Note 242 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242 Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early as iii. 7, or 20, leaped from Luke vi. 12 (17) to Matt. xii. 15; and only at iv. 35 (21 ff.) returns to Luke viii. 22 (16 ff.);243 thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples, μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244 lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.