PROBLEMS OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Problems of Early Christianity
PART ONE: EARLY CHRISTIANITY
PART TWO: "RAISED FROM THE DEAD"
AMAL KIRAN (K. D. SETHNA)
The Integral Life Foundation
P.O. Box 239
Waterford CT. 06385 USA
First published 1998
(Typeset in 10.5/13 Palatino)
© Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna)
Published by
The Integral Life Foundation, U.S.A.
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry
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Part One
EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Some Reflections on their Contemporaneity
December 25, year 0 or else 1 (authorities differ on the point): this has been observed for centuries as the date of the birth of Jesus. The historical situation of it has been highlighted from two statements in the New Testament. The Gospel of Matthew (2:1) tells us that "Jesus was born in Judaea, in the days of Herod the king..." The Gospel of Luke (2:1-5) has the information that Jesus' mother Mary, when she was "great with child" (believed to be by the Holy Ghost's "overshadowing") was taken by her husband Joseph to Bethlehem, which was "his own city", for both of them to be taxed along with "all the world" according to "a decree from Caesar Augustus", which was passed "when Cyrenius was governor of Syria".
By our present computation of the Christian era both these statements are inaccurate - except for the broad contemporaneity of Jesus and Augustus and for the fact that Jesus' birthplace Bethlehem fell within the empire - termed at that time "all the world" - of the latter whose reign covered 30 B.C.-14 A.D. by our present computation and who therefore was responsible for the appointment not only of "Cyrenius"; the Bible's name for the Roman "Quirinius", but also of Herod I to their respective posts. In two points the data of Matthew and Luke are faulty by the present calendar. Herod I has been found to have died in 4 B.C. So Jesus could not have been born after that year. The census under Quirinius, by the same calendar, took place in 6 A.D. So, if this census synchronised with the year of Jesus' birth, Jesus could not have been born before that year. A bewildering dilemma is thus created.
To avoid it we must convict Luke of a half-error. Half because the linkage of Jesus' birth with Quirinius's census is wrong and yet the linkage of this event with Quirinius's governorship of Syria could be right because a fragment of a Roman inscription discovered at Antioch has revealed that Quirinius had come as the legate of Augustus to the Near
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East once before 6 A.D. on a military assignment and had established his seat of government as well as his headquarters in Syria between 10 and 7 B.C.1 So Jesus' birth may be dated to this interval with 7 B.C. as the latest possibility. This dating would synchronise it with Herod's reign on the one hand and "Cyrenius"'s governorship on the other. The paradox of being "before Christ" arises simply from our current confused calendar which was fixed in the sixth century by the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus ("Dionysius the Dwarf") who made a number of mistakes and miscalculations.
7 B.C. is particularly appropriate if we are to credit the legend of the unusual star which the Magi, the Wise Men of the East, are said by Matthew (2:1-2) to have followed as a guide towards the one "who is born king of the Jews". The visit of the Magi may not be history, but, as Kepler calculated in 1603, there was indeed an abnormal phenomenon in the night-sky in 7 B.C. The planets Jupiter and Saturn were in "conjunction" -that is, appeared very close to each other - in the constellation Pisces in a markedly visible manner in the sky of the Mediterranean area three times in that year: on May 29, October 3 and December 4.2 On the third occasion they would seem to have dissolved into one great brilliant star.3 P. Schnabel, the German scholar, deciphering the Neo-Babylonian cuneiform writings of a famous professional institute in the ancient world, the School of Astrology at Sipper in Babylonia, found a confirmation of Kepler in a note about the position of the planets in the constellation of Pisces, carefully marking in Jupiter and Saturn over a period of five months in what would be reckoned as 7 B.C. in our calendar.4 As Jesus is said to have been already born before the Magi saw the impressive astral phenomenon, his birth must have preceded this phenomenon's most concentrated and brightest development - that is, it must have been sometime prior to December 4 in that year.
Such a date need not be in conflict with fact, since December 25 for Jesus' nativity is referred to in documents as Christmas Day in 354 A.D. for the first time and was evidently chosen in order to replace an old Roman festival known as Dies
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NatalisInxncti, "the birthday of the unconquered", the occasion of the winter solstice when the day's length begins to gain on the length of the night. Furthermore, there is the declaration in Luke's Gospel (2:8) about the time Jesus was born: "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." Metereological observation has shown that during the last 2000 years in which, according to all existing information, the climate of Palestine has not changed, Bethlehem at Christmas-time would be in the grip of frost and no cattle could be in the fields in that temperature.5 The Jewish religious book, the Talmud, remarks that in that neighbourhood the flocks were put out to grass in March and brought in again at the beginning of November.6 Hence, if Luke is to be believed, Jesus must have been born not at nearly the end of December but between March and November in 7 B.C.
When Jesus was born, Augustus had been emperor for 23 years and during that time as well as after and certainly before the public ministry of Jesus which started after his baptism by John the Baptist, when "Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23), Augustus had put his stamp upon his epoch. This stamp is commonly forgotten when we speak of the period of Jesus' birth, which is thought to be eminently memorable because of it and because of the career that followed. But this period, we may remind ourselves, is known to general history as the Augustan Age.
What is most striking as between the two illustrious contemporaries is that just as Jesus came to be called the Son of God, worshipped as divine and considered mankind's Saviour as well as the inaugurator of a new era moving towards the Kingdom of God, Augustus was heralded by poets like Virgil as the creator of a Golden Age of peace and prosperity and accepted worship from the East as a divine being and saviour of humanity. Like the virginal conception the Gospels of Matthew and Luke picture for Jesus, a supernatural birth brought about by a deity's intervention was surmised for Augustus. Whatever the travesty of the deific title in relation to
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some of his successors like Nero, Caligula and Domitian who claimed it as an inheritance from its first bearer, here was a natural spontaneous ascription by his compatriots to one felt to be of extraordinary greatness, as if sent by Heaven on a sovereign mission.
