Note 13 — Chapter V · THE ASCENSION.

This interpretation of the opinion of the fourth Evangelist concerning the impartation of the Spirit to the disciples, is attested as the correct one by the fact, that it throws unexpected light on an obscurity in his gospel with respect to which we were previously unable to come to a decision. In relation to the farewell discourses of Jesus, it was not possible to settle the dispute, whether what Jesus there says of his return is to be referred to the days of his resurrection, or to the outpouring of the Spirit, because the description of that return as a seeing again seemed to speak as decidedly for the former, as the observation that in that time they would no longer ask him anything, and would understand him fully, for the latter: a dispute which is decided in the most welcome manner, if it can be shown to be the opinion of the narrator that the impartation of the Spirit fell in the days of the resurrection.13 At first indeed it might be thought, that this impartation, especially as in John it is connected with the formal appointment of his disciples as his envoys, and the communication of the authority to remit and retain sins (comp. Matt. xviii. 18), would have been more appropriate at the close than the commencement of the appearances of the risen Jesus, and in a full assembly of the Apostles than in one from which Thomas was absent; but on this account to suppose with Olshausen that the Evangelist for the sake of brevity merely appends the impartation of the Spirit to the first appearance, though it really belonged to a later interview, is an inadmissible violence; and we must rather allow, that the author of the fourth gospel regarded this first appearance of Jesus as the principal one, and the one eight days later as merely supernumerary in favour of Thomas. The appearance chap. xxi. is also a supplement, which the author, when he wrote his gospel, either had not known, or at least did not recollect.