[5094] Luke xxii. 22.
[5095] Ipse.
[5096] This is an argumentum ad hominem against Marcion for his cavil, which was considered above in book ii. chap. v.-viii. p. 300.
[5097] Obstitit peccaturo.
[5098] Si ignorabat. One would have expected "si non ignorabat," like the "si sciebat" of the next step in the argument.
[5099] The original of this not very clear sentence is: "Nam et Petrum præsumptorie aliquid elocutum negationi potius destinando zeloten deum tibi ostendit."
[5100] Luke xxii. 34 and 54-62.
[5101] Luke xxii. 47-49.
[5102] Isa. xxix. 13.
[5103] Luke xxii. 66, 67.
[5104] Oehler's admirable edition is also carefully printed for the most part, but surely his quæsisset must here be quæsissent.
[5105] Luke xxii. 67.
[5106] Supersedit ostendere.
[5107] i.e., not to answer that question of theirs. This seems to be the force of the perfect tense, "occultasse se."
[5108] He makes Jesus stretch forth His hand, porrigens manum inquit.
[5109] Luke xxii. 69.
[5110] Dan. vii. 13.
[5111] Ps. cx. 1.
[5112] Luke xxii. 70.
[5113] Luke xxii. 70.
[5114] Or does he suppose that they repeated this same question twice? His words are, "dum rursus interrogant."
[5115] Either, "Art thou," or, "Thou art, then, the Son of God."
[5116] Oblique.
[5117] Ut, quia...sic senserunt.
[5118] Aperte.
[5119] Æque ita et ille confirmative respondit.
[5120] Ut perseveraverint in eo quod pronuntiatio sapiebat....See Luke xxii. 71.
Chapter XLII.--Other Incidents of the Passion Minutely Compared with Prophecy. Pilate and Herod. Barabbas Preferred to Jesus. Details of the Crucifixion. The Earthquake and the Mid-Day Darkness. All Wonderfully Foretold in the Scriptures of the Creator. Christ's Giving Up the Ghost No Evidence of Marcion's Docetic Opinions. In His Sepulture There is a Refutation Thereof.
For when He was brought before Pilate, they proceeded to urge Him with the serious charge [5121] , of declaring Himself to be Christ the King; [5122] that is, undoubtedly, as the Son of God, who was to sit at God's right hand. They would, however, have burdened Him [5123] with some other title, if they had been uncertain whether He had called Himself the Son of God--if He had not pronounced the words, "Ye say that I am," so as (to admit) that He was that which they said He was. Likewise, when Pirate asked Him, "Art thou Christ (the King)?" He answered, as He had before (to the Jewish council) [5124] "Thou sayest that I am" [5125] in order that He might not seem to have been driven by a fear of his power to give him a fuller answer. "And so the Lord hath stood on His trial." [5126] And he placed His people on their trial. The Lord Himself comes to a trial with "the elders and rulers of the people," as Isaiah predicted. [5127] And then He fulfilled all that had been written of His passion. At that time "the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain things; the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ." [5128] The heathen were Pilate and the Romans; the people were the tribes of Israel; the kings were represented in Herod, and the rulers in the chief priests. When, indeed, He was sent to Herod gratuitously [5129] by Pilate, [5130] the words of Hosea were accomplished, for he had prophesied of Christ: "And they shall carry Him bound as a present to the king." [5131] Herod was "exceeding glad" when he saw Jesus, but he heard not a word from Him. [5132] For, "as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth," [5133] because "the Lord had given to Him a disciplined tongue, that he might know how and when it behoved Him to speak" [5134] --even that "tongue which clove to His jaws," as the Psalm [5135] said it should, through His not speaking. Then Barabbas, the most abandoned criminal, is released, as if he were the innocent man; while the most righteous Christ is delivered to be put to death, as if he were the murderer. [5136] Moreover two malefactors are crucified around Him, in order that He might be reckoned amongst the transgressors. [5137] Although His raiment was, without doubt, parted among the soldiers, and partly distributed by lot, yet Marcion has erased it all (from his Gospel), [5138] for he had his eye upon the Psalm: "They parted my garments amongst them, and cast lots upon my vesture." [5139] You may as well take away the cross itself! But even then the Psalm is not silent concerning it: "They pierced my hands and my feet." [5140] Indeed, the details of the whole event are therein read: "Dogs compassed me about; the assembly of the wicked enclosed me around. All that looked upon me laughed me to scorn; they did shoot out their lips and shake their heads, (saying,) He hoped in God, let Him deliver Him." [5141] Of what use now is (your tampering with) the testimony of His garments? If you take it as a booty for your false Christ, still all the Psalm (compensates) the vesture of Christ. [5142] But, behold, the very elements are shaken. For