Note 209 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesus speaks to the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209 But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do (John v. 28; comp. 1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210 but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her, Weep not.211 But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212 spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words: νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι, Young man, I say unto thee arise! resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213