Note 89 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

From the number of those accounts concerning the first intelligence of the resurrection of Jesus which have any claim to the rank of autoptical testimonies, modern criticism has excluded that of the first gospel;89 and we cannot, as in other instances, complain of this disfavour as an injustice. For in many respects the narrative of the first gospel here betrays itself to have been carried a step farther in traditional development than that of the other gospels. First, that the miraculous opening of the grave is seen by the women—if indeed Matthew intends to say this—could scarcely, had it really been the case, have been so entirely lost from remembrance as it is in the other Evangelists, but might very well be formed gradually in tradition; further, that the rolling away of the stone was effected by the angel, evidently rests only on the combination of one who did not know any better means of answering the question, how the great stone was removed from the grave, and the guards taken out of the way, than to use for both purposes the angel presented to him in the current narratives of the appearance witnessed by the women; to which he added the earthquake as a further embellishment of the scene. But besides this, there is in the narrative of Matthew yet another trait, which has anything but an historical aspect. After the angel has already announced the resurrection of Jesus to the women, and charged them to deliver to the disciples the message that they should go into Galilee, where they would see the risen one: Jesus himself meets them and repeats the message which they are to deliver to the disciples. This is a singular superfluity. Jesus had nothing to add to the purport of the message which the angel had given to the women; hence he could only wish to confirm it and render it more authentic. But to the women it needed no further confirmation, for they were already filled with great joy by the tidings of the angel, and thus were believing; while for the disciples even that confirmation did not suffice, for they remained incredulous even to the account of those who assured them that they had seen Jesus, until they had seen him themselves. Thus it appears that two different narrations, as to the first news of the resurrection, have here become entangled with each other; the one representing angels, the other Jesus himself, as the medium by which the women were informed of the event and sent with a message to the disciples:—the latter evidently the later tradition.