133. Prodigies Attendant On the Death of Jesus. (Chapter 4. Death and Resurrection of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

ACCORDING To The Gospel accounts, the death of Jesus was accompanied by extraordinary phenomena. Three hours before, we are told, a darkness diffused itselfj and lasted until Jesus expired (Matt, xxvii. 45. parall.); in the moment of his death the veil of the temple was torn asunder from the top to the bottom, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, and many bodies of departed saints arose, entered into the city, and appeared to many (Matt. v.51ff. parall.). These details are very unequally distributed among the evangelists: the first alone has them all; the second and third merely the darkness and the rending of the veil; while the fourth knows nothing of all these marvels.

We will examine them singly according to their order. The darkness (skotia) which is said to have arisen while Jesus hung on the cross, cannot have been an ordinary eclipse of the sun, caused by the interposition of the moon between his disc and the earth, since it happened during the Passover, and consequently about the time of the full moon. The Gospels however do not directly use the terms "eclipse of the sun"; the two first speaking only of darkness in general, and though the third adds with somewhat more particularity: skotoj egeneto ef' olhn thn ghn, "and there was darkness over all the earth", still this might be said of any species of widely extended obscuration. Hence it was an explanation which lay near at hand to refer this darkness to an atmospheric, instead of an astronomical cause, and to suppose that it proceeded from obscuring vapours in the air, such as are especially wont to precede earthquakes. That such obscurations of the atmosphere may be diffused over whole countries, is rue; but not only is the statement that the one ^{P.788} in question extended ef' olhn thn ghn, i.e, according to the most natural explanation, over the entire globe, to be subtracted as an exaggeration of the narrator: but also the pre-supposition, evident in the whole tenor of their representation, that the darkness had a supernatural cause, appears destitute of foundation from the want of any adequate object for such a miracle. Since then, with these accessory features, the event does not in itself at once carry the conviction of its credibility, it is natural to inquire if it have any extrinsic confirmation.

The Fathers of the Church appeal in its support to the testimony of heathen writers, among whom Phlegon especially in his xronikoi is alleged to have noticed the above darkness; but on comparing the passage preserved by Eusebius, which is apparently the one of Phlegon alluded to, we find that it determines merely the Olympiad, scarcely the year, and in no case the season and day of this darkness. More modern apologists appeal t similar cases in ancient history, of which Wetstein in particular has made a copious collection. He adduces from Greek and Roman writers the notices of the eclipses of the sun which occurred at the disappearance of Romulus, the death of Caesar, and similar events; he cites declarations which contain the idea that eclipses of the sun betoken the fall of kingdoms and the death of kings; lastly he points to Old Testament passages (Isai. 1.3; Joel iii. 20; Amos viii. 9; comp. Jer. xv. 9.) and rabbinical dicta, in which either the obscuring of the light of day is described as the mourning garb of God, or the death of great teachers compared with the sinking of the sun at mid-day, 1 or the opinion advanced that at the death of exalted hierarchical personages, if the last honours are not paid to them, the sun is wont to be darkened. But these parallels, instead of being supports to the credibility of the Gospel narrative, are so many premises to the conclusion, that we have here also nothing more tan the mythical offspring of universally prevalent ideas, - a Christian legend, which would make all nature put on the weeds of mourning to solemnize the tragic death of the Messiah. The second prodigy is the rending of the veil of the temple, doubtless the inner veil before the Holy of Holies. It was thought possible to interpret this rending of the veil also as a natural event, by regarding it as an effect of the earthquake. But, as Lightfoot has already justly observed, it is more conceivable that an earthquake should rend stationary fixed bodies such as the rocks subsequently mentioned, than that it should tear a pliant, loosely hung curtain. Hence Paulus supposes that the veil of the temple was stretched and fastened not only above but also below and at the sides. But first, this is a mere conjecture: and secondly, if the earthquake shook the walls of the temple so violently, as to tear a veil which even though stretched, was still pliant; such a convulsion would rather have caused a part of the building to fall, as is said to have been the case in the Gospel of the Hebrews: unless it be chosen to add, with Kuin l, the conjecture that the veil was tender from age, and might therefore be torn by a slight concussion. That our narrators had no such causes in their minds is proved by the fact that the second and third evangelists are silent concerning the earthquake, and that the first does not mention it until after the rending of the veil. Thus if this event really happened we must regard it as a miracle. Now the object of the divine Providence in effecting such a miracle could only have been this to produce in the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus a deep impression of the importance of his death and to furnish the first promulgators of the gospel with a fact to which they might appeal in support of their cause. But. as Schleiermaeher has shown, nowhere else in the New Testament, either in the apostolic epistles or in the Acts, or even in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in connection with the subject of which it could scarcely fail to be suggested, is this event mentioned: on the contrary, with the exception of this bare synoptic notice, every trace of it is lost; which could scarcely have been the case if it had really formed a ground of apostolical argument. Thus the divine purpose in ordaining this miracle must have totally failed; or, since this is inconceivable, it cannot have been ordained for this object; in other words, since neither any other object of the miracle, nor yet a mode in which the event might happen naturally can be discovered, it cannot have happened at all. In another way, certainl, a peculiar relation of Jesus to the veil of the temple is treated of m the Epistle to the Hebrews. While before Christ, only the priests had access into the holy place, and into the Holy of Holies only the high priest might enter once in the year with the blood of atonement; Christ, as the eternal high priest, entered by his own blood into the holy place within the veil, into the Holy of holies in heaven, whereby he became the forerunner, npodpofiog, of Christians, and opened access to them also, founding an eternal redemption, aluviov Mrpuaiv (vi. 19 f.; ix. 6, 12; x. 19 f.). Even Paulus finds in these metaphors so close an affinity to our narrative that he thinks it possible to number the latter among those fables which according to Henke's definitions are to be derived e figurato genere dicendi; at least the event, even if it ^{P.790} really happened, must have been especially important to the Christians on account of its symbolical significance, as interpreted by the images in the Epistle to the Hebrews: namely, that by Christ's death the veil of the Jewish worship was rent asunder, and access to God opened to all by means of worship in the Spirit. But if, as has been shown, the historical probability of the event in question is extremely weak, and on the other hand, the causes which might lead to the formation of such a narrative without historical foundation very powerful; it is more consistent, with Schleiermacher, entirely to renounce the incident as historical, on the ground that so soon as it began to be the practice to represent the office of Christ under the images which reign throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews, indeed, in the very earliest dawn of this kind of doctrine, on the first reception of the Gentiles, who were left free from the burden of Jewish observances, and who thus remained without participation in the Jewish sacrfices, such representations must have entered into the Christian hymns (and the Gospel narratives).

