The difi'erent interests or points of view of the Evangelists will determine the perspective in which the facts are viewed, and the diBerent aspects of the facts emphasized. Matthew, e.g., is occupied throughout his Gospel with the Galilajan ministry of Jesus as that in which he beheld the fullilment of Jewish prophecy. So in his account of the appearances he concentrates on the meetiqg in Galilee with its great commission, ' Go ye there- fore, and make disciples of all the nations.' To this as his objective he hastens on without pausing on intermediate events. While Matthew concen- trates on the meeting in Galilee, Luke is chietly interested in the appearances in Jerusalem on the Resurrection day as leading up to the promise of the Spirit and the Ascension at Bethany, and ignores the appearances in Galilee. ' We do the
Evangelists injustice,' therefore, ' when we regard them as witnesses in a court of law, who have been appointed to prove a fact, and who have deliber- ately taken it in hand to do so' (W. Milligau, The liesurrection of our Lord, p. 57). Not that the narratives are not evidence, but they are not put forward as juesenting the complete evidence. There is not the least ground for su)iposing that the Evangelists told us all they knew, nor yet the least necessity that they should have done so. They recorded what was sufficient for their pur- pose. To bring out the meaning or signilicance of the appearances to the disciples, they may have condensed into a single representative or typical scene what they knew to be dillerent appearances.
Thus we find that even so conservative a critic as Denney counts it 'not in the least improbable . . . that in the great appearing of Jesus to the eleven recorded in all the gospels (Mt 2S"'-™, Mk IG'-"-'*, Lk 24*'-™ Jn 20"'-^) we have not the literal record of what took place on a single occasion, but the condensation into a representative .scene of all that the appearances of Jesus to His disciples meant. . . . And if Jesus nevertheless had in point of fact appeared in diilereut jilaces, we can understand how one evangelist should put this typical scene in Galilee and another in Jerusalem. When we see what is being done we should rather say that both are right than that either is wrong ' {Jesus and the Gospel, p. 155 f.). The main thing in all the narratives is not the details of time or place or circumstances — in regard to these a certain confusion may remain through uiiassiiuilated and unharmonized traditions — but the fact of the ap- pearing of the Risen Christ to His disciples, together with the significance of the fact. And to establish tliis, to justify and sustain the faith that Jesus is risen from the dead, the narratives, though fragmentary and in no case presenting an orderly statement of the whole facts, supply sufficient evidence. So that Saiulay, while recog- nizing to the full the difficulties in the narratives, yet maintains that 'no difficulty of weaving the separate incidents into an orderly well-compacted narrative can impugn the unanimous belief of the Church which lies behind them, that the Ijord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to the disciples' (art. 'Jesus Christ' in HDB ii. 641»).
This enables us also to answer the other objec- tion brought against the apostolic narratives — that the appearances recorded were only to the circle of His disciples, to ' interested parties,' and, there- fore, that the evidence presented is not of a kind to satisfy the demands of scientific historical in- quiry. This objection, urged, as we have seen above, by Strauss and Renan, is one which occurs already in Celsus' criticism of Christianity written about the end of the 2nd century. ' After these points,' says Origen, taking up Cidsus' objections one by one, ' Celsus proceeds to bring against the Gospel narratives a cliarge which is not to be lightly passed over, viz. that if Jesus desired to convince men that He was really divine He ought to have appeared to those who had ill-treated Him, and to him who had condemned Him, and to men generally (SXus Trdai.i')' (c. Cels. ii. 03). The fact to which this criticism refers is, it should be noted, explicitly acknowledged by the apostles. ' Him,' says Peter, ' God raised on the third day, ami allowed him to be seen not by all the People but by witnesses whom God had previously .selected, by us who ate and drank with him after his resur- rection from the dead' (Ac 10*"'- [Mollatt]).
The evidence was designed not to satisfy ' scien- tific experts,' but to evoke and support belief in the Resnrrec^tion on the [lart of those ' whom God had previously selected ' that they might be ' witnesses '
34-t llESUKRECTION OF CUKIST
KESURRECTION OF CHRIST
to others. If tlie fiU't to be testified to were the manner of the Resurrection and the exact sequence uf the physical changes that accompanied it, sup- posing this capable of description in scientilic terms, then, no doubt, the disciples were not qualified witnesses. They were born 1900 years too soon for this. Hut 'if the essential truth to be con- veyed was the personal identity of Him who died and was buried with Him who was raised and appeared, what evidence is to be com|)ared with that of intimate personal friends (' (Cnmbriclqc Tlieol. Essays, p. 323). To impugn their witness as not impartial is to forget what the narratives uniformly testify, that so far from being predis- posed to believe in the fact, their predisposition was all the other way.