Note 69 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

These difficulties in the present narrative of the first gospel have been felt to be so pressing, that it has been attempted to remove them by the supposition of interpolation;69 which has lately been moderated into the opinion, that while the anecdote did not indeed proceed from the Apostle Matthew himself it was not however added by a hand otherwise alien to our gospel, but was inserted by the Greek translator of the Hebrew Matthew.70 Against the former supposition the absence of all critical authority is decisive; the appeal of those who advance the other opinion to the unapostolic character of the anecdote, would not warrant its separation from the context of the main narrative, unless that narrative itself were already proved to be of apostolic origin; while the anecdote is so far from presenting any want of connexion with the rest, that, on the contrary, Paulus is right in his remark that an interpolator (or inserting translator) would scarcely have given himself the trouble to distribute his interpolation in three different places (xxvii. 62–66; xxviii. 4, 11–15), but would have compressed it into one passage, or at most two. Neither can the question be settled so cheaply as Olshausen imagines, when he concludes that the entire narrative is apostolic and correct, save that the Evangelist erred in representing the corruption of the guards as being resolved on in full council, whereas the affair was probably managed in secret by Caiaphas alone: as if this assembly of the council were the sole difficulty of the narrative, and as if, when errors had insinuated themselves in relation to this particular, they might not extend to others also.71