508 KESUERECTION OF CHRIST
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
needless to remark that this daring assertion of the actual production of the bodj' is a mediceval fabrication, but it is an assertion very necessary to account for facts, when the empti- ness of the grave was admitted and yet the Resurrection denied.
Substantially, then, St. Matthew's narrative is corroborated by the admissions made by opponents of Ciirist. That the disciples removed the body was a saying commonly reported among the Jews ' until this day ' (Mt 28^''). And this admission by opponents is enough to show that the evidence for the empty grave was ' too notorious to be denied ' (Cambr. Thcol. Essays, p.33G).
(5) The grave, then, was assuredly empty. But the emptiness of the grave does not demonstrate resurrection. The alternatives are that this was a human work or a Divine. Either somebody removed the corpse, or the Almighty raised the dead. The momentousness of the alternative it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. The uitimate de- cision must be largely influenced by the entire range of a man's presuppositions. Two antagon- istic conceptions of God and the world and man- kind meet at the grave of Christ. It will always be possible to construct naturalistic hypotheses to account for the vacant grave, but it is impossible to conceal the rationalistic assumptions upon which such constructions are based. We may here quote a recent and extremely independent critic.
' It is admitted that with the Resurrection the body of Jesus also had vanished from the grave, and it will be impossible to account for this on natural grounds ' (Wellhausen, Das Ev. Matt. p. 150).
(6) If we. keep to the evidence, it is certain that the empty grave was not the cause of the disciples'' faith. According to the Evangelists, the fact of the empty grave created no belief in the Resur- rection in the case either of Mary Magdalene, or of the women, or of St. Peter. The only exception, and tiiat under conditions of peculiar reticence and reserve, was St. John.
' Thus the oft repeated expression that the faith of the Chris- tian Church is founded on an empty grave is one which re- quires explanation. The Easter faith did not really spring from the empty grave, but from the self-manifestation of the risen Lord ' (S. Simpson, Our Lord's Resurrection, p. 103). .
6. The locality of the appearances. — The nar- ratives present us with a double series of mani- festations of the Risen Lord, distinguished by locality : the Judsean series and the Galilsean series.
(1) Any true criticism should start from the data of the original Mark. According to this (16^), not only did the women visit the grave on Easter Day and therefore were still present in Jerusalem, but the message sent to the disciples, ' He goeth before you into Galilee,' implies the presence of the disciples also in Jerusalem on that day. Accordingly the theory that ' they all for- sook him and fled' (14^") means fled direct home to Galilee, is refuted by the implications of the same Evangelist (cf. Rordam, Hibbert Journ., July 1905, p. 781). On the other hand, the direction 'he goeth before you into Galilee ' would seem to indi- cate that the lost conclusion of this Gospel must have contained a description of an appearance in Galilee. This may be true. But what we cannot determine is whether any Judaean appearance Avas also recorded.
(2) Mt. (28^) relates that the first appearance took place to the women near Jerusalem, and then adds a manifestation to the Eleven in Galilee.
(3) Lk. contains an exclusively Judsean series of manifestations. He ' knows nothing ' of appear- ances in Galilee. The significance of this must depend on St. Luke's worth as a historian. Har- nack has recently exhibited a profound mistrust of the Lukan account {Luke the Physician). St.
Mark, who is assumed to have recorded nothing but a Galilean series, is endorsed as correct. On the other hand, the high value of St. Luke as a historian is vigorously asserted by so critical a scholar as Ramsay, who came to the study greatly prejudiced against him. He places the author of the Acts ' among historians of the first rank ' {Paul the Traveller, pp. 4 fl"., 8, 14). Then, further, St. Luke cannot possibly, as St. Paul's companion, have been ignorant of tlie Jerusalem tradition. How could he conceivably have written a version of the Resurrection manifestation which the Jeru- salem Church could not receive ? It is quite poss- ible that he derived his information as to the 40 days at Jerusalem itself. St. Paul gives no locality, but the natural view is that he considered the first manifestation to have occurred in Jerusalem. Is it possible tliat St. Luke's exclusive interest in the Judrean series is due to the purpose for which his Gospel was written ? Writing for Greek be- lievers, it would be natural that he should con- centrate attention upon the Holy City. Is it not possible conversely that St. Matthew, as Pales- tinian and Jerusalemite, gives for that very reason the more distant and less known manifestations in Galilee ?
Harnack seems reduced to the singular position that the only evidence for the Galilajan series is St. Mark's conclusion, and that does not exist. For he lays all stress, for St. Mark's value, on St. Matthew as his copyist. He depreciates the independence of St. Luke and rejects the authority of St. John. Thus, after all, the testimony to a Galilaean series is reduced to a solitary witness whose testimony is lost.