Воок ІІ.

THE APOSTLES.

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CHAPTER I.

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

MATTHEW XXVII. 62-XXVIII.; LUKE XXIV. 13-53; Acts L 3-14; 1 CORINTHIANS XV. 3-8.1

O Jesus and his cause appeared to have been finally crushed. A single vigorous and well-concerted measure had smothered the Messianic agitation. The prophet of Galilee had paid, by a malefactor's death, for his audacity in coming to Jerusalem itself to preach his gospel and unfurl his banner of freedom and of the spirit, for his heroic effort to make God's kingdom come. Who was there left to take up his task? His best disciples and his closest friends were fugitives and apostates.

Yet hopeless as things seemed to be, the unshaken confidence with which Jesus had faced his lot was justified by the event. From his momentary defeat he rose again with wider and deeper influence than ever. Were there no danger of misunderstanding, we would gladly use an expression of his own,2 and speak of this as his "rising again" or "resurrection." But this word is commonly used to signify something very different from his triumph after defeat. For when the faith of the Apostles and other disciples, recovering from the shock under which at first it had tottered and collapsed, appeared once more in renovated strength, it took the form of a belief that Jesus had risen up from the dead and ascended to heaven. This is what is generally meant by the "Resurrection;" and if we were to employ the word, it might seem as though we accepted this early belief as an historical fact.

1 Mark xvi.; Luke xxiv. 1-12.

2 Compare pp. 328 f., 350.

1 See, for instance, Revelation xx. 12-14; and compare op. 272, 313, 387

388.

2 Compare vol. i. pp. 528-531; ii. pp. 395, 396; pp. 331 ff., 378 ff.

апи п we were to employ the wou, s though we accepted this early belief as an historical fact.

1 Mark xvi.; Luke xxiv. 1-12.

2 Compare pp. 328 f., 350.

Moreover, in saying that the belief in the "resurrection was but the form assumed by the reviving faith of the disciples, we have explained our reasons for dealing with it in our Second Book, which treats of the Apostles, instead of including it in the history of Jesus himself as the last scene of his life on earth; for, amidst all the doubts that hang around this subject, of one thing at least we may be sure, namely, that it forms a chapter of the inner life of the disciples, not of the outward life of the Master. In other words, the resurrection of Jesus is not an external fact of history, but simply a form of belief assumed by the faith of his friends and earliest disciples.

Let us begin by considering what that word "resurrection" really meant, whether applied to Jesus or to others. Later representations, down to our own times, have regarded it as equivalent to a rising from the grave; but the question is, what it meant in the faith and preaching of the Apostles, in the genuine, original, primitive tradition that Jesus had risen. Now, "resurrection" means elsewhere a return from the realm of shades to the human life on earth; and in like manner it was said that Jesus too had left the underworld, but not, in this case, to return at once to life upon the earth, nt to be taken up provisionally into heaven. Originally the surrection and ascension of Jesus were one. It was only er that the conception sprang up of his having paused upon rth, whether for a single day or for several weeks, on his urney from the abyss to the height.

We may therefore safely assert that if the friends of Jesus ad thought as we do of the lot of those that die," they would ever have so much as dreamed of their Master's resurrection or ascension. For to the Christian belief of to-day it would be, so to speak, a matter of course that Jesus, like all good and noble souls, and indeed above all others, - would go straight to a better world," "to heaven," "to God," at the instant of his death; but in the conception of the Jews, including the Apostles, this was impossible. Heaven was the abode of the Lord and his angels only; and if an Enoch or an Elijah had been caught up there alive, to dwell there for a time, it was certain that all who died, without exception, even the purest and most holy, must go down as shades into the realms of the dead in the bowels of the earth, and thence,

1 See, for instance, Revelation xx. 12-14; and compare p. 272, 313, 387 388.

2 Compare vol. i. pp. 528-531; ii. pp. 395, 396; pp. 331 ff., 378 ff.

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of course, they could not issue except by rising again." And this is why we are never told that Jesus rose from death," far less "from the grave," but always from the dead," that is, from the place where the shades of the departed abide; from the realms of the dead. The dead, when thus waked into life again, must have a body, whether it were a new one,1 or whether the old one left the grave for him.2 Now the Apostles could not accept or endure the thought that their Master was left in the abyss a powerless and lifeless shadow, they were convinced that he must be living in heaven in glory; and, moreover, they believed themselves to have evidence of his continued existence. The only possible conclusion, therefore, was that he had risen from the realm of shades.

All this is simple enough. Is it not equally clear that where there is no belief in this realm of shades a 66 resurrection" has no meaning? And if we have all ceased to believe in any such shadow-land, we are forced to admit that the narratives we are about to consider do not concern a fact in the life of Jesus, but a conception on the part of his friends, —the origin of which we must, if possible, explain.

The contradictions in the narratives themselves, though so great as to lay insuperable difficulties in the way of a literal interpretation, no longer surprise us when we know that we are dealing with a product of the religious imagination, gradually amplified and embellished by tradition.

The following story indicates the way in which the disciples rose to the belief that their Master still lived and would yet be the Christ:

It was on the Sunday after the crucifixion that two of the disciples were going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, about two leagues distant, conversing on the way about all that had occurred. Now while they were discussing their divergent views or doubts they were joined by a third wayfarer. This was no other than Jesus himself; but they were so blinded that they did not know him. "What are you speaking about," he asked, "that makes you look so sad as you walk along?" "What are we speaking of?" repeated Cleopas, one of the two; "then are you the only one among all the strangers in the Holy City that does not know what has happened there in these last days?" "What about?" he asked 1 See p. 272; compare 1 Corinthians xv. 50. 2 See p. 457; compare John v. 28, 29.