' He appeared to them in another form ' (iv iripg. Mop0»), says the Mk. App. of the manifestation to tlie two on the way to Emmaus. That the words mean only that to the two on the way to Emmaus He presented a different appearance from that to Mary Magdalene (possibly, as Alford suggests, through His dress being changed, giving the im- pression not now of a gardener or labourer at work, but rather of a traveller with his loins girt, shoes on feet, and statt"in hand) is altogether improbable. The natural interpretation of the words is that He appeared in a different form from that He had on earth, that some change had come over Him so that He did not look the same as when He was with them before the Passion (' ij.op(pri always signifies a form which truly and fully expresses the being which underlies it ' [H. A. A. Kennedy, in EGT, London, 1903, on Ph 2"]).
This is supported by the cumulative evidence of tlie narratives, the uniform testimony of which is that, while the same, some mysterious change had corae over His whole mode of existence. It is a change which attaches to all that we read in the Gospels of the appearances of Jesus. It was not only, as we have seen, that His risen body was no longer subject to ordinary phj-sical laws, but the manner of His intercourse with His disciples after His resurrection was altogether changed. His appearances were occasional. He appeared only when He willed to appear. There is a strange aloofness and reserve about His attitude to them. He is no longer their companion as He used to be ; He speaks of the time ' when I was yet with you ' (Lk 24"). Though He invites them to feel Him and see that they may be thus convinced that He was no phantasm or apparition, but indeed the Risen Jesus, He forbids Mary Magdalene to ' keep clinging to him' (Jn 20", /U?) ixov Utttov) so as to hold Him in possession. The prohibition of Jesus meant that the old earthly intercourse and rela- tions with His disciples which Mary wished to
resume could not be restored, that they were for ever past, and that their place was to be taken by a new and higher kind of fellowship, to be realized only when He had completed His earthly self- manifestation, and had ' ascended unto the I'ather' (Jn 20", oOttu yap amliifirjKa). For the present He is, in His intercourse with them, hovering between the old and the new in a transiticmal condition, combining the seemingly opposite qualities of the material and spiritual, embodied in another form.
This combination of two oppo.site sets of char- acteristics in the appearances of the Kisen Christ Weizsacker (Apust. Age'', i. 9-11) makes the basis of criticism of the credibility of the (Jospel accounts. They represent, he says, two ditieient layers of tradition. The apjiearances were in their earliest form purely spiritual or visional ; but, as time went on, the craving for external and palpable signs, combined with popular realistic ideas of a carnal Resurrection, led to a gradual materializing of the visions, and an endowing of the visional with physical attributes, thus over- laying history with legend. So Harnack and others hold that the idea of a bodily Resurrection was a form subsequently imposed on a more primary spiritual belief in the Lord's continued life. This overlaying of the Gospel representations by popular realistic conceptions was a process which history shows speedily manifested itself in the early Church. But the combination of con- trasted traits — the ' dual quality ' or double aspect of His appearances — is of the very essence of the Gospel accounts throughout, present in what Weizsacker terms the earlier layers of the tradi- tion as really as in the later. And if the Resurrec- tion be what it is uniformly represented in the narratives as being — not the simple reanimation of His mortal body which Harnack speaks of (Hist, of Dogma, i. 85 n.), a resuscitation and restoration to the former conditions of existence, but the entrance on a new order of life, then the combina- tion in the Gospel accounts of the appearances of apparently inconsistent aspects, so far from casting doubt on these accounts, is a strong evidence of their historical trustworthiness.
For such a conception of the mode of existence of the Risen Christ the disciples had absolutely no precedent. On the contrary, it was to them, as the records show, a most novel and strange idea for which they were unprepared, and which with diffi- culty they were persuaded to receive. It was opposed to both Jewish and Greek ideas on the subject. The Resurrection as it actually took place ' would be quite foreign to Jewish ideas, which embraced the continuance of the soul after death and the final resurrection of the body, but not a state of spiritual corporeity, far less, under condi- tions such as those described in the Gospels ' (Edersheim, LT* ii. 624). About the current Jewish conception of the Resurrection-Body there was little that was spiritual. ' The future body, as to material and organisation, was conceived as essentially of the same quality as the present' (F. W. Weber, Lehren des Talmud, Leipzig, 1S80, p. 353, quoted by Kennedy, St. Paul's Conceptions of the Last Things, p. 227). Xn Apoc. Bar. [e.g.