A further point of interest and significance in the comparison arises from the use of the Greek word euangelion in regard to Jesus by Paul and the other writers of the New Testament. This word, translated "Gospel" in English, connoting "Glad Tidings" or "Good News", is illuminated the most by the same term's employment in the imperial Roman cult associated with Augustus. Howard Clark Kee, in his Jesus in History: An Approach to the Study of the Gospels,7 writes:
"It meant an announcement of the benefits the empire enjoyed through the gracious authority of Caesar, the divinely appointed ruler of Rome. Although the fuller documentation for this meaning of euangelion comes in part from post-New Testament writers, such as Plutarch (A.D. 46?-120?) in De For-tuna Romanorum8 there is inscriptional evidence going back to the time of Augustus for the use of euangelion in connection with the imperial cult: 'The birthday of the god was for the world the beginning of tidings of joy [euangelion] on his account.'* Gerhard Friedrich has summarized what the term implied when associated with the saving power and person of the emperor:
* A photograph, transcription, and translation of this 9 B.C. text from Priene can be found in Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, rev. ed., trans. L.R.M. Strachan (New York: Harper & Row, n.d.), p. 366 and Figure 70. Whether the euangelion is understood to be the announcement of his birth (so Deissmann) or the fulfilment of the Sibylline prophecies about Augustus (so Eduard Norden in Deissmann, p. 366, n. 8), the analogy with the use of the term by Mark and the other evangelists is evident. The full Greek text is in Wilhelm Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae [Selected Greek Inscriptions from the Orient], Vol. 2, no. 458 (reprinted, Hildesheim: Olms, 1960), lines 40-79 (the point at which the passage under study appears).
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The ruler is divine by nature. His power extends to men, to animals, to the earth and to the sea. Nature belongs to him; the wind and the waves are subject to him. He works miracles and heals men. He is the savior of the world who also redeems individuals from their difficulties.9
"The emperor's divinity was attested by signs in the heavens at both his birth and his death that showed he belonged among the gods. Although some leading scholars have denied the link between the meaning of euangelion as applied to the first four books of the New Testament and the connotation it carries in the imperial cult,10 the connection has recently and rightly been reaffirmed in an important study of gospel origins by Wilhelm Schneemelcher."11
All this attribution of a more-man-human personality to Augustus Caesar, a status comparable in general formulation to that of his contemporary of Palestine in a different sphere, draws our attention because of a certain correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and a disciple in 1937. The latter Was discussing the subject of past lives, and Sri Aurobindo in the course of his replies distinguished between arriving at conclusions by means of "sight" (spiritual vision) and coming to them by "inference". After writing that he was never certain that a poet-friend of the disciple and, for some time, a fellow-sadhak had been Shelley in a past life, Sri Aurobindo added: "as I am for instance about Dilip having been Horace. I am certain because that was 'seen' [by the Mother] and I myself can remember very well (psychically, not in any outward event) my contact with his personality then." (19.7.1937)
When the disciple suggested that Sri Aurobindo might have been Julius Caesar or Mark Antony and the Master gave a clue that he had been neither, the disciple wrote: "So who remains a famous person in contact with Horace? The answer is unmistakable: Caesar Octavianus, afterwards Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Have I at last hit the nail on the head? If so, will you please tell me, as you did about Leonardo da Vinci, what exactly he stood for in the history of Europe?"
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About Leonardo the disciple had asked Sri Aurobindo: "Mother or you are said to have declared that a divine descent was attempted during the Renaissance with Leonardo da Vinci as its centre - a credible report since you were Leonardo and Mother Mona Lisa. But I shall be much interested to know something about the inner side of the phenomenon. Was there a secretly recognised mystic consciousness at work - that is, recognised by da Vinci? Was he aware of his semi-Avatarhood, aware of the work he was destined to do, aware of the spiritual planes?"
Sri Aurobindo replied: "Never heard before of my declaring or anybody declaring such a thing. What Leonardo da Vinci held in himself was all the new age of Europe on its many sides. But there was no question of Avatarhood or consciousness of a descent or pressure of spiritual planes. Mysticism was no part of what he had to manifest." (16.7.1937)
To the question about Augustus, Sri Aurobindo gave the answer: "Augustus Caesar organised the life of the Roman empire and it was this that made the framework of the first transmission of the Graeco-Roman civilisation to Europe - he came for that work and the writings of Virgil and Horace and others helped greatly towards the success of his mission. After the interlude of the Middle Ages, this civilisation was reborn in a new mould in what is called the Renaissance, not in its life aspects but in its intellectual aspects. It was therefore a supreme intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, who took up again this work and summarised in himself the seeds of modern Europe." (29.7.1937)
The appearance of Augustus in the very period when Christianity had its origination seems to have answered a need of the future Europe standing on the threshold of an era in which a new powerful spirit had broken in upon old Judaism and a Graecised Near East and a rising Roman culture. Its invasion, with its "Christ crucified", its faith in things unseen, its unearthly formula of "Love your enemies" and its passion for the Beyond, called for a complementary if not counterpoising force. While its soulful enthousiasmos brought something
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highly fecundating by means of a subtilising light from the deep heart of religious aspiration, it brought also a threat to the existing progressive elan of the European consciousness. There was the danger of its submerging the glory that was the Greek mind of inspired reason and chastened aesthetic sense and the grandeur that was the Roman vitality building a manifold order, instituting laws, moulding strength of character and striking out pathways of world-communication. A millennium and a half later, Leonardo embodied a well-tempered synthesis of the two currents and gave it a forward-looking face of analytic-eyed imagination. Augustus made the synthesis achievable and rendered a complex yet balanced modern psychology a predictable part of "things to come" by embodying to the nth degree one side of that synthesis at a critical time, a time when Jesus Christ embodied to the maximum the other side and might have tilted by his luminous extreme the fate of Europe in favour of an inward other-worldliness based on an outward primitivism.
However, by a paradox of Divine Destiny, Augustus served also to render possible, instead of negating, the development of the Christian euangelion as a component of the future. For, despite occasional persecution, Roman rule fostered Christianity through the Pax Romana which Augustus had established. This Roman Peace by its maintenance of political stability, easy communications and flourishing trade, ensured not only the survival and transmission of the Classical heritage but also the means for the diffusion of Christ's message.
References
1. The Bible as History by Werner Keller (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1957), p. 327.
2. Ibid., pp. 330-31.
3. Ibid., p. 334.
4. Ibid., p. 331.
5. Ibid., p. 336.
6. Ibid.
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7. Published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1977, pp. 133-34.
8. In the Loeb edition of Plutarch the treatise is found in Moralia, Vol. 2, trans. F.C. Babbitt (New York: Putnam's, 1928), pp. 73-89.
9. Friedrich, "Evangelizesthai" in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 2, trans. G.W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), p. 724.
