Note 75 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

It has been thought possible to reconcile the greater part of these divergencies by supposing, instead of one scene variously described, a multiplicity of different scenes; for which purpose the ordinary grammatical and other artifices of the harmonists were pressed into the service. That Mark might not contradict the σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης while it was yet dark of John, the apologists did not scruple to translate the words ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου by orituro sole;75 the contradiction between Matthew and the rest, when the former appears to say that the women saw the stone rolled away by the angel, seemed to be more easy of solution, not indeed by supposing, with Michaelis,76 that καὶ ἰδοὺ (and behold!) denotes a recurrence to a previous event, and that ἀπεκύλισε has the signification of a pluperfect (an expedient which has been justly combated by modern criticism in opposition to Lessing, who was inclined to admit it);77 but by understanding the ἦλθε v. 1 to express a yet unfinished progress of the women towards the grave, in which case the καὶ ἰδοὺ and what follows may, in accordance with its proper meaning, relate something that happened after the departure of the women from their home, but before their arrival at the grave.78 In relation to the number and the visit of the women, it was in the first place urged that even according to John, although he mentions only Mary Magdalene by name,—several women must have accompanied her to the grave, since he makes her say after her return to the two disciples: we know not where they have laid him;79 a plural, which certainly intimates the presence of other but unspecified persons, with whom Mary Magdalene, whether at the grave itself or on her return, had conversed on the subject before she came to the Apostles. Thus, it is said, Mary Magdalene went to the grave with the other women, more or fewer of whom are mentioned by the other Evangelists. As however she returned without having, like the other women, seen an angel, it is supposed that she ran back alone as soon as she saw the stone rolled away: which is accounted for by her impetuous temperament, she having been formerly a demoniac.80 While she hastened back to the city, the other women saw the appearances of which the synoptists speak.—To all it is maintained, the angels appeared within the grave; for the statement in Matthew that one sat outside on the stone, is only a pluperfect: when the women came he had already withdrawn into the sepulchre, and accordingly, after their conversation with him, the women are described as departing from the sepulchre, ἐξελθοῦσαι ἐκ τοῦ μνημείου (v. 8):81 in which observation it is only overlooked that between the first address of the angel and the above expression, there stands his invitation to the women to come with him into the grave and see the place where Jesus had lain. In relation to the difference that according to the two first Evangelists the women see only one angel, according to the third, two, even Calvin resorts to the miserable expedient of supposing a synecdoche, namely that all the Evangelists certainly knew of two angels, but Matthew and Mark mention only the one who acted as speaker. Others make different women see different appearances: some, of whom Matthew and Mark speak, seeing only one angel; the others, to whom Luke refers, and who came earlier or perhaps later than the above, seeing two;82 but Luke makes the same two Maries who, according to his predecessors, had seen only one angel, narrate to the Apostles an appearance of two angels. It is also said that the women returned in separate groups, so that Jesus might meet those of whom Matthew speaks without being seen by those of Luke; and though those of Mark at first tell no one from fear, the rest, and they themselves afterwards, might communicate what they had seen to the disciples.83—On hearing the report brought by several women, Peter, according to Luke, straightway goes to the grave, finds it empty and turns away wondering. But according to the hypothesis which we are now detailing, Mary Magdalene had run back a considerable time before the other women, and had brought with her to the grave Peter and John. Thus Peter, first on hearing the imperfect intelligence of Mary Magdalene that the grave was empty, must have gone thither with John; and subsequently, on the account of the angelic appearance brought by the other women, he must have gone a second time alone: in which case it would be particularly surprising that while his companion arrived at a belief in the resurrection of Jesus on the very first visit, he himself had not attained further than wonder even on the second. Besides, as the Fragmentist has already ably shown, the narrative in the third gospel of the visit of Peter alone, and that in the fourth of the visit of Peter and John, are so strikingly similar even in words,84 that the majority of commentators regard them as referring to a single visit, Luke having only omitted to notice the companion of Peter: in support of which opinion they can appeal to Luke xxiv. 24. But if the visit of the two Apostles, occasioned by the return of Mary Magdalene, be one and the same with that occasioned by the return of the other women, then the return of the women is also not a double one; if however they returned in company with each other, we have a contradiction. After the two Apostles are returned without having seen an angel, Mary, who remains behind, as she looks into the grave, all at once sees two. What a strange playing at hide and seek must there have been on the part of the angels, according to the harmonistic combination of these narratives! First only one shows himself to one group of women, to another group two show themselves; both forthwith conceal themselves from the disciples; but after their departure both again become visible. To remove these intermissions Paulus has placed the appearance presented to Mary Magdalene before the arrival of the two disciples: but by this violent transposition of the order chosen by the narrator, he has only confessed the impossibility of thus incorporating the various Evangelists with each other. Hereupon, as Mary Magdalene raises herself from looking into the grave and turns round, she sees Jesus standing behind her. According to Matthew, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, when they had already set out on their way to the city, consequently when they were at some distance from the grave. Thus Jesus would have first appeared to Mary Magdalene alone, close to the grave, and a second time when she was on her way from thence, in the company of another woman. In order to avoid the want of purpose attaching to the repetition of an appearance of Jesus after so short an interval, commentators have here called in the above supposition, that Mary Magdalene had previously separated herself from the women of whom Matthew speaks:85 but in that case, since Matthew has besides Mary Magdalene only the other Mary, it would have been only one woman to whom Jesus appeared on the way from the grave: whereas Matthew throughout speaks of several (ἀπήντησεν αὐταῖς).