Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (870 page)

* As Kern admits, Hauptthats. Tüb. Zeitschr. 1836, 3, s. 57.this, but then it would still fall before that to Thomas and
all the apostles,
which John enumerates as the second. Perhaps, however, the appearance of Jesus before the five hundred is to be placed later, so that after that entrance of Jesus among the assembled disciples would first follow the scene with Thomas, after this the appearance at the sea of Galilee, and only then the sight of Jesus granted to the five hundred. But if the appearance before Thomas is to he reckoned the same with the fifth in Paul’s enumeration, this apostle must have reversed the order of his two last appearances, a transposition for which there was no reason : On the contrary, it would have been more natural to place last the appearance before the five hundred brethren, as the most important. Thus nothing remains but to say: John understood under the word
m
a
q
h
t
a
i
V
merely a greater or a smaller assembly of the apostles; but among the five hundred there was no apostle; hence he omitted these also, and thus correctly numbered the appearance at the sea of Tiberias as the third: if indeed this could have happened before the one on the mountain in Galilee, which, we have seen, to be inconceivable. The above expedients resorted to by way of accommodation are in part ridiculous enough: but Kern has lately surpassed them all by a suggestion which he advances with great confidence, namely, that John here intends to number, not the appearances, but the days on which appearances took place, so that
t
o
u
t
o
h
d
h
t
r
i
t
o
n
e
f
a
n
e
r
w
q
h
o
I
.
t
o
i
V
m
a
q
h
t
a
i
V
, this is now the third time that Jesus showed himself to the disciples,
means: now had Jesus already appeared to his disciples on three separate days: namely, four times on the day of the resurrection; then once eight days after; and now again some days later.
^*
Renouncing such expedients, nothing remains but to acknowledge that the fourth Evangelist numbers only those appearances of Jesus to his disciples, which he had himself narrated; and the reason of this can scarcely have been that the rest, from some cause or other, appeared to him less important, but rather that he knew nothing of them.
^†
And again, Matthew with his last Galilean appearance, can have known nothing of the two in Jerusalem recorded by John; for if in the first of these ten apostles had been convinced of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, and in the second Thomas also: it could not have been that at that later appearance on the mountain in Galilee some of the eleven (for only these are represented by Matthew as going thither) still doubted (
o
i
d
e
e
d
i
s
t
a
s
a
n
,
v. I7). Lastly, if Jesus here delivered to his disciples the final command to go into all the world teaching and baptizing, and gave them the promise to he with them until the end of the existing age, which is manifestly the tone of one who is taking leave: he cannot subsequently, as is narrated in the introduction to the Acts, have communicated to them his last commands and taken leave of them at Jerusalem. According to the conclusion of the gospel of Luke,

* Hauptthatsachen, ut sup. s. 47.

† Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. 1
,
3, s. 205, 210; Weisse, die evang.
Gesch.
2
, s
.
409.this farewell departure on the contrary occurs much earlier than can be supposed in accordance with Matthew; and in the close of the gospel of Mark, where Jesus is represented as parting from his disciples in Jerusalem on the very day of his resurrection, partly the same words are put into his mouth as, according to Matthew, are spoken in Galilee, and in any case later than on the day of the resurrection. The fact, that the two books of the same author, Luke, diverge so widely from each other in relation to the time during which Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, that one determines this time to have been a single day, the other, forty days, cannot be taken into more particular consideration until we have reached a farther point of our inquiry.

Thus the various evangelical writers only agree as to a few of the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection; the designation of the locality in one excludes the appearances narrated by the rest; the determination of time in another leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow Evangelists; the enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events reported by his predecessors; lastly, among several appearances recounted by various narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet has nothing in common with the others. Hence nothing but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that no one of the narrators knew and presupposed what another records; that each again had heard a different account of the matter; and that consequently at an early period, there were current only uncertain and very varied reports concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus.
^*

This conclusion, however, does not shake the passage in the first Epistle to the Corinthians which, (it being undoubtedly genuine,) was written about the year 59 after Christ, consequently not 30 years after his resurrection. On this authority we must believe that many members of the primitive church who were yet living at the time when this epistle was written, especially the apostles, were convinced that they had witnessed appearances of the risen Christ. Whether this involves the admission that some objective reality lay at the foundation of these appearances, will hereafter become the subject of inquiry; concerning the present point, the divergencies of the Evangelists, especially in relation to the locality, the passage of Paul offers nothing decisive, since he has given no particular description of any of those appearances.

