Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (863 page)

* Thus Tholuck, in loc.

† See the Fragments, ut sup. s. 469 ff.

‡ Michaelis, ut sup. s. 99 f. ; Kuinöl and Lücke leave open the choice between this expedient and the former.

§ Comp. De Wette, in loc. Matth.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
k
a
i
n
o
n
, 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
a
u
t
o
u
(his own)
after
m
n
h
m
e
i
w
; while an ancient translation read, instead of
o
e
l
a
t
o
m
h
s
e
n
(which he had hewn
), —
o
h
n
l
e
l
a
t
o
m
e
n
o
n
(which was hewn)
:
^*
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

* Michaclis, ut sup. s.
45
ff
.
vicinity, and the fact that the grave belonged to Joseph — may have co-operated.
^*
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.
^†

§ 136. THE WATCH AT THE GRAVE OF JESUS.

On the following day, the Sabbath,
^‡
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,
w
s
e
i
n
e
k
r
o
i
, — 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

* Kuinöl, in Matth. p. 786; Hase, § 145; Tholuck, Comm. s. 320.

† A confusion of the
k
h
p
o
V
garde;:
near to the place of execution, where according to John Jesus was buried, with the garden of Gethsemane, where he was taken prisoner, appears to have given rise to the statement of the Evang. Nicodemi, that Jesus was crucified
e
n
t
w
k
h
p
w
,
o
p
o
u
e
p
i
a
s
q
h
in the garden where he was apprehended.
C. ix. p. 580, ap. Thilo.

‡
T
h
e
p
a
u
r
i
o
n
,
h
t
i
V
e
s
t
i
m
e
t
a
t
h
n
p
a
r
a
s
k
e
u
h
n
(the next day, that followed the day of the preparation),
is certainly a singular periphrasis for the Sabbath, for it is a strangely inappropriate mode of expression to designate a solemn day, as the day after the previous day: nevertheless we must abide by this meaning so long as we are unable to evade it in a more natural manner than Schneckenburger in his chronology of the Passion week, Beitrage, s. 3 ff.by Paulus.
^*
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 :
^†
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.
^‡
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

* The former, ut sup. s. 437 ff.; the latter in the exeg. Handb. 3, b, s. 837 ff.Comp. Kaiser, bibl. Theol. 1, 5. 253.

† Michaelis, Begräbniss- und Auferstehungsgeschichte, s. 206; Olshausen 2, s.
506.

‡ Michaclis, ut sup.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 :
^*
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.