10. For example, Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, Vol. I, trans. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Scribner's, 1951), p. 87.
11. In New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R. Mel. Wilson and others (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), pp. 72-73.
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A Letter of January 6,1981
Today is Epiphany Day on which, according to the New-Testament legend, the Magi, the Wise Men of the East - perhaps "Parsis" like me, since "Magi" originally meant Persian highpriests - brought gifts to the infant Jesus. The occasion is appropriate for me to reply to your many-faceted letter, expressing doubt about the historicity of Christ.
I am surprised that my article in the Mother India of last December - "Augustus Caesar and the Birth of Jesus" - has revived your scepticism. It accepts the historicity of Christ as much as that of Augustus Caesar. And it would not have done so if Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had anywhere been uncertain. In that very issue you will find on the opening page the Mother's sentence: "Jesus is one of the many forms which the Divine has assumed to enter into relationship with the earth."
In Mother India's issue of December 1977 (p. 842) I have collected some words of the Mother to make a feature, "What Christ was and taught", from which I may quote a few points. "When Christ came upon earth, he brought a message of brotherhood..." - "I heard Sri Aurobindo himself say that Christ was an emanation of the Lord's aspect of love." -"... the death of Christ was the starting-point of a new stage in the evolution of human civilisation. That is why Sri Aurobindo tells us that the death of Christ was of greater historical consequence than the death of [Julius] Caesar. The story of Christ, as it has been told, is the concrete and dramatic enactment of the divine sacrifice: the Supreme Lord, who is All-Light, All-Knowledge, All-Power, All-Beauty, All-Love, All-Bliss, accepting to assume human ignorance and suffering in matter, in order to help men to emerge from the falsehood in which they live and because of which they die."
What you quote about Vivekananda's dream during his voyage back from America to India is not determinative. Ac-
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cording to you, a man appeared to him one night mentioning Crete as the land where Christianity had begun and going on to say: "I am one of the Therapeutae who used to live here. The truths and ideals preached by us have been given out by the Christians as having been taught by Jesus; but, for the matter of that, there was no such personality of the name of Jesus ever born. Various evidences testifying to this fact will be brought to light by excavating here." You say that Vivekananda woke up, rushed to the deck and asked the captain their whereabouts just then. The answer was: "Fifty miles off Crete." I may comment that the writers of Vivekananda's biography record: "Whatever doubts the Swami may have had on the matter, the dream did not make him yield a whit in his love and adoration of the Son of Mary."1 How could it when the dream went against the experience of his master Ramakrishna? Once Ramakrishna had a most vivid vision of Jesus, a figure of great beauty and holiness who embraced him and disappeared into his body, causing an ecstatic trance. Later he asked his disciples what the Bible had to say about the physical features of Jesus. They replied: "Sir, we have not seen it written in the Bible anywhere; but born a Jew, he must have been very fair in complexion with long eyes and aquiline nose to be sure." Ramakrishna answered: "But I saw that the tip of his nose was a little flat; I don't know why I saw him like that."2 If we have trust in so great a Yogi as Ramakrishna, we cannot ever be sceptical about Jesus' historicity. That small unusual touch about the nose seems to render the vision all the more authentic.
I may add that the mention of Crete in Vivekananda's dream is rather odd. The Therapeutae are historically known to have been a religious group of Jews akin to the Qumran Essenes. The authoritative account of them in ancient times is The Contemplative Life (I.2, cp. II.10-11) by the famous Philo of Alexandria (a contemporary of Christ). He locates them not in Crete but in Egypt. However, there is some truth in another part of the dream-man's declaration to Vivekananda. A later authority on the Therapeutae is the Church historian Eusebius
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(third and fourth century). His Ecclesiastical History (II.xvii, 3-23) shows how struck he was by the likeness of the Therapeutae to Christian monks of his own day. He even thought they might have been Christians and that their founder's writings to which Philo had referred might be the Epistles and Gospels of the New Testament.
The Telugu book to which you refer was obviously penned by someone who was very much of an ignoramus. In contradiction of his statements as numerically tabulated by you, let me make the following points:
(1) The author says that the Roman Governor who ordered the crucifixion of Christ sent no report of the same to his superiors. If this is true, how is it that Tacitus, the Roman historian who wrote his famous Annals in about 115-120 A.D., deals with Nero's persecution of the Christians in 64 A.D. thus: "Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate; and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular" (XV.44)?
(2) Your author asserts: "No historian of the time made any mention of the phenomenon of Christ, except in one case where there is a line about Christ, which line is a clear interpolation." The only first-century historian whose works are in our hands is the Jew Josephus. He has left two books: The Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities. The former recounts Jewish history from 170 B.C. to A.D. 73, the latter extends from the creation of the world to A.D. 66. The Jewish War has nothing to say on our subject. Jewish Antiquities has two passages. One in Book XVIII.6,4 is a long paragraph in the section concerned with the procuratorship of Pilate. It is highly favourable to Jesus and his followers. But we first meet it in a quotation by Eusebius who flourished in the fourth century, whereas Origen who wrote in the third century refers to Josephus as "not believing in Jesus as the Christ". This shows that the
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paragraph was not in his copy and was clearly an interpolated forgery made after his time. However, there is in Antiquities (XX.9,1) another reference. Here Josephus, relating the events of A.D. 62, says that the high priest Ananus or Nanias caused "the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, James by name, and some others" to be stoned as breakers of the law. If, as seems certain, Book XVIII did carry an account of Jesus, an originally hostile one which was later displaced, the mention in Book XX which is merely factual is very likely to be genuine. So a historian of the period can be taken to have mentioned "the phenomenon of Christ".
(3) We are told by your author: "When Christ was crucified, it is said, it became all dark for a number of hours. Such a natural calamity was nowhere noted by any scientist." A hypothesis has been put forward by the scholars Robert Eisler (The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist, pp. 297-99) and Maurice Goguel (Life of Jesus, pp. 91-93, 185, 540) on the strength of a quotation made by the ninth-century Byzantine chronicler, George Syncellus, from a third-century Christian historian Julius Africanus, that the darkness at the crucifixion was due to an eclipse of the sun: Syncellus alludes to a possibly first-century historian named Thallus for the report. But this Thallus is a very elusive and uncertain quantity. A Thallus seems to be mentioned by Josephus as a money-lender to Herod Agrippa in A.D. 35: there is not even a hint that this financier was also a historian. So it is dangerous to build upon him. And there is no need to do so. For, the Gospels contain, as is now admitted by all scholars, a lot of fiction or else symbolic matter. But this does not make the whole of them false. History and myth are combined in them. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus are undoubtedly historical. Some other events have also the stamp of reality: e.g., the baptism and a few details of the ministry. Then there are the sayings. The Mother has held that "the writers of the Gospels have tried to reproduce exactly what Christ taught and they have in a certain measure succeeded in transmitting his message" (Mother India, December 1977, p. 842).
