Part 11 (1/2)

IX

The Resurrection

209 Christianity as a historic religious movement starts from the resurrection of Jesus fros of Paul The first distinctively Christian feature in his address at Athens is his statee of”raised him from the dead” (Acts xvii 31), and for him the resurrection was the demonstration of the divinity of Christ (Rom i 4), and the confirmation of the Christian hope (I Cor xv)

With him the prime qualification for an apostle was that he should have seen the risen Lord (I Cor ix 1) The early preaching as recorded in Acts shows the same feature, for after repeated testimony to the fact that God had raised up Jesus, Peter summed up his address with the declaration, ”Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified” (Acts ii 36) In fact the buoyancy of hope and confidence of faith which gave to the despised followers of the Nazarene their strength resulted directly froloom that settled over the disciples when Jesus died

210 It can but seee to us that after Jesus had so often foretold his death and the resurrection which should follow it, his disciples were thrown into despair by the cross Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus when they es which Jesus gave to the nearer circle of his followers, but it is difficult to believe that the women who prepared their spices to anoint his body (Mark xvi 1) had heard nothing of these predictions, and it is certain that the apostles who received with incredulity the first news of the resurrection were the lorious victory

The disciples do not see theain from the dead should mean” (Mark ix 10, compare Luke xviii 34) until Jesus himself explained it by his return to them after his crucifixion It was formerly common to conclude from the scepticism of the disciples that Jesus could not have told theain the third day It is noidely conceded, however, that if he foresaw and foretold his death, he surely coupled with it a promise of resurrection, otherwise he must have surrendered his own conviction that he was Messiah; for a Messiah taken and held captive by death was apparently as foreign to Jesus' thought as it was unthinkable for the eneration The inability of the disciples to adjust their Messianic ideas to the death of their Master was not removed by the rebuke Jesus administered to Peter at Caesarea Philippi; their objections were only silenced It would seem that even when they saw his death to be inevitable, they were simply dumb with hope that in some way he would come off victor; the cross and the tomb crushed out that hope--at least from most of them If one disciple, his closest friend, recalled and believed his words when he saw the empty tomb (John xx 8), others were cast into still deeper sorrow by the report, and could only say, ”But we hoped that it was he which should redeeht which banished the gloom from the hearts of Jesus'

followers dawned suddenly There was no ti of hope from a faith which would not die The uniform early tradition is that Jesus showed himself alive to his disciples ”on the third day,” that is, a little over thirty-six hours froospels, but Paul, rote elists, testify to this (I Cor xv 4), as does the very early observance of the first day of the week as ”the Lord's day,”

and the substitution of ”the third day” for ”after three days” in the gospels which made use of our Gospel of Mark (compare parallels with Mark viii 81; ix 31; x 34, and see Holtzmann, NtTh I 309) Of the events which occurred on that third day and after, our earliest account is that of Paul He gives a si to them as well known, in fact as the fa (I Cor xv 4-8) He gives definite date to none of these appearances, indicating only their sequence He tells of six differentwith an appearance to Cephas on the third day, then to the twelve, then to a large company of disciples,--above five hundred,--then to James, then to all the apostles

The sixth in the list is his own experience, which he puts in the sa Two of these instances are found only in Paul's account, the appearance to Jah this last may probably be the same as is referred to in the Gospel of Matthew (xxviii 16-20)

212 The gospel records are much fuller, but they differ from each other even more than they do from Paul Mark is unhappily incoospel, as we have it, are lacking in the oldest manuscripts, and were probably written by a second-century Christian naospel which seems by some accident to have been lost These twelve verses are clearly co the currency of the complete tradition in the early second century, but they contribute nothing to our knowledge of the resurrection All, then, that Mark tells is that the women who came early on the first day of the week to anoint the body of Jesus found the toel who bade them tell the disciples that the Lord had risen How the record originally continued no one knows, for Matthew and Luke use the saeneral testio quite different ways Of the two Matthew is closer to Mark than is Luke

The first gospel adds to the record of the second an account of an appearance of Jesus to the women as they went to report to the disciples, and then tells of theof Jesus with the disciples on a ives no account of the ascension Luke agrees with Mark in general concerning the visit of the woelic vision, and the report to the disciples He says nothing of an appearance of Jesus to the woenuine (see RV in), he, like John, tells of Peter's visit to the sepulchre

