Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (859 page)

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.
^†
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 exspirasset, orbi terrarum indicaretur, illustrem esse oporlebat
.
^‡

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,
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,
^§
after their resurrection
^||
nor

* Ueber den Lukas, s.
293. Comp.
De Wette, exeg. Handb., 1, 1, s. 240.

† Georg. i. 463 ff.

‡ When Hase, § 143, writes: “The earth trembled, mourning for her greatest Son,” we see how the historian in speaking of this feature, which he maintains to be historical, involuntarily becomes a poet ; and when in the second edition the author qualifies the phrase by the addition of an “as it were:” it is further evident that his historical conscience had not failed to reproach him for the license.

§ Only such must be here thought of, and not
sectatores Christi,
as Kuinöl maintains. In the Evang. Nicodemi, c. xvii., there are indeed adherents of Jesus, namely, Simeon (Luke ii.) and his two sons, among those who come to life on this occasion; but the majority in this apocryphal book also, and as well in the
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(Thilo, p. 810), according to Epiphanius, orat. in sepulchrum Chr. 275, Jgnat. ad Magnes. ix. and others (comp. Thilo, p. 780 ff.), are Old Testament persons, as Adam and Eve, the patriarchs and prophets.

|| Comp. the various opinions in Thilo, p. 783 f.is anything satisfactory to be discovered concerning a possible object for so extraordinary a dispensation.
^*
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,
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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.
^†
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.
^‡
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

* Comp. especially Eichhorn, Einl. in d. N. T. 1, s. 446 ff.

† Stroth, von Interpolationen im Evang. Matth. In Eichhorn’s Repertorium, 9, s. 139. It is hardly a preferable expedient to regard the passage as an addition of the Greek translator. See Kern, Ueber den Urspr. des Evang. Matth. s. 25 and 100.

‡
Thus Paulus and Kuinöl, in loc. The latter calls this explanation a mythical one.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.
^*
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.
^‡
When, however, he yet speaks of visionary appearances whtch 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
^§
The actual expectation may be more correctly stated thus. From the epistles of Paul (i Thess. iv. 16,; comp. i 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
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or
the resurrection of the just
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(Luke xiv. 14 ?), in place of which Justin has
the holy resurrection
h
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.
^||
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.
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,
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(Col. i. 18; Rev. 1. 5),
the firstfruits of them that sleep,
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(i 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

* Leben Jesu, § 148.

† Ueber den Urspr. s. 67.

‡
Paulus, exeg. Handb., 3, b. s. 798.

§ Dial. c. Tryph. cxiii.

|| See the collection of passages relative to this subject in Schöttgen, 2, p. 570 ff.; and in Bertholdt’s Christologia, § 35.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,
^*
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 (i Pet. iii. 19 f.) was the means of delivering the previously deceased from this abode;
^†
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.