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(4) "Two of the Gospels make no mention of the crucifixion and the resurrection, although they should be the outstanding events of Jesus' life." The man who said this does not know his New Testament at all. The crucifixion is common to all the four Gospels. The resurrection is recounted in three -Matthew, Luke and John. Only Mark stops short of it. His own identifiable ending does not go beyond 16:8. The present "long ending" of verses 9-20 was tagged on some time in the second century A.D.
What the writer should have listed was not the crucifixion but the virgin birth, about which you have expressed reservations in the closing part of your letter. The virgin birth of Jesus is neither in the first Gospel - Mark's - nor in the last -John's. It occurs only in Matthew's and Luke's Gospels. I may add that the earliest Christian documents, the several Epistles of Paul, do not breathe a word of it and the rest of the New Testament too has no sign of it. Hence it is only two documents out of the twenty-seven constituting the New Testament that speak of a miraculous nativity. Sri Aurobindo regards it as a symbol of the Avatar's direct derivation from the Higher Spiritual Nature - Para-Prakriti, Para-Maya, the Supernature that is the Divine Shakti, the creative Goddess-Power which is ever pure, the Virgin Mother of all beings and things. He says: "In the Buddhist legend the name of the mother of Buddha [Maya-Devi, Maha-Maya] makes the symbolism clear; in the Christian the symbol seems to have been attached by a familiar mythopoeic process to the actual human mother of Jesus of Nazareth" (Essays on the Gita, Centenary Edition, p. 153, fn. I). A growing number of Christian theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, believe that the story of the virgin birth is an "his-toricising" of the theological concept that Jesus was the Son of God in a unique sense, on whom the fact of human paternity has no bearing, even though he had a human father. They also declare that the virgin birth is not in the least necessary for Jesus in order to be the Son of God. According to them, Mark's, Matthew's and Luke's accounts of the baptism and the transfiguration plus the Pauline and Johannine doctrine of
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the pre-existent Christ are enough to substantiate the idea of Divine Sonship.3
(5) If Herod's order to massacre the "innocents" is not historical, we should not be upset and start casting doubt on all that the Gospels relate. Most of the incidents connected with the alleged virgin birth are folkloric legends.4 As to Herod living in B.C., historians say that he died in 4 B.C. and that if Jesus was born before Herod died the birth-date of Jesus must be at the latest 4 B.C. The present Christian calender was made by a sixth century Scythian monk who committed a number of mistakes in calculation. Jesus' birth-date was most probably 7 or 6 B.C.
(6) Why does your author declare that the manuscripts of the Gospels should have been in Hebrew? The mother-tongue of Jesus having been Hebrew or rather its dialect Aramaic does not necessitate the Gospels getting written in the same language. They were written from thirty-five to fifty or sixty years after Jesus' death and at that time and even before it the general language of the Roman Empire was Greek. If the Gospels were meant to be widely read, Greek was the right tongue to be written in. Their composition in Greek does not at all "point to the suspicion that they might have been made up".
(7) Yes, there were "other Gospels" than the ones we have. Parts of them still exist. All of them were later writings and are called "apocryphal". They were adjudged unreliable and fantastic and therefore omitted from the official canon. You have only to read them to see the wisdom of omitting them. Some of them, like the Protevangelium of James, were influential in spite of their dubious nature and have coloured quite an amount of popular belief.
(8) The statement - "It was only centuries later that the Gospels were given the present form" - is not quite accurate. In the time of Irenaeus, c. 180 A.D., the four canonical Gospels were in existence, for he cites them all by name. Evidence for individual Gospels is found even before. Thus Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110 A.D.) knew the Matthaean tradition. So, even if
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the present manuscripts are of a later date, the existence of the original versions is surely much earlier. Some changes, however, may have occurred in the course of time. For instance, in the major manuscripts in our hands today Mark 6:3 reads: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?" Origen, who lived in c. 185-253 A.D., records that the original reading was: "Is this not the son of the carpenter and of Mary?", which is practically the same as Matthew 12:46.
(9) The "utterly diabolical methods" used in the propagation of what may be dubbed "Churchianity" rather than "Christianity" make no odds to the historicity of Jesus and his teachings or to the value of the latter.
(10) The proposition that "a sect, known as Christians, was there in Egypt long before Jesus and this sect assumed the present proportions by their machinations and manipulations" is utterly foundationless. Apart from Josephus and Tacitus, we have only the early testimony of Pliny the Younger and of Suetonius about the existence of Christians - that is, testimony independent of the New Testament. Pliny was governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor from 111 or 113 A.D. His correspondence with the Emperor Trajan includes a report on the proceedings against the Christians. It describes the Christians as in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before dawn and singing a hymn to Christ as to a god, after doing which they separate and meet once more for a common meal. In about 120, Suetonius, secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, wrote Lives of the Caesars, ranging from the great Julius to the infamous Domitian. In the section "Claudius", XXV.4, he tells us that the Jews were expelled from Rome by the Emperor Claudius because they "constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestos". Claudius reigned from A.D. 41 to 54. Orosius, a later writer, informs us that the expulsion of Christian Jews by Claudius took place in the ninth year of that emperor's reign, i.e., A.D. 49. The fact of this expulsion is corroborated by the New Testament's Acts of the Apostles (18:2) in which Paul finds, when he comes to Corinth from Athens, "a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with
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his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome". Suetonius, in the section "Nero", XVI. 2, also mentions Nero's punishment in about 64 A.D. of the Christians, "a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition". Note the word "new". Suetonius's "Chrestos" (the Greek for "good") is merely the Greek-speaking world's easy alteration of the unfamiliar "Christos" (the Greek for "anointed"). Indeed the latter's derivative "Christiani" was frequently spelled "Chrestiani".
