Note 101 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

The first contradiction which presents itself more immediately between Matthew and Luke, has by no one been more pointedly exhibited than by the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist. If, he writes, it be true, as Luke says, that Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem on the day of his resurrection, and commanded them to remain there, and not to depart thence until Pentecost: then is it false that he commanded them within the same period to journey into Galilee, that he might appear to them there, and vice versâ.101 The harmonists indeed affected to regard this objection as unimportant, and only remarked briefly, that the injunction to remain in a city was not equivalent to an arrest, and did not exclude walks and excursions in the neighbourhood; and that Jesus merely forbade the removal of residence from Jerusalem, and the going out into all the world to preach the gospel, before the given term should arrive.102 But the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee is not a mere walk, but the longest expedition which the Jew could make within the limits of his own country; as little was it an excursion for the apostles, but rather a return to their home: while what Jesus intended to prohibit to the disciples in that injunction cannot have been the going out into all the world to preach the gospel, since they would have no impulse to do this before the outpouring of the Spirit; nor can it have been the removal of residence from Jerusalem, since they were there only as strangers visiting at the feast: rather Jesus must have meant to deter them from that very journey which it was the most natural for them to take, i.e. from the return to their native province Galilee, after the expiration of the feast days. Besides this—and even Michaelis confesses himself obliged to wonder here—if Luke does not mean by that prohibition of Jesus to exclude the journey into Galilee, why is it that he alludes to this by no single word? and in like manner, if Matthew knew that his direction to go into Galilee was consistent with the command to remain in the metropolis, why has he omitted the latter, together with the appearances in Jerusalem? This is certainly a plain proof that the accounts of the two Evangelists are based on a different idea as to the theatre on which the risen Jesus appeared.