Note 27 — Chapter V · THE ASCENSION.

Thus it is undeniable that the above Evangelists were ignorant of the ascension: but the conclusion of the most recent criticism, that this ignorance is a reproach to the first Evangelist as a sign of his unapostolic character,27 is the less in place here, because the event in question is rendered suspicious not merely by the silence of two Evangelists, but also by the want of agreement between those who narrate it. Mark is at variance with Luke, nay, Luke is at variance with himself. In the account of the former, it appears as if Jesus had ascended into heaven immediately from the meal in which he appeared to the eleven, consequently from out of a house in Jerusalem; for the phrases: he appeared with the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them—and he said—So then after the Lord had spoken unto them he was received up into heaven, etc., ἀνακειμένοις—ἐφανερώθη· καὶ ὠνείδισε—καὶ ἐ͂ιπεν—Ὁ μὲν οὖν κύριος, μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς, ἀνελήφθη κ.τ.λ. have an immediate dependence on each other, and it is only by violence that a change of place or a distinction of time can be introduced.28 Now an ascent into heaven directly out of a room is certainly not easy to imagine; hence Luke represents it as taking place in the open air. In his gospel he makes Jesus immediately before his ascension, lead out his disciples as far as Bethany ἕως εἰς Βηθανίαν, but in the Acts he places the scene on the mount called Olivet ὄρος τὸ καλούμενον ἐλαιῶνα; this, however, cannot be imputed to him as a contradiction, since Bethany lay in the neighbourhood of the mount of Olives.29 But there is a more important divergency in his statement of time; for in his gospel, as in Mark, we are left to infer that the ascension took place on the same day with the resurrection: whereas in the Acts it is expressly remarked, that the two events were separated by an interval of forty days. It has already been remarked that the latter determination of time must have come to the knowledge of Luke in the interim between the composition of the gospel and that of the Acts. The more numerous the narratives of appearances of the risen Jesus, and the more various the places to which they were assigned: the less would the short space of a day suffice for his life on earth after the resurrection; while the determination of the lengthened period which had become necessary to forty days precisely, had its foundation in the part which this number is known to have played in the Jewish, and already in the Christian legend. The people of Israel were forty years in the wilderness; Moses was forty days on mount Sinai; he and Elias fasted forty days; and Jesus himself previous to the temptation remained the same length of time without nourishment in the wilderness. As, then, all these mysterious intermediate states and periods of transition were determined by the number forty: this number presented itself as especially appropriate for the determination of the mysterious interval between the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.30