There is no evidence of Christians before Jesus. The Mother's saying that what is known as Christmas was really "the festival of light" which had been observed before Christ does not mean that before the birth of Jesus it was already called "Christmas" and that therefore there must have been Christians before Jesus. The fact is simply that Christianity in 354 A.D. or a little earlier fixed 25 December as Christmas Day - that is, the day of Christ's birth - in order to coincide a Christian religious holiday with an old Roman festival and thereby both placate the converted Pagans and wean them from old associations to those of their new religion. The term "Christian" came into vogue in about 41 A.D. when Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch in Syria. Acts 11:26 runs: "For a whole year they were guests of the Church there and they instructed a very considerable number of people. And it was at Antioch that the disciples first received the name of Christians." "Christiani" was a nickname and means "belonging to the party of Christ". The Antiocheans took the title "Christ" ("anointed") for a proper name.
I think the author from whom you have drawn arguments was misled by a term applied to the Christians in very early days. From Acts 24:5 we learn that a Jew employed the word "Nazoraeans" or "Nazarenes" to designate the religious group to which Paul belonged and which at that time was looked upon as a sect of Judaism. The later part of the Talmud, which developed between 220 and 500 A.D., refers to Jesus - almost always pejoratively - as "ha-Nozri" (the Nazarene). The popular notion is that "Nazarene" comes from the description
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"Jesus of Nazareth". Not that the etymology is quite at fault. Philologists like Albright, Moore and Schaeder vouch for its possibility. But actually there appears to have been no "city" such as Matthew (2:23) and Luke (1:26; 2:39; 4:29), writing in c. 80-100 A.D., speak of. Neither the Old Testament nor the Talmud nor Josephus mentions any city of that name. Josephus was especially in a position to know of it if it existed. In A.D. 66, when war broke out between Rome and the Jews, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the whole Galilee area by the Roman emperor Trajan. He fortified all the important cities and named each of them in his history. If in his day a city called Nazareth had stood at the location where it later came to be, he would inevitably have referred to it, particularly as he reported several skirmishes in the immediate vicinity of present-day Nazareth. Unfamiliar with Hebrew-Aramaic and with the topography of Palestine, Greek-speaking Christians of Matthew's and Luke's time traced to an imaginary city the word "Nazarene". In passing, it is worth remarking that no other instance is known of a sect being called after the home of its founder. The place where a sect is founded may dictate the sect's name: e.g., "Plymouth Brethren". But nobody, for instance, dreams of identifying Mohammedans by designating them "Meccans" from Mohammed's birth-place Mecca.
Outside of the Gospels, only a fifth-century Jewish love-poem yields for the first time the name "Nazareth" for a city. Most probably the word "Nazarene" derives from the Hebrew "nazar" meaning to "keep" or "observe" and labelling the observers of certain religious usages. From a late tradition maintained by the Mandaeans of Syria who relate themselves to John the Baptist and call themselves nasorayya, "Observants", we may conjecture that the early followers of John the Baptist who announced the coming of a Saviour and whose baptising of Jesus started the latter on his ministry were also known as "Nazarenes". Since passages like Acts 1:21-22 and John 1:35-43 suggest that some of Jesus' Twelve Apostles were formerly disciples of the Baptist, it is quite on the cards that their transition was made easier because Jesus himself belonged to
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the same sect as the Baptist. John 3:20, 26 even gives one to think that Jesus imitated the Baptist's mode of ministry and that he did so because he identified himself with the latter's movement so far as to become temporarily his disciple. The sect of Nazarenes, to which Jesus no less than the Baptist seems to have adhered, had - according to Epiphanius, the fourth-century Christian writer against heresies - flourished in the pre-Christian period under that very name. No wonder, then, that some scholar should imagine this sect to be Christian before the age allotted commonly to Christianity and look upon the followers of Christ as a continuation from the past. But here is a mistake and, although Christianity may have and does have affinities with religious beliefs and practices which are pre-Christian, particularly with the Dead-Sea denomination of ascetics named Essenes, Jesus started a distinctive movement. He was a real historical personage and his movement alone can be termed Christianity.
Those who try to prove Jesus to be a myth overlook an objection which seems final and unanswerable. The opponents of the early Christians never raised the issue of his existence. They only questioned whether he was the Son of God and they criticised the practices of his followers. If it had been true that he did not exist, the denial of his historicity would have been an obvious and immediate rejoinder to their private ardours and their public propaganda. Celsus the Platonic philosopher, Tacitus the pagan historian, the Jewish rabbis - all of them had harsh things to say about him and his religion but none called him a mythical figure - as they certainly would have if there had been any plausibility of it.
Then there is the fact that all the three synoptic evangelists - Matthew (10:23; 16:28; 24:34), Mark (9:1; 13:30), Luke (9:27; 21:32) - report Jesus prophesying the advent of the Messianic kingdom before the generation which he addressed would pass away. The first Christians believed in the prophecy implicitly. Evidently, it was originally communicated by those who belonged to the generation addressed - the generation of Jesus himself. These people must have been alive at the
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time they quoted Jesus and, to be able to quote, they must have known him. Under no other circumstances could they have circulated so specific and so curious a prediction and assurance. None except still living men who could remember a real Jesus could have supplied the matter for the relevant texts in the synoptic Gospels. The prophecy was falsified, but only those who were directly acquainted with Jesus could have reported it with the natural certitude of its fulfilment.
Archibald Robertson was the first to draw attention to these texts in The Rationalist Annual, 1928 ("The Historical Jesus: Some Suggestions" under the pseudonym "Robert Arch"). He has yet to be genuinely answered. We may confidently close with some words written by him 24 years later: "It may reasonably be urged that no Christian in his senses would have fabricated a prophecy that Jesus would return in the lifetime of people who had seen him if Jesus had never lived and nobody had seen him, or if he had lived so long ago that nobody who had seen him could possibly be alive."5
1. The Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western Disciples (Almora: Advaita Ashram, 1949), p. 458.
2. Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master by Swami Saradananda, translated by Swami Jagadananda (Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1956), p. 296.
3. For recent Catholic and Protestant opinion, see the Roman Catholic priest Raymond E. Brown's book, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), p. 24 with fn. 26 and p. 42 with fn. 52.
4. Ibid., pp. 54-55.
5. Jesus: Myth or History? (London: The Thinker's Library, Watts Co., 1946), p. 101. For some of the points made in my letter this book has been of substantial help.