213 Luke further reports the appearances of Jesus to two on their way to Emmaus, to Si blended consciously or unconsciously with the finalof Jesus with the disciples before his ascension The genuine text of the gospel (xxiv 50) says nothing of the ascension itself, but clearly implies it In contrast with Matthew it is noticeable that Luke shows no knowledge of any appearance of Jesus to his disciples in Galilee John is quite independent of Mark, as well as of Matthew and Luke He dalene in connection with the early visit to the toh perhaps he implies the presence of others with her (”we” in xx 2) He tells of a visit of Peter and John to the todalene, of an appearance to ten of the disciples in the evening, and a week later to the eleven, including Thoospel makes no reference to appearances in Galilee; but in the appendix (chapter xxi) there is added aon the Sea of Galilee

214 Criticisospels, for instance most recently Reville in his ”Jesus de Nazareth,” discovers two separate andof appearances in Galilee, represented by Mark and the last chapter in John, the other telling of appearances in or near Jerusalem, and found in Luke and the twentieth chapter of John It is said that the gospels have sought to blend the two cycles, as when Matthew tells of an appearance to the women in Jerusalem on their way froinal gospel a Galilean appearance Luke, however, who makes no reference at all to Galilean inally the one cycle knew nothing of the other This theory falls, however, before the uniform tradition of appearances on the third day, which must have been in Jerusalem, and the very early testimony of Paul to an appearance to above five hundred brethren at once, which could not have been in Judea It need not surprise us that there should have been two cycles of tradition, not however mutually exclusive, if Jesus did appear both in Jerusalem and in Galilee The same kind of local interest which is supposed to explain the one-sidedness of the synoptic story of the public ministry would easily account for one line of tradition which reported Galilean appearances, and another which reported those in Jerusalem Luke may have had access to information which furnished him only the Jerusalem story John and Peter, however, ences and seeospels, troubleso the fact of the resurrection reht of the apostolic day nice carefulness concerning the testimony to individual manifestations of the risen Lord Doubtless the first preaching rested, as in the case of Paul, on a simple ”I have seen the Lord” When later the detailed testiospels, it had suffered the lot co up which it is no longer possible for us to resolve They do not, however, challenge the fact which lies behind all the varied testieneral view of the events of that third day and those which followed can be constructed froospels and Paul Early on the first day of the week certain wodalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, Salome, Joanna, and others, came to anoint the body of Jesus On their arrival they found that the stone had been rolled back frorave was empty and ran to tell Peter and John The others saw also a vision of angels which said that Jesus was alive and would see his disciples in Galilee, and ran to report this to the disciples Meanwhile Mary Magdalene returned, following Peter and John who ran to see the toered after they left, and Jesus appeared to her, she ardener She then went to tell the disciples that she had seen the Lord These events evidently occurred in the earlyThe next incident reported is that of the walk of two disciples, not of the twelve, to Emmaus, and the appearance of Jesus to theht them out of the scriptures the necessity that the Messiah should die He washe sat doith them to a familiar meal Either before or after this event he had shown himself to Peter This is the first enuine (see RV ain reached Jerusalem the apostles received them with the news that Peter had seen the Lord That sa the disciples in their well-guarded upper roo was such that he had to convince the disciples that he was not simply a dise the part of a fish before the to John, Tho with the disciples A week later, presuainwith them, and dispelled the doubt of that disciple who loved too deeply to indulge a hope which ht only disappoint He had but to see in order to believe, and make supreme confession of his faith The next appearance was probably that to the seven disciples by the Sea of Galilee, when Peter, who denied thrice, was thrice tested concerning his love for his Lord Then apparently followed theon the mountain reported in Matthehich was probably the same as the appearance to the five hundred brethren; then, probably still in Galilee, Jesus appeared to his brother Ja the disciples The next manifestation of which record is preserved was the final one in Jerusalem, after which Jesus led his disciples out as far as Bethany and was separated froht of by theht hand of God

216 This construction of the story as given in the New Testament does violence to the accounts in one particular It holds that Matthew's report of theof Jesus with the wo is to be identified with his dalene

This can be done only if it is supposed that in the transiven the woel (Mark xvi 6f) becaiven to Mary by the Lord (John xx 17), the result being virtually the saious interest of the first Christians, while for the historic interest of our days it constitutes a discrepancy The difficulty is less on this supposition than on any other It is highly significant that the account of the most indubitable fact in the view of the early Christians is the ospels for the exact harmonist to deal with This is not of serious ainst theoretical ideas of inspiration

