Note 174 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

When once the idea of a resurrection of Jesus had been formed in this manner, the great event could not be allowed to have happened so simply, but must be surrounded and embellished with all the pomp which the Jewish imagination furnished. The chief ornaments which stood at command for this purpose, were angels: hence these must open the grave of Jesus, must, after he had come forth from it, keep watch in the empty place, and deliver to the women, who (because without doubt women had had the first visions) must be the first to go to the grave, the tidings of what had happened. As it was Galilee where Jesus subsequently appeared to them, the journey of the disciples thither, which was nothing else than their return home, somewhat hastened by fear, was derived from the direction of an angel; nay, Jesus himself must already before his death, and, as Matthew too zealously adds, once more after the resurrection also, have enjoined this journey on the disciples. But the further these narratives were propagated by tradition, the more must the difference between the locality of the resurrection itself and the appearances of the risen one, be allowed to fall out of sight as inconvenient; and since the locality of the death and resurrection was not transferable, the appearances were gradually placed in the same locality as the resurrection,—in Jerusalem, which as the more brilliant theatre and the seat of the first Christian Church, was especially appropriate for them.174