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"Born of a Woman"
As the Letters of Paul constitute the earliest Christian witness, an important question in regard to the earliest Christianity and hence by implication Christianity as originally promulgated is: Does Paul know the doctrine of Mary's virginal conception of Jesus?
Here the most discussed passage is one that occurs in Galatians. The eminent Roman Catholic commentator, Raymond E. Brown,1 approaches it through a glance at the general New-Testament situation: "It is beyond dispute that there is no explicit reference to the virginal conception in NT outside the infancy narratives [in Matthew and Luke]. What is a matter of dispute is whether there are some implicit references.....In Galatians 4:4-5 Paul says, 'When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.' Influenced perhaps by the (mis)use of the term 'virgin birth', some (Zahn, Miguens) have immediately thought of a virginal conception here, since only the mother is mentioned. To be precise, however, Paul is speaking about the reality of Jesus' birth, not about the manner of his conception. The phrase 'born of a woman' is meant to stress what Jesus shared with those whom he redeemed, precisely because it was applicable to everyone who walks this earth. It no more supports the virginal conception of Jesus than the figurative phrase 'born of the seed of David' in Romans 1:3 disproves it. A more serious argument for Paul's knowledge of the virginal conception has been advanced from Paul's custom of writing in terms of Jesus' being 'born' (the verb ginesthai in Gal 4:4; Rom 1:3; Philippians 2:7) rather than of his being 'begotten' (the verb gennan, used of Ishmael and Isaac in Gal 4:23, 24, 290). However, both these verbs in the middle or passive can mean 'be born' and 'be begotten'; and neither one really tells us anything specific about the manner of conception. For example, Matthew, who believes in the virginal conception, does use the verb gennan of Jesus once, at least, clearly with the meaning 'begotten' (1:20...). Without further indication of Paul's mind, it would
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be abusive to read a knowledge of virginal conception into Paul's use of ginesthai."
In the middle of his observation, after the words "applicable to everyone who walks this earth" Brown has the footnote: "See Matt 11:11 and Luke 7:28: Among those born (begotten) of women, none is greater than John the Baptist."
At the end of his treatment of "The Silence of the Rest of the New Testament", which takes up as "major texts that have been proposed" passages both from the Gospel of Mark and from the Johannine writings no less than the cullings from the Pauline Letters, Brown2 pronounces: "In summary evaluation of the evidence, I would say that it is perfectly proper to speak of the silence of the rest of the NT about the virginal conception because not a single one of the 'implicit references' has any compelling force. On the other hand, one would misinterpret this silence if one concluded from it that no other author of the NT (outside of Matthew and Luke) knew of the virginal conception. Even where the virginal conception was known and accepted, it would have become the subject of preaching (and therefore likely to be included in the kind of writing we have in the NT) only when its christological significance was seen. What the silence of the rest of the NT does call into question is the theory that the memory of the virginal conception was handed down by the family of Jesus to the apostolic preachers and was universally accepted as fundamental Christian belief."
If the theory to which Brown alludes is seriously to be questioned, the odds against a neutral attitude towards the silence of the twenty-five out of the twenty-seven books of the NT seem rather heavy. They grow more patently heavy when we find Brown3 dismissing as "untenable" the "simplistic" thesis that the Matthean infancy narrative, in which the angel of the Lord announced Mary's virginal conception to Joseph, came from Joseph and that the Lucan infancy narrative, where the announcement is to Mary herself, came from her. The very idea of an angelic announcement or, to use the techi-cal term annunciation, derives, in Brown's opinion,4 from an
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Old-Testament pattern of describing divine revelation, and "thus there is no reason to think that a narrative about an annunciation came down from the parents". The crucial point for Brown to settle is "whether the experiential knowledge that the child had been conceived without a human father" had its origin in one or the other or both of them. He suggests that "the complete absence of Joseph during the ministry of Jesus makes Mary a more plausible channel". But "the real difficulty about a preserved family (Marian) tradition... is the failure of that memory to have had any effect before its appearance in two Gospels in the last third of the first century". Brown adds: "There is a strong tradition that the brothers of Jesus did not believe in him during the ministry 0ohn 7:5; Mark 3:21, 3:31) - did Mary not communicate his divine origins to them? Did not the virginal conception carry for Mary some implication as to who Jesus was? In the few ministry scenes in which she appears, historical or not, there is no memory that she showed any such understanding (Mark 3:31-35; John 2:3-4). And certainly she communicated no profound christolog-ical understanding to his followers who came to understand only after the resurrection and, indeed, at first seem to have proclaimed that Jesus had become Messiah, Lord, or Son of God through the resurrection, never mentioning the virginal conception. The family tradition thesis is not impossible, but it faces formidable difficulties."
There is an alternative thesis proposed. According to the narratives, "Jesus was born noticeably early after his parents came to live together. Is this an historical fact?"5 There is "the Jewish charge of illegitimacy as it is clearly documented from the second century onwards in both Christian and Jewish witnesses".6 If that charge circulated in the first century independently of the Gospels, Mary's pregnancy without her husband's co-operation would be taken by the Christians -unlike the opponents of Jesus who "would deem him illegitimate and Mary unfaithful" - as a sign of virginal conception, "for they had a widespread and firm belief that Jesus was totally free of sin (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22; Hebrews
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4:15; 1 John 3:5) and both Matthew and Luke present his parents as holy and righteous (Matt 1:19; Luke 1:42)".7 To this positive explanation, "perhaps... family tradition was an auxiliary". Brown sees "an interplay of many factors" building up the positive explanation, but he adds: "This complicated solution, although it reflects items from the meager evidence we possess, leaves many questions unanswered (e.g., Mary's understanding of all this); and so it remains tenuous."8
Besides, as Brown9 admits, "there is no way to know with certainty whether the post-NT charge of illegitimacy is an authentic recollection of Jewish charges that were circulating before Matthew composed his narrative." Nor does Brown10 discover any firm support in the two other Gospels - those of Mark and John - "for a Jewish charge of illegitimacy during the ministry of Jesus or even at a period contemporary with the evangelists."
However, in the alternative thesis Brown brings in an ingredient of family tradition as perhaps leavening the mixture of several factors - in conformity with his earlier granting that "the family tradition thesis is not impossible". But such a posture flies in the face of his own puzzlement as to why, if this tradition existed, it "surfaced relatively late and only in two NT writings".11 The difficulties in the way are not merely "formidable": they appear to be insuperable.
