Note 254 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

If it is thus proved that all the three evangelical histories of resuscitations are rendered more or less doubtful by negative reasons: all that is now wanting to us is positive proof, that the tradition of Jesus having raised the dead might easily be formed without historical foundation. According to rabbinical,254 as well as New Testament passages (e.g. John v. 28 f., vi. 40, 44; 1 Cor. xv.; 1 Thess. iv. 16), the resuscitation of the dead was expected of the Messiah at his coming. Now the παρουσία, the appearance of the Messiah Jesus on earth, was in the view of the early church broken by his death into two parts; the first comprised his preparatory appearance, which began with his human birth, and ended with the resurrection and ascension; the second was to commence with his future advent on the clouds of heaven, in order to open the αἰὼν μέλλων, the age to come. As the first appearance of Jesus had wanted the glory and majesty expected in the Messiah, the great demonstrations of messianic power, and in particular the general resurrection of the dead, were assigned to his second, and as yet future appearance on earth. Nevertheless, as an immediate pledge of what was to be anticipated, even in the first advent some fore-splendours of the second must have been visible in single instances; Jesus must, even in his first advent, by awaking some of the dead, have guaranteed his authority one day to awake all the dead; he must, when questioned as to his messiahship, have been able to adduce among other criteria the fact that the dead were raised up by him (Matt. xi. 5), and he must have imparted the same power to his disciples (Matt. xi. 8, comp. Acts ix. 40, xx. 10); but especially as a close prefiguration of the hour in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth (John v. 28 f.), he must have cried with a loud voice, Come forth! to one who had lain in the grave four days (John xi. 17, 43). For the origination of detailed narratives of single resuscitations, there lay, besides, the most appropriate types in the Old Testament. The prophets Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings xvii. 17 ff.; 2 Kings iv. 18 ff.) had awaked the dead, and to these instances Jewish writings appealed as a type of the messianic time.255 The object of the resuscitation was with both these prophets a child, but a boy, while in the narrative common to the synoptists we have a girl; the two prophets revived him while he lay on the bed, as Jesus does the daughter of Jairus; both entered alone into the chamber of death, as Jesus excludes all save a few confidential friends; only, as it is fitting, the Messiah needs not the laborious manipulations by which the prophets attained their object. Elijah in particular raised the son of a widow, as Jesus did at Nain; he met the widow of Zarephath at the gate (but before the death of her son) as Jesus met the widow of Nain, under the gate of the city (after the death of her son); lastly, it is in both instances told in the same words how the miracle-worker restored the son to the mother.256 Even one already laid in his grave, like Lazarus, was restored to life by the prophet Elisha; with this difference, however, that the prophet himself had been long dead, and the contact of his bones reanimated a corpse which was accidentally thrown upon them (2 Kings xiii. 21). There is yet another point of similarity between the resuscitations of the dead in the Old Testament and that of Lazarus; it is that Jesus, while in his former resuscitation he utters the authoritative word without any preliminary, in that of Lazarus offers a prayer to God, as Elisha, and more particularly Elijah, are said to have done. While Paulus extends to these narratives in the Old Testament, the natural explanation which he has applied to those in the New, theologians of more enlarged views have long ago remarked, that the resurrections in the New Testament are nothing more than mythi, which had their origin in the tendency of the early Christian church, to make her Messiah agree with the type of the prophets, and with the messianic ideal.257