ii. The documentary evidence.— With this fundamental and primary evidence for the Resur- rection before us, we pass to consider what is commonly called ' the historical evidence,' that presented in the NT documents or narratives.
1. The witness of St. Paul. — The earliest docu- mentary evidence to the fact of the resurrection of Christ is that presented in the writings of St. Paul.
(a) The empty grave. — St. Paul is sometimes appealed to in support of a purely spiritual Resur- rection, as teaching that it was the spirit of Clirist which rose into new life, and his view is contrasted with the ' more materialized ' representation of the Gospels. The empty tomb and the resurrection of the Body were, it is alleged, no part of St. Paul's teaching, but a later development. Schmiedel, e.g., supports his contention of the unhistorical character of the evidence for the empty tomb by reference to ' the silence of Paul . . . — a sUence which would be wliolly inexplicable were the story true' {EBi iv. 4UG6). Weizsiicker urges that St. Paul says nothing of what happened at tlie grave because he knew nothing of it (Apost. Age-, London, 1897-99, i. -5). And Harnack, while think- ing it ' probable ' that the Apostle knew of the message about the empty grave, holds that ' we cannot be quite certain about it.' In any case, ' certain it is that what he and the disciples regarded as all-important was not the state in which the grave was found, but Christ's appearances' (What is Christianity?, Eng. tr.^, London, 1904, p. 164 f.). What are the facts? In the first Epistle of his which has come down to us, which is also the first extant NT writing — IThess. — written from Corinth about A.D. 51, St. Paul simply asserts the fact of the Resurrection without defining its nature. He recalls liow the Thessalonians ' turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus' (!"•); 'if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,' etc. (4"). The fact is referred to incidentally as if it were a matter unquestioned in the Church. This is St. Paul's general attitude in his Epistles, and it is an attitude even more significant as an attestation of the Resurrection than any more direct evidence.
But St. Paul's conception of the nature of the fact is plainly indicated by the more explicit refer- ence in 1 Co 15, written about the year A.D. 55 (see Sanday, in EBi i. 904), i.e., about twenty-five years after the Resurrection. Here St. Paul re- minds the Corinthians of the fundamental facts of his preaching and of their faith — 'tlie gospel which I preached unto you ... by which also ye are saved ' (v."-). In this earliest extant narrative of the facts, which is therefore the primary docu- ment in regard to the Resurrection, St. Paul's words are: 'For I delivered unto you first of all (iv irpuTois, 'first and foremost' [Motlatt]) that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures ; and that he was buried ; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to thescriptures; and thatheappeared to Cephas,' etc. (v.^*-). In this outline statement of the substance of his preaching in Corinth the following points of importance are to be noted :
(1) St. Paul explicitly refers to a rising ' on the third day,' which was distinct from and prepara- tory to tlie appearances. Thisevent on the third day, as concrete an event as the death of Jesus, is set
over against the burial, and is presented as the reversal of it, thus making clear what is meant by the fact. If St. Paul meant simply a spiritual rosyrrection, a manifestation of the spirit of Jesus from heaven, he need have said no more than that Jesus died and on the third day appeared to the disciples. The clause ' and that he was buried ' not merely emphasizes the full reality of His death, but points to the grave as the state from which the Resurrection took place. ' Why mention His burial unless it was His bodily resurrection he [Paul] had in view ? ' (Dods, in Supernatural Chris- tianity, p. 103). Who ever heard of a spirit being buried? Even Schmiedel somewhat inconsistently admits this : ' That Jesus was buried and that " he has been raised" (1 Co 15*) cannot be affirmed by any one who has not the reanimation of the body in mind ' (EBi iv. 4059). So in the other two pas- sages in St. Paul's writings where reference is made to the burial of our Lord (Ro &\ Col 2'=). In both, the Resurrection is presented as relative to the burial and as the reversal of it, showing that even if St. Paul does not explicitly mention the empty grave it was the bodily resurrection he had in view. This is borne out by the whole line of the Apostle's argument in 1 Co 15. St. Paul is replying to those in Corinth who denied, not the continued spiritual existence of the Christian after death, but the possibility of his bodily resurrection, on the ground that they could not conceive how the body could rise ; and he does so by setting the resurrection of Christian believers, the quickening of their mortal bodies (v.''-'^- ), in closest and organic connexion with the resurrection of Christ as ' the firstfruits of them that are asleep ' (v.-"). Here, obviously, only a reference to the bodily resurrection of our Lord would have been relevant. This is the concep- tion of the Resurrection which permeates his Epistles (e.g., Ro 6'"- 8", 2 Co 5'■^ Ph 3^'), and it is reflected in the speeches of St. Paul reported in the Acts (132"- 17^1 26'^). Such a conception of the Resurrection, indeed, was required by the whole context of Pauline thought on the matter. For St. Paul, as for the entire Jewish Christian com- munity, sin and physical death stood in organic connexion with each other. Hence Christ's triumph over sin involved for them His final and complete victory over the death not only of the soul but of the body as well.