§ 139. QUALITY OF THE BODY AND LIFE OF JESUS AFTER THE RESURRECTION.

But how are we to represent to ourselves this continuation of the life of Jesus after the resurrection, and especially the nature of

* Comp. Kaiser, bidl. Theol. 1
,
s. 254 ff; De Wette ut sup. ; Ammon, Fortbildung, 2, 1
,
Kap. 1;
Weisse, die Evang. Gesch., 2, 7 tes Buch.his body in this period? In order to answer this question we must once more cast a glance over the separate narratives of his appearances when risen.

According to Matthew, Jesus on the morning of the resurrection meets (
a
p
h
n
t
h
s
e
n
)
the women as they are hastening back from the grave; they recognize him, embrace his feet in sign of veneration, and he speaks to them. At the second interview on the Galilean mountain the disciples see him (
i
d
o
n
t
e
V
)
,
but some still doubt, and here also Jesus speaks to them. Of the manner in which he came and went, we have here no precise information.

In Luke, Jesus joins the two disciples who are on their way from Jerusalem to the neighbouring village of Emmaus (
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g
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s
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V
s
u
n
e
p
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V
); they do not recognize him on the way, a circumstance which Luke attributes to a subjective hindrance produced in them by a higher influence (
o
i
o
f
q
a
l
m
o
i
a
u
t
w
n
e
k
r
a
t
o
u
n
t
o
,
t
o
u
m
h
e
p
i
g
n
w
n
a
i
a
u
t
o
n
),
and only Mark, who compresses this event into few words, to an objective alteration of his form (
e
n
e
t
e
r
a
m
o
r
f
h
)
.
On the way Jesus converses with the two disciples, after their arrival in the village complies with their invitation to accompany them to their lodging, sits down to table with them, and proceeds according to his wont to break and distribute bread. In this moment the miraculous spell is withdrawn from the eyes of the disciples, and they know him :
^*
but in the same moment he becomes invisible to them (
a
f
a
n
t
o
V
e
g
e
n
e
t
o
a
p
‘
a
u
t
w
n
).
Just as suddenly as he here vanished, he appears to have shown himself immediately after in the assembly of the disciples, when it is said that he all at once stood in the midst of them (
e
s
t
h
e
n
m
e
s
w
a
u
t
w
n
),
and they, terrified at the sight, supposed that they saw a spirit. To dispel this alarming idea, Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and invited them to touch him, that by feeling his
flesh and bones
they might convince themselves that he was no spectre; he also caused a piece of broiled fish and of honeycomb to be brought to him, and ate it in their presence. The appearance to Simon is in Luke described by the expression
w
f
q
h
;
Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinthians uses the same verb for all the Christophanies there enumerated, and Luke in the Acts comprises all the appearances of the risen Jesus during the forty days under the expressions
o
p
t
a
n
o
m
e
n
o
V
(i. 3) and
e
m
f
a
n
h
g
e
n
e
s
q
a
i
(x. 40). In the same manner Mark describes the appearance to Mary Magdalene by
e
f
a
n
h
,
and those to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and to the eleven by
e
f
a
n
e
r
w
q
h
.
John describes the appearance at the sea of Tiberias by
e
f
a
n
e
r
w
s
e
n
e
a
u
t
o
n
,
and to all the Christophanies narrated by him he applies the word
e
f
a
n
e
r
w
q
h
.
Mark and Luke add, as the close of the earthly life of the risen Jesus, that he was taken away from before the eyes of the disciples, and (by a cloud, according to Acts i. 9) carried up to heaven.