Note 104 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

Meanwhile, even admitting that this contradiction might be in some way or other removed, still, even without that express command which Luke mentions, the mere facts as narrated by him and his predecessor and successor, remain irreconcilable with the injunction which Jesus gives to the disciples in Matthew. For, asks the Fragmentist, if the disciples collectively twice saw him, spoke with him, touched him, and ate with him, in Jerusalem; how can it be that they must have had to take the long journey into Galilee in order to see him?104 The harmonists, it is true, boldly reply: when Jesus causes his disciples to be told that they will see him in Galilee, it is by no means said that they will see him nowhere else, still less that they will not see him in Jerusalem.105 But, the Fragmentist might rejoin, after his manner: as little as one who says to me, go to Rome, there you shall see the Pope, can mean that the Pope will indeed first come through my present place of residence, so as to be seen by me here, but afterwards I must yet go to Rome, in order to see him again there: so little would the angel in Matthew and Mark, if he had had any anticipation of the appearance in Jerusalem on the very same day, have said to the disciples: go into Galilee, there will Jesus show himself to you; but rather: be comforted, you shall yet see him here in Jerusalem before evening. Wherefore the reference to the more remote event, when there was one of the same kind close at hand? wherefore an appointment by means of the women, for the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, if the latter foresaw that he should on the same day personally speak with the disciples? With reason does the latest criticism insist on what Lessing had previously urged;106 namely, that no rational person would make an appointment with his friends through a third party for a joyful reunion at a distant place, if he were certain of seeing them repeatedly on the same day in their present locality.107 If thus the angel and Jesus himself, when they in the morning by means of the women directed the disciples to go into Galilee, cannot yet have known that he would show himself to them on the evening of the same day in and near Jerusalem: he must in the morning have still held the intention of going immediately into Galilee, but in the course of the day have embraced another purpose. According to Paulus,108 an indication of such an original intention is found in Luke, in the travelling of Jesus towards Emmaus, which lay in the direction of Galilee; while the reason for the alteration of plan is supposed by the same expositor, with whom in this instance Olshausen agrees,109 to have been the belief of the disciples, as more particularly manifested to Jesus on occasion of the journey to Emmaus. How so erroneous a calculation on the part of Jesus can consist with the orthodox view of his person, is Olshausen’s care; but even regarding him in a purely human character, there appears no sufficient reason for such a change of mind. Especially after Jesus had been recognised by the two disciples going to Emmaus, he might be certain that the testimony of the men would so accredit the assertion of the women, as to lead the disciples with at least a glimmering ray of faith and hope into Galilee. But in general, if a change of mind and a diversity of plan in Jesus before and after that change, really existed: why does no one Evangelist take any notice of such a retractation? Why does Luke speak as if he knew nothing of the original plan; Matthew, as if he knew nothing of a subsequent alteration; John, as if the principal theatre of the appearances of the risen Jesus had been Jerusalem, and he had only by way of supplement at length showed himself in Galilee? Lastly, why does Mark speak so as to make it evident that, having gathered the original direction to go into Galilee from Matthew, and the succeeding appearances in Jerusalem and its environs from Luke or elsewhere, he was unable, nor did he even make the attempt, in any way to reconcile them; but placed them together as he found them, rough hewn and contradictory.