All in all, Brown's stand that Paul is speaking about the reality of Jesus' birth and not about the manner of his conception is insufficient except for checking the habit of capital being made out of the fact that the mother alone is mentioned. On the commentator's showing the gap of family evidence, the expression "born of a woman" seems definitely to point in the direction of Jesus having been conceived in the ordinary manner. Only if we took this expression in a vacuum rather than in the context of the full NT situation would we be left in doubt about its negative bearing in the problem whether the doctrine of the virginal conception had a place in the earliest and original Christianity.
A comparative ambiguity in the last resort, accompanying
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a keen analysis of surface meanings and a rejection of pro-virginity readings, is the result in a more recent treatment of the subject. A collaborative assessment of Marian themes by Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars12 deals with Galatians 4:4-5 along lines somewhat overlapping with Brown. After quoting the text with its ending which Brown has omitted -"so that we might receive adoption as sons" - and after a few introductory remarks the team tells us:
"One may debate whether 'His Son' implies pre-existence or not, but in any case Paul is certainly stressing Jesus' humanity ('one born of a woman') and his relation to Israel ('one born under the Law').
"The phrase, genemenon ek gynaikos, 'born of a woman,' is a frequently-used Jewish expression to designate a person's human condition. It reflects adam yelud'issah of Job 14:1, 'a human being (that is) born of a woman...' (cf. Job 15:14; 25:4). The phrase is found in the same sense in the NT, applied to John the Baptist, en gennetais gynaikon, 'among those born of women' (Matt 11:11; Luke 7:28). As a Semitic expression it is further found in Qumran literature from Palestine. Such a description simply stresses the human condition of Jesus. Thus no convincing argument for Paul's awareness of the virginal conception can be drawn from this phrase - nor from Paul's use of genomenon (ginesthai) instead of gennomenon (gennan...), nor from Paul's omission here of any mention of a father. (The implication that Paul should have said 'begotten of a man' is unfounded since there is no evidence that such an idiom existed as a ready alternative to yelud'issah.) Seemingly the apostle was simply making use of a stereotyped literary expression and not attempting to supply detail on how the Son became man.
"If one were to ask how Paul could write that Jesus was 'born of a woman,' or even that he 'came into being from a woman,' without implying some reference to Mary, one would have to answer that Paul does thus indirectly refer to her. But it is a reference to her simply as mother, in her maternal role of bearing Jesus and bringing him into the world. There is not
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the slightest hint here that Jesus was her 'first born' (see Luke 2:7) or that she was a virgin. Paul simply does not mention the virginal conception, and there is no reason to think that he knew of it. On the other hand, a christological affirmation such as Paul makes here is not at all incompatible with the christology of other and later NT writers who maintain the virginal conception.
"How unimportant the phrase 'born of a woman' really was for Paul may be shown by the fact that, of the three things asserted about Jesus in v. 4 (Son, born of a woman, born under the Law), only the first and third are taken up in the parallel description of Christians in v. 5 (he redeemed those under the law; he brought it about that we receive adoptive sonship)."
The consensus of the Catholic and Protestant scholars involved in the discussion is: Paul betrays no knowledge of the virginal conception, but the words "born of a woman" are so neutral that they can not be posed in opposition to anyone's statement of such a conception. The flaw in the consensus is that if Paul attaches little or no importance to these words there was for him nothing of note in the birth of Jesus and they carry the suggestion of the birth being quite ordinary, a product of two human parents. Again, the inference could be that in Paul's time - the time of Christianity at its earliest and in its original form - the virginal-conception doctrine was non-existent.
Evidently, to arrive at the correct conclusion in the controversy we must explore the exact meaning of those four words of Paul's. Let us see whether we can reach that meaning from some remarks of that well-known British scholar and religious popularizer, William Barclay. Apropos of the sixth and seventh lines of the Apostles' Creed -
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
he13 writes on Paul and the "Virgin Birth":
"There is no mention of it either in Paul's letters or in
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his sermons as related in Acts. It is sometimes claimed that Galatians 4:4-5 where Paul speaks of Jesus as being born of a woman, born under the law, is a reference to the Virgin Birth. But born of a woman is the standard description of an ordinary man born in the usual way. 'Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble' (Job 14:1). 'How can he that is born of a woman be clean?' (Job 25:4). Certainly the phrase 'born of a woman' has nothing to do with the Virgin Birth. That Paul does not speak of the Virgin Birth is no proof that he did not know of it and believe in it; but it quite certainly is proof that he did not set either the doctrine or the belief in it in the forefront of his gospel, nor did he regard knowledge of it and belief in it as in any way essential to salvation."
Barclay's delineation of Paul's attitude towards "the doctrine or the belief" is accurate from the evidence to be gleaned from that apostle. But one is at a loss what to make of the rest of Barclay's exposition. At its face-value his statement that the Pauline phrase "is the standard description of an ordinary man born in the usual way" is in stark contradiction to the later assertion that Paul's silence on the Virgin Birth does not prove lack of knowledge of it and belief in it on his part. Surely, "the usual way" for "an ordinary man" to be "born" is from the cohabitation of two human beings? Barclay would seem to have a different phenomenon in mind. He must mean simply the emergence of a child from a womb into earth-life, so that Jesus was like any other man when he took birth. Then the mode of being born shared by him with the whole race provides no indication of a Virgin Birth, but neither does it negate such a nativity. The context of the phrase "born of a woman" does not at all raise the issue of our answering "Yes" or "No" about it: this appears to be Barclay's point. Although his "ordinary" and "usual" are suggestive of a different view, he is fundamentally at one with the thinkers we have quoted, except that while they indicated a possible pristine Christianity without the doctrine in question he lets us suppose its presence in a very minor key.
Barclay is open to criticism on two scores. First, is it rea-
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sonable to think that so out-of-the-cornmon, so miracle-lit a doctrine would remain in the background? Faith in it may not be necessary to salvation: even now only the ordinary magisterium has declared it infallible, it has not been universally and consistently proposed by the Church as an intrinsic constituent of divine revelation. Still, if it had been a part of the apostolic tradition and if Paul had known of it and held it, he would not have been utterly devoid of any recognizable reference to it. Secondly, is it coherent to argue from the query in Job 25:4 - "How can he that is born of woman be clean?" -that Jesus, if he were born of a virgin who had no intercourse with a man, could yet be considered as emerging from a womb into earth-life like every other man in a state which in any sense would be regarded as unclean? Barclay on his own data impresses us as having failed to gauge the proper association of Paul's phrase.