On the succeeding particulars of the earthquake and the rending of the rocks, we can only pronounce a judgment in connection 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 Caesar, 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: Messiae obitum atrocibus ostentis, quibus, quantus vir quummaxime exspirasset, orbi terrarum indicaretur, illustrem esse aportebat.

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, after their resurrection; ) nor ^{P.791} 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" 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, te 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 rationalist 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

^{P.792} 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; from which 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 myth: accordingly Schneckcnburger has left the emptiness of the graves out of his calculation. When, however, he yet speaks of visionary appearances which 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 rnythus. The actual expectation may be more correctly stated thus. From the epistles of Paul (1 Thess. iv. 16; comp. 1 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 f) dvdaraoig r TtpuTi), or the resurrection of the just r&v dmatuv (Luke xiv. 14?), in place of which Justin has the holy resurrection rj ayia dvdaraaigS 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 Iraelites 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," (Col. i. 18; Rev. i. 5), "the first fruits of those who sleep" (1 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 ^{P.793} motives which might in oNier cases led 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 (1 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 connection 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.

The Synoptics conclude their description of the events at the death of Jesus, with an account of the impression which they made more immediately on the Roman centurion whose office it' was to watch the crucifixion. According to Luke (v. 47) this impression was produced by to genomenon (what was done), i.e, since he had beforehand mentioned the darkness, by the departure of Jesus with an audible prayer, that being the particular which he had last noticed; indeed Mark, as if expounding Luke, represents the exclamation: truly this man was the Son of God as being called forth from the centurion by the circumstance that Jesus so cried out, and gave up the ghost kraugaj ecepneusen(v. 39).

Now in Luke, who gives a prayer as the last utterance of Jesus, it is possible to conceive that this edifying end might impress the centurion with a favourable opinion of Jesus: but how the fact of his expiring with a loud cry could lead to the inference that he was the Son of God, will in no way appear. Matthew hoever gives the most suitable relation to the words of the centurion, when he represents them as being called forth by the earthquake and the other prodigies which accompanied the death of Jesus: were it not that the historical reality of this speech of the centurion must stand or fall with its alleged causes. In Matthew and Mark this officer expresses the conviction that Jesus is in truth the Son of God, in Luke, that he is a righteous man. The evangelists in citing the former expression evidently intend to convey the idea that a Gentile bore witness to the Messiahship of Jesus; but in this specifically Jewish sense the words cannot well have been understood by the Roman soldier: we might rather suppose that he regarded Jesus as a Son of God in the heathen sense, or as an innocent man unjustly put to death, were it not that the credibility of the whole synoptic account of the events which signalize the death of Jesus being shaken, this, which forms the top stone as it were, must also be of doubtful security; especially when we look at the narrative of Luke, who besides the impression on the centurion adds that on the rest of the spectators, and makes them return to the city with repentance and mourning-a trait which appears to represent, not so probably what the Jews actually felt and did, as wht in the opinion of the Christians they ought to have felt and done.