Note 42 — Chapter I · RELATION OF JESUS TO THE IDEA OF A SUFFERING AND DYING MESSIAH; HIS DISCOURSES ON HIS DEATH, RESURRECTION, AND SECOND ADVENT.

It has been attempted to blunt the edge of this dilemma, by attributing to the above predictions, not the literal sense, that the deceased Jesus would return out of the grave, but only the figurative sense that his doctrine and cause, after having been apparently crushed, would again expand and flourish.42 As the Old Testament prophets, it was said, represent the restoration of the Israelitish people to renewed prosperity, under the image of a resurrection from the dead (Isa. xxvi. 19; Ezek. xxxvii.); as they mark the short interval within which, under certain conditions, this turn of things was to be expected, by the expression: in two or three days will Jehovah revive the smitten one, and raise the dead (Hos. vi. 2),43 a statement of time which Jesus also uses indefinitely for a short interval (Luke xiii. 32): so by the declaration that he will rise on the third day after his death, τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἀναστῆναι, he intends to say no more than that even though he may succumb to the power of his enemies and be put to death, still the work which he has begun will not come to an end, but will in a short time go forward with a fresh impetus. These merely figurative modes of speaking adopted by Jesus, the apostles, after Jesus had actually risen in the body, understood literally, and regarded them as prophecies of his personal resurrection. Now that in the prophetic passages adduced, the expressions ‏קוּם חָיָה‎ and ‏הֵקִיץ‎ have only the alleged figurative sense, is true; but these are passages the whole tenor of which is figurative, and in which, in particular, the depression and death which precede the revivification are themselves to be understood only in a figurative sense. Here, on the contrary, all the foregoing expressions: παραδίδοσθαι, κατακρίνεσθαι, σταυροῦσθαι, ἀποκτείνεσθαι κ.τ.λ. (to be delivered, condemned, crucified, killed, etc.) are to be understood literally; hence all at once, with the words ἐγερθῆναι and ἀναστῆναι, to enter on a figurative meaning, would be an unprecedented abruptness of transition; not to mention that passages such as Matt. xxvi. 32, where Jesus says: After I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee, μετὰ τὸ ἐγερθηναί με προάξω ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν, can have no meaning at all unless ἐγείρεσθαι be understood literally. In this closely consecutive series of expressions, which must be taken in a purely literal sense, there is then no warrant, and even no inducement, to understand the statement of time which is connected with them, otherwise than also literally, and in its strictly etymological meaning. Thus if Jesus really used these words, and in the same connexion in which they are given by the Evangelists, he cannot have meant to announce by them merely the speedy victory of his cause; his meaning must have been, that he himself would return to life in three days after his violent death.44