drists had taken precautions against His Body being stolen, so as to give the appearance of fulfilment to His prediction that He would xxvii. 62-66 rise again after three days 2-that, therefore, they knew of such a prediction, and took it in the literal sense-would give only more emphasis to the opposite bearing of the disciples and their manifest non-expectancy of a literal Resurrection. What the disciples expected, perhaps wished, was not Christ's return in glorified corporeity, but His Second Coming in glory into His Kingdom. a b But if they regarded Him as really dead and not to rise again in the literal sense, this had evidently no practical effect, not only on their former feelings towards Him, but even on their faith in Him as the promised Messiah.3 This appears from the conduct of Joseph and Nicodemus, from the language of the women, and from the whole bearing of the Apostles and disciples. All this must have been very different, if they had regarded the Death of Christ, even on the Cross, as having given the lie to His Messianic Claims. On the contrary, the impression left on our minds is, that, although they a XX. 9 b St.Matt. OOK V a St. Mark xvi. 10 deeply grieved over the loss of their Master, and the seeming triumph of His foes, yet His Death came to them not unexpectedly, but rather as of internal necessity and as the fulfilment of His often repeated prediction. Nor can we wonder at this, since He had, ever since the Transfiguration, laboured, against all their resistance and reluctance, to impress on them the fact of His Betrayal and Death. He had, indeed-although by no means so frequently or clearly—also referred to His Resurrection. But of this they might, according to their Jewish ideas, form a very different conception from that of a literal Resurrection of that Crucified Body in a glorified state, and yet capable of such terrestrial intercourse as the Risen Christ held with them. And if it be objected that, in such case, Christ must have clearly taught them all this, it is sufficient to answer, that there was no need for such clear teaching on the point at that time; that the event itself would soon and best teach them; that it would have been impossible really to teach it, except by the event; and that any attempt at it would have involved a far fuller communication on this mysterious subject than, to judge from what is told us in Scripture, it was the purpose of Christ to impart in our present state of faith and expectancy. Accordingly, from their point of view, the prediction of Christ might have referred to the continuance of His Work, to His Vindication, or to some apparition of Him, whether from heaven or on earth-such as that of the saints in Jerusalem after the Resurrection, or that of Elijah in Jewish belief-but especially to His return in glory; certainly, not to the Resurrection as it actually took place. The fact itself would be quite foreign to Jewish ideas, which embraced the continuance of the soul after death and the final resurrection of the body, but not a state of spiritual corporeity, far less, under conditions such as those described in the Gospels.' Elijah, who is so constantly introduced in Jewish tradition, is never represented as sharing in meals or offering his body for touch; nay, the Angels who visited Abraham are represented as only making show of, not really, eating. Clearly, the Apostles had not learned nected with the history of the Resurrection. But even if a belief in His Resurrection had been a requirement in their faith, as Keim rightly remarks, such realistic demonstration of it would not have been looked for. Herod Antipas did not search the tomb of the Baptist when he believed him risen from the dead-how much more should the disciples of Christ have been satisfied with evidence far less realistic and frequent than that described in the Gospels. This consideration shows that there was no motive for inventing the details con 2 So Josephus (Ant. xi. 1, 2), and, to show that this was not a rationalistic view, Baba Mez. 86 b, Ber. R. 48. Later tradition (Tos. B. Mez.; Bemidb. R. 10). indeed, seems to admit the literal eating, but as a sort of miracle and in reward of Abraham's piety, Onkelos simply renders literally, but the Targum Pseudo-Jon. seems purposely to leave the point undetermined. |