their Lord was suffering. If, however, it was their enemy to whom all this injury was done, the heaven would have gleamed with light, the sun would have been even more radiant, and the day would have prolonged its course [5143] --gladly gazing at Marcion's Christ suspended on his gibbet! These proofs [5144] would still have been suitable for me, even if they had not been the subject of prophecy. Isaiah says: "I will clothe the heavens with blackness." [5145] This will be the day, concerning which Amos also writes: And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that the sun shall go down at noon and the earth shall be dark in the clear day." [5146] (At noon) [5147] the veil of the temple was rent" [5148] by the escape of the cherubim, [5149] which "left the daughter of Sion as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." [5150] With what constancy has He also, in Psalm xxx., laboured to present to us the very Christ! He calls with a loud voice to the Father, "Into Thine hands I commend my spirit," [5151] that even when dying He might expend His last breath in fulfilling the prophets. Having said this, He gave up the ghost." [5152] Who? Did the spirit [5153] give itself up; or the flesh the spirit? But the spirit could not have breathed itself out. That which breathes is one thing, that which is breathed is another. If the spirit is breathed it must needs be breathed by another. If, however, there had been nothing there but spirit, it would be said to have departed rather than expired. [5154] What, however, breathes out spirit but the flesh, which both breathes the spirit whilst it has it, and breathes it out when it loses it? Indeed, if it was not flesh (upon the cross), but a phantom [5155] of flesh (and [5156] a phantom is but spirit, and [5157] so the spirit breathed its own self out, and departed as it did so), no doubt the phantom departed, when the spirit which was the phantom departed: and so the phantom and the spirit disappeared together, and were nowhere to be seen. [5158] Nothing therefore remained upon the cross, nothing hung there, after "the giving up of the ghost;" [5159] there was nothing to beg of Pilate, nothing to take down from the cross, nothing to wrap in the linen, nothing to lay in the new sepulchre. [5160] Still it was not nothing [5161] that was there. What was there, then? If a phantom Christ was yet there. If Christ had departed, He had taken away the phantom also. The only shift left to the impudence of the heretics, is to admit that what remained there was the phantom of a phantom! But what if Joseph knew that it was a body which he treated with so much piety? [5162] That same Joseph "who had not consented" with the Jews in their crime? [5163] The "happy man who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful." [5164]
[5121] Onerare coeperunt.
[5122] "King Messiah;" legonta heauton Christon basilea einai, Luke xxiii. 1, 2.
[5123] Gravassent.
[5124] Proinde.
[5125] Luke xxiii. 3.
[5126] Constitutus est in judicio. The Septuagint is katastesetai eis krisin, "shall stand on His trial."
[5127] Isa. iii. 13, 14 (Septuagint).
[5128] Ps. ii. 1, 2.
[5129] Velut munus. This is a definition, in fact, of the xenium in the verse from Hosea. This xenion was the Roman lautia, "a state entertainment to distinguished foreigners in the city."
[5130] Luke xxiii. 7.
[5131] Hos. x. 6 (Sept. xenia to basilei).
[5132] Luke xxiii. 8, 9.
[5133] Isa. liii. 7.
[5134] Isa. l. 4 (Sept.).
[5135] Ps. xxii. 15.
[5136] Luke xxiii. 25.
[5137] Comp. Luke xxiii. 33 with Isa. liii. 12.
[5138] This remarkable suppression was made to escape the wonderful minuteness of the prophetic evidence to the details of Christ's death.
[5139] Ps. xxii. 18.
[5140] Ps. xxii. 16.
[5141] Ps. xxii. 16, 7, 8.
[5142] We append the original of these obscure sentences: "Quo jam testimonium vestimentorum? Habe falsi tui prædam; totus psalmus vestimenta sunt Christi." The general sense is apparent. If Marcion does suppress the details about Christ's garments at the cross, to escape the inconvenient proof they afford that Christ is the object of prophecies, yet there are so many other points of agreement between this wonderful Psalm and St. Luke's history of the crucifixion (not expunged, as it would seem, by the heretic), that they quite compensate for the loss of this passage about the garments (Oehler).
[5143] Comp. Josh. x. 13.
[5144] Argumenta.
[5145] Isa. l. 3.
[5146] Amos viii. 9.
[5147] Here you have the meaning of the sixth hour.
[5148] Luke xxiii. 45.
[5149] Ezek. xi. 22, 23.
[5150] Isa. i. 8.
[5151] Comp. Luke xxiii. 46 with Ps. xxxi. 5.
[5152] Luke xxiii. 46.
[5153] Spiritus: or "breath."
[5154] Expirasse: considered actively, "breathed out," in reference to the "expiravit" of the verse 46 above.
[5155] A sharp rebuke of Marcion's Docetism here follows.
[5156] Autem.
[5157] Autem.
[5158] Nusquam comparuit phantasma cum spiritu.
