| 113. Precise Declarations of Jesus Concerning His Future Resurrection. | ||||
ACCORDING To The Gospel accounts, Jesus predicted his resurrection in words not less clear than those in which he announced his death, and also fixed the time of its occurrence with singular precision. As often as he said to his disciples, the Son of man will be crucified, he added: .And the third day he shall rise again, (Matt. xvi. 21; xvii. 23; xx. 19. parall. comp. xvii. 9; xxvi. 32. parall.). | ||||
But of this announcement also it is said, that the disciples did not understand it; so little, indeed, that they "debated among themselves what the rising from the dead should mean" (Mark ix. 10.); and in consistency with this want of comprehension, they, after the death of Jesus, exhibit no trace of a recollection that his resurrection had been foretold to them, no spark of hope that this prediction would be fulfilled. When the friends of Jesus had taken down his body from the cross, and laid it in the grave, they undertook (John xix. 40.)-or the women reserved to {P.645} themselves (Mark xvi. 1; Luke xxiii. 56.), the task of embalming him, which is only performed in the case of those who are regarded as the prey of corruption; when, on the morning which, according to the mode of reckoning in the New Testament, opened the day which had been predetermined as that of the resurrection, the women went to the grave, they were so far from thinking of a predicted resurrection, that they were anxious about the probable difficulty of rolling away the stone from the grave (Mark xvi. 3.); when Mary Magdalene, and afterwards Peter, found the grave empty, their first thought, had the resurrection been predicted, must have been, that it had now actually taken place: instead of this, the former conjectures that the body may have been stolen (John xx. 2), while Peter merely wonders, without coming to any definite conjecture (Luke xxiv. 12.); when the women told the disciples of the angelic apparition which they had witnessed, and discharged the commission given them by the angel, the disciple partly regarded their words as idle tales (Luke xxiv. 11), and were partly moved to fear and astonishment when Mary Magdalene, and subsequently the disciples going to Emmaus, assured the eleven, that they had themselves seen the risen one, they met with no credence (Mark xvi. 11. 13), and Thomas still later did not believe even the assurance of his fellow-apostles (John xx. 25.); lastly, when Jesus himself appeared to the disciples in Galilee, all of them did not even then cast off doubt (oi( de e)distasan, Mark xxviii. 17.). All this we must, with the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist, find incomprehensible, if Jesus had so clearly and decidedly predicted his resurrection. | ||||
It is true, that as the conduct of the disciples, after the death of Jesus, speaks against such a prediction on the part of Jesus, so the conduct of his enemies appears to speak for it. For when, according to Matt, xxvii.62ff., the chief priests and Pharisees entreat Pilate to set a watch at the grave of Jesus, they allege as a reason for their request, that Jesus while yet alive had said: "After three days I will rise again." But this narrative of the first gospel, which we can only estimate at a future point in our investigation, at present decides nothing, but only falls to one side of the dilemma, so that we must now say: if the disciples really so acted after the death of Jesus, then neither can he have decidedly foretold his resurrection, nor can the Jews in consideration of such a prediction have placed a watch at his grave; or, if the two latter statements be true, the disciples cannot have so acted. | ||||
It has been attempted to blunt the edge of this dilemma, by attributing to the above predictions, not the literal sense, that the deceased Jesus would return out of the grave, but only the figurative sense that his doctrine and cause, after having been apparently {P.646} crushed, would again expand and flourish. As the Old Testament prophets, it was said, represent the restoration of the people of Israel to renewed prosperity, under the image of a resurrection from the dead (Isai. xxvi. 19; Ezek. xxxvii.); as they mark the short interval within which, under certain conditions, this turn of things was to be expected, by the expression; in two or three days will the Lord revive the smitten one, and raise the dead (Hos. vi. 2), a statement of time which Jesus also uses indefinitely for a short interval (Luke xiii. 32); so by the declaration that he will rise on the third day after his death, he intends to say no more than that even though he may succumb to the power of his enemies and be put to death, still the work which he has begun will not come to an end, but will in a short time go forward with a fresh impetus. This merely figurative mode of speaking adopted by Jesus, the apostles, after Jesus had actually risen in the body, understod literally, and regarded them as prophecies of his personal resurrection. Now that in the prophetic passages adduced, the expressions have only the alleged figurative sense, is true; but these are passages the whole tenor of which is figurative, and in which, in particular, the depression and death which precede the revivification are themselves to be understood only in a figurative sense. Here, on the contrary, all the foregoing expressions: paradidosqai, staurousqai ktl. (to be delivered, condemned, crucified, killed, etc.) are to be understood literally; hence all at once, with the words egerqhnai and anasthnai to enter on a figurative meaning, would be an unprecedented abruptness of transition: not to mention that passages such as Matt. xxvi. 32., where Jesus says: "After I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee" can have no meaning at all unless egeiresqai be understood literally. In this closely consecutive series of expressions, which must be taken in a purely literal sense, there is then no warrant, and even no inducement, to understand the statement of time which is connected with them, otherwise than also literally, and in its strictly etymological meaning. Thus if Jesus really used these words, and in the same connection in which they are given by the evangelists, he cannot have meant to announce by them merely the speedy victory of his cause; his meaning must have been, that he himself would return to life in three days after his violent death. As however Jesus, judging from the conduct of his disciples after his death, cannot have announced his resurrection in plain words; other commentators have resigned themselves to the admission, that the evangelists, after the issue, gave to the discourses of Jesus a {P.647} definiteness which, as uttered by him, they did not possess; that they have not merely understood literally, what Jesus intended figuratively, of the revival of his cause after his death, but in accordance with their erroneous interpretation, have so modified his words that, as we now read them, we must certainly understand them in a literal sense; yet that not all the discourses of Jesus are altered in this manner, here and there his original expressions still remain. | ||||