Note 16 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

The last miraculous sign at the death of Jesus, likewise peculiar to the first Evangelist, is the opening of the graves, the resurrection of many dead persons, and their appearance in Jerusalem. To render this incident conceivable is a matter of unusual difficulty. It is neither in itself clear how it is supposed to have fared with these ancient Hebrew saints, ἁγίοις,16 after their resurrection;17 nor is anything satisfactory to be discovered concerning a possible object for so extraordinary a dispensation.18 Purely in the resuscitated themselves the object cannot apparently have lain, for had it been so, there is no conceivable ground why they should be all awaked precisely in the moment of the death of Jesus, and not each at the period prescribed by the course of his own development. But if the conviction of others was the object, this was still less attained than in the miracle of the rending of the veil, for not only is any appeal to the apparition of the saints totally wanting in the apostolic epistles and discourses, but also among the Evangelists, Matthew is the only one by whom it is recorded. A special difficulty arises from the position which the determination of time: after his resurrection, μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ, occupies between the apparently consecutive stages of the event. For if we connect these words with what precedes, and thus suppose that at the moment of the death of Jesus, the deceased saints were only reanimated, and did not come out of their graves until after his resurrection,—this would have been a torment for the damned rather than a guerdon for the holy; if, on the contrary, we unite that determination of time to what follows, and thus interpret the Evangelist’s meaning to be, that the resuscitated saints did indeed come out of their graves immediately on their being reanimated at the moment that Jesus died, but did not go into the city until after his resurrection,—any reason for the latter particular is sought in vain. It is but an inartificial way of avoiding these difficulties to pronounce the whole passage an interpolation, without any critical grounds for such a decision.19 A more dexterous course is pursued by the rationalistic expositors, when they endeavour to subtract the miraculous from the event, and by this means indirectly to remove the other difficulties. Here, as in relation to the rending of the veil, the earthquake is regarded as the chief agent: this, it is said, laid open several tombs, particularly those of some prophets, which were found empty, because the bodies had either been removed by the shock, or become decomposed, or fallen a prey to wild beasts. After the resurrection of Jesus, those who were friendly to him in Jerusalem being filled with thoughts of resurrection from the dead, these thoughts, together with the circumstance of the graves being found empty, excited in them dreams and visions in which they believed that they beheld the pious ancestors who had been interred in those graves.20 But the fact of the graves being found empty would scarcely, even united with the news of the resurrection of Jesus, have sufficed to produce such visions, unless there had previously prevailed among the Jews the expectation that the Messiah would recall to life the departed saints of Israel. If however this expectation existed, it would more probably give birth to the legend of a resurrection of the saints coincident with the death of Jesus than to dreams; whence Hase wisely discards the supposition of dreams, and attempts to find a sufficient explanation of the narrative in the emptiness of the graves on the one hand, and the above Jewish expectation on the other.21 But on a nearer view it appears that if once this Jewish idea existed there needed no real opening of the graves in order to give rise to such a mythus: accordingly Schneckenburger has left the emptiness of the graves out of his calculation.22 When, however, he yet speaks of visionary appearances which were seen by the adherents of Jesus in Jerusalem, under the excitement produced by his resurrection, he is not less inconsequent than Hase, when he omits the dreams and yet retains the laying open of the graves; for these two particulars being connected as cause and effect, if one of them be renounced as unhistorical so also must the other.