[5159] Post expirationem.
[5160] See these stages in Luke xxiii. 47-55.
[5161] Non nihil: "a something."
[5162] This argument is also used by Epiphanius to prove the reality of Christ's body, Hæres. xl. Confut. 74. The same writer also employs for the same purpose the incident of the women returning from the sepulchre, which Tertullian is going to adduce in his next chapter, Confut. 75 (Oehler).
[5163] Luke xxiii. 51.
[5164] Ps. i. 1.
Chapter XLIII.--Conclusions. Jesus as the Christ of the Creator Proved from the Events of the Last Chapter of St. Luke. The Pious Women at the Sepulchre. The Angels at the Resurrection. The Manifold Appearances of Christ After the Resurrection. His Mission of the Apostles Amongst All Nations. All Shown to Be in Accordance with the Wisdom of the Almighty Father, as Indicated in Prophecy. The Body of Christ After Death No Mere Phantom. Marcion's Manipulation of the Gospel on This Point.
It was very meet that the man who buried the Lord should thus be noticed in prophecy, and thenceforth be "blessed;" [5165] since prophecy does not omit the (pious) office of the women who resorted before day-break to the sepulchre with the spices which they had prepared. [5166] For of this incident it is said by Hosea: "To seek my face they will watch till day-light, saying unto me, Come, and let us return to the Lord: for He hath taken away, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up; after two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up." [5167] For who can refuse to believe that these words often revolved [5168] in the thought of those women between the sorrow of that desertion with which at present they seemed to themselves to have been smitten by the Lord, and the hope of the resurrection itself, by which they rightly supposed that all would be restored to them? But when "they found not the body (of the Lord Jesus)," [5169] "His sepulture was removed from the midst of them," [5170] according to the prophecy of Isaiah. "Two angels however, appeared there." [5171] For just so many honorary companions [5172] were required by the word of God, which usually prescribes "two witnesses." [5173] Moreover, the women, returning from the sepulchre, and from this vision of the angels, were foreseen by Isaiah, when he says, "Come, ye women, who return from the vision;" [5174] that is, "come," to report the resurrection of the Lord. It was well, however, that the unbelief of the disciples was so persistent, in order that to the last we might consistently maintain that Jesus revealed Himself to the disciples as none other than the Christ of the prophets. For as two of them were taking a walk, and when the Lord had joined their company, without its appearing that it was He, and whilst He dissembled His knowledge of what had just taken place, [5175] they say: "But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel," [5176] --meaning their own, that is, the Creator's Christ. So far had He been from declaring Himself to them as another Christ! They could not, however, deem Him to be the Christ of the Creator; nor, if He was so deemed by them, could He have tolerated this opinion concerning Himself, unless He were really He whom He was supposed to be. Otherwise He would actually be the author of error, and the prevaricator of truth, contrary to the character of the good God. But at no time even after His resurrection did He reveal Himself to them as any other than what, on their own showing, they had always thought Him to be. He pointedly [5177] reproached them: "O fools, and slow of heart in not believing that which He spake unto you." [5178] By saying this, He proves that He does not belong to the rival god, but to the same God. For the same thing was said by the angels to the women: "Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered up, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." [5179] "Must be delivered up;" and why, except that it was so written by God the Creator? He therefore upbraided them, because they were offended solely at His passion, and because they doubted of the truth of the resurrection which had been reported to them by the women, whereby (they showed that) they had not believed Him to have been the very same as they had thought Him to be. Wishing, therefore, to be believed by them in this wise, He declared Himself to be just what they had deemed Him to be--the Creator's Christ, the Redeemer of Israel. But as touching the reality of His body, what can be plainer? When they were doubting whether He were not a phantom--nay, were supposing that He was one--He says to them, "Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See [5180] my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; for a spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have." [5181] Now Marcion was unwilling to expunge from his Gospel some statements which even made against him--I suspect, on purpose, to have it in his power from the passages which he did not suppress, when he could have done so, either to deny that he had expunged anything, or else to justify his suppressions, if he made any. But he spares only such passages as he can subvert quite as well by explaining them away as by expunging them from the text. Thus, in the passage before us, he would have the words, "A spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have," so transposed, as to mean, "A spirit, such as ye see me to be, hath not bones;" that is to say, it is not the nature of a spirit to have bones. But what need of so tortuous a construction, when He might have simply said, "A spirit hath not bones, even as you observe that I have not?" Why, moreover, does He offer His hands and His feet for their examination--limbs which consist of bones--if He had no bones? Why, too, does He add, "Know that it is I myself," [5182] when they had before known Him to be corporeal? Else, if He were altogether a phantom, why did He upbraid them for supposing Him to be a phantom? But whilst they still believed not, He asked them for some meat, [5183] for the express purpose of showing them that He had teeth. [5184]