Note 63 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
The account given by Luke of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus is contained in the last chapter, chap. 24:53. According to this account, by no men was Jesus seen in the interval between those two events, besides the eleven Apostles and a few others, all together not more than enough, to sit down together at meat, in one of the houses of a village. Luke 25:9, 28, 29, 30. Number of the occasions on which Jesus was seen by the Apostles, two: the company the same without addition, and both occasions having place within twenty-four hours. Between these two occasions it is that Paul sticks in the one of his own invention, in which Jesus was seen by above five hundred brethren at once.
Point-blank on this head is the contradiction given to this story of Paul's, by his own attendant and historiographer: namely, in the account put into the mouth of Peter, speaking to Centurion Cornelius, Acts 10:39 to 42. Expressly is it there said, ver. 40, "Him" (Jesus) "God raised up the third day, and showed him openly;—Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." When in the year 62, or some posterior year, the author of the Acts was writing his history, nothing, it will be inferred, did he know of the contradictory account given by his hero, in writing in a letter written in the year 57.