217 The universal acknowledgment that the early Christians firmly believed in the resurrection of their Lord has in of that firm conviction a question of primary importance The simple facts as set forth in the New Testament serve abundantly to account for the faith of the early church, but they not only involve a large recognition of the miraculous, they also contain perplexities for those who do not stumble at the supernatural; hence there have been many attempts to find other solutions of the problem Some of the explanations offered may be dismissed with a word: for instance, those which, in one forospel, that the disciples stole the body of Jesus, and then declared that he had risen; and those which assume that the death of Jesus was apparent only, that he fainted on the cross, and then the chill of the night air and of the sepulchre served to revive hi he was able to leave the tomb and appear to his disciples as one risen froly deception, while the theory that the disciples or any group of theave currency to the notion that he had risen, builds the greatest ethical and religious htly different explanation which was very early suggested was that the Jews theardener, had the body removed, and that when Mary found the tomb empty she let her faith conclude that his absence must be due to his resurrection

218 This last explanation has in recent times been revived in connection with the so-called vision-hypothesis by Renan and Reville Mary found the to nervous nature--she had been cured by Jesus of seven devils--by thinking about the empty tomb she soon worked herself into an ecstasy in which her eyes seemed to behold what her heart desired to see She communicated her vision to the others, and by a sort of nervous contagion, they, too, fell to seeing visions, and it is the report of these that we have in the gospels The vision-hypothesis takes with some, Strauss for instance, a different form

These deny that the toard this story as a contribution of the later legend- spirit They hold that the disciples fled from Jerusalem as soon as the death of Jesus was an assured fact, and not until after they found themselves amid the familiar scenes of Galilee, did their faith recover from the shock it had received in Jerusalem In Galilee the experiences of their life with Jesus were lived over again, and the old confidence in hi about the Lord, their hearts would say, ”He cannot have died,”

and after a while their faith rose to the conviction which declared, ”He is not dead;” then they passed into an ecstatic errown

219 These different forms of the vision-hypothesis have been subjected tocriticisht has so much that is akin to them There are two objections which refute the hypothesis The first is that the uniform tradition which connects the resurrection and the first appearances with the ”third day” after the crucifixion leaves far too short a tirowth of ecstatic feeling which are requisite for these visions, even supposing that the disciples' faith had such recuperative powers The second is that once such an ecstaticto experience in analogous cases for the visions to continue, if not to increase, as the thought of the risen Lord grew more clear and familiar; yet the tradition is uniform that the appearances of the risen Christ ceased after, at most, a feeeks The only later one was that which led to the conversion of Paul; and though Paul was a iven to ecstatic experiences (see II Cor xii), he carefully distinguishes in his own thought his seeing of the Lord and his heavenly visions In a word, the disciples of Jesus never showed a th to found a church of believers in the resurrection in the face of persecution and scorn

220 Keim seeks to avoid the difficulties which his own acute criticism disclosed in the ordinary vision-theory, by another which rejects the gospel stories as legendary, yet frankly acknowledges that the faith of the apostles in the resurrection was based on a miracle Their certainty was so unshakable, so uniforing that they did actually see the Lord This seeing, however, was not with the eyes of sense, but with the spiritual vision, which properly perceives what pertains to the spirit world into which the glorified Lord had withdrahen he died In his spiritual estate he manifested himself to his disciples, by a series of divinely caused and therefore essentially objective visions, in which he proved to them abundantly that he was alive, was victor over death, and had been exalted by God to his right hand This theory is not in itself offensive to faith

It concedes that the belief of the disciples rested on actual disclosures of hilorified Lord The difficulty with the theory is that it relegates the eh it is a feature of the tradition which is found in all the gospels and clearly implied in Paul (I Cor xv 4; colorified Christ caht of by the disciples as _risen_, rather than sis us back to the necessity of recognizing a resurrection which was in some real sense corporeal, difficult as that conception is for us The gospels assert this with great simplicity and delicate reserve They represent Jesus as returning to his disciples with a body which was superior to the lie our lives about It may be well described by Paul's words, ”It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body”

Yet the records indicate that when he willed Jesus could offer hi--”handle me and see”