Unwittingly, however, he has given us a cue to look at this phrase in its total historical nuance rather than in isolation. Neglecting that nuance, all the commentators we have noticed may be taken to have missed making explicit the exact drift of the phrase. We must press beyond the surface connotation of it which has passed into current literary usage and attend to the peculiar Biblical aura around its formulation by Paul's pen.
Although in general it connotes "mortal man"14 and appears neutral as to the manner of birth - sexual or virginal - it has scripturally much more to it. We must assess with care its pre-Pauline associations. The old classic references are eminently in Job. There are three of them, as marked in Mary in the New Testament. To respect orthodoxy let us draw upon the versions in the prestigious Roman Catholic production, The Jerusalem Bible:
(1) Man, born of woman,
has a short life yet has his fill of sorrow.
He blossoms, and he withers like a flower;
fleeting as a shadow, transient.
And is this what you deign to turn your gaze on,
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him that you would bring before you to be judged? Who can bring the clean out of the unclean? No man alive: (14:l-4)15
(2) How can any man be clean?
Born of woman, can he ever be good? (15:14)16
(3) Could any man ever think himself innocent, when
confronted by God? Born of woman, how could he ever be clean? (25:4)17
Two motifs are evident here in interconnection: human birth and uncleanness. The Jerusalem Bible18 annotates the first passage (14:1-4): "Job acknowledges man's essential vileness but pleads it as an excuse. The emphasis is laid on the physical (and therefore ritual) uncleanness which man contracts from the moment of his conception, cf. Leviticus 15:19f, and birth, cf. Lev 12:2f, since he is born of woman, Job 14:1, cf. Psalms 51:5. But this ritual uncleanness involves a corresponding moral weakness, a tendency to sin, and Christian interpretation has seen in this passage at least an allusion to what was later recognised as 'original sin' passed on from parent to child. Cf. Romans 5:12+." We may infer, from the comment as well as from the passage, that "Man, born of woman" implies human beings in their natural process of birth and must involve for Paul both physical uncleanness and moral frailty, a normal unredeemed state of original sin in which human beings are born from the usual cohabitation of two partners. The phrase, in its total significance, cannot admit any shade related to a sexless virginal conception - and it was coined such obviously because there never was a question of so uncommon a mode of birth.
Paul has employed a turn of speech which before him had no application outside of common human nativity due to sex-contact and which was shot through with a sense incapable of including anything else. Even after him it was never applied otherwise in scripture, as is shown from Brown's references19 to the Gospels: "See Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28: Among those born (begotten) of women none is greater than John the
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Baptist." John the Baptist had a birth by two human beings cohabiting. Thus the same Evangelists who posit the virginal conception happen to reinforce - and that too in a declaration by Jesus himself - Paul's implication of mortal men entering the world by the natural process of conception as well as birth. Here is a fixed form of words which had an unequivocal drift and on no occasion gave room for the nuance "born of a virgin".
It suggested the very absence that we can discern of an extraordinary nativity in some of Paul's other proclamations about Jesus. Romans 8:3 runs in The Jerusalem Bible: "God dealt with sin by sending his own Son in a body as physical as any sinful body, and in that body condemned sin."20 At the third occurrence of the word "body" we are pointed to a note: "Lit. 'in the likeness of sinful flesh, and in that flesh...'".21 It should be plain that there could be no real condemnation of universal sin in a body of Jesus' self-sacrifice unless the body he had taken were built in the same way as all "sinful flesh", even though he himself committed no sin. This posture of salvific action is underlined in the note preceding the one we have quoted: "Christ alone, who by his death destroyed our unspiritual nature (lit. 'flesh') in his own person, could destroy sin whose domain the 'flesh' was. Man formerly carnal is now, through union with Christ, spiritual."22 The identical posture is brought home to us in 2 Corinthians 5:2: "For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God."23 At the word "sin" we are sent to the note: "By a kind of legal fiction God identified Jesus with sin so that he might bear the curse incurred by sin, Galatians 3:13; Romans 8:3."24
To sum up: Paul's "born of a woman", viewed in the right perspective of Biblical usage and perceived with its true implications in the Pauline theology, rules out the idea of the virginal conception and proves the original apostolic Christianity to have had no link with it.
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1. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (Garden City, New York: Image Books, A Division of Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979), pp. 518-19.
2. Ibid., p. 521.
3. Ibid., p. 525.
4. Ibid., p. 526.
5. Ibid., p. 527.
6. Ibid., p. 534.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 537.
10. Ibid., p. 541.
11. Ibid., p. 525.
12. Mary in the New Testament, edited by Raymond E. Brown, Karl R Don-fried, Joseph A. Fitzmyer and John Reumann (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1981, originally published in London by Cassell Ltd., 1978), pp. 42-44.
13. The Plain Man Looks at the Apostles' Creed (Glasgow: Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1979), p. 77.
14. The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1964), p. 1502, col. 2.
15. The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966), The Old Testament, p. 743.
16. Ibid., p. 745.
17. Ibid., p. 756.
18. Ibid., p. 743, col. 2, n.c.
19. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 519, fn. 5a.
20. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 278.
21. Ibid., p. 279, col. 2, note d.
22. Ibid., note c.
23. Ibid.,p.3U.
24. Ibid.
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Notes on Some Comments on
I have to attend to the opinions of two scholars. One of them was the Professor of the Classics Department, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1985, who unfortunately met soon after with a terrible accident to his head depriving him of normal discourse.
I am afraid his observations even before this mishap do not show a very accurate mind on a subject which was couched originally in the New Testament's Greek, a language allied to those tackled in the Classics Department.
His concluding remark on my argument runs: "It is misdirected. One should not expect to find an historical account of this kind of event." The ruling here forgets the Professor's own approving statement about Raymond Brown in relation to my article: "...strikes me that Brown is more thorough and responsive to different problems." It happens that I have quoted Brown's response in full and he is concerned essentially with the same task of trying to find an historical account of the virginal conception through possible "implicit" references in the New Testament outside the "explicit" ones in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, which, though insufficient and unreliable no less than mutually contradictory, claim to be historical. Here Paul's Galatians 4:4-5, which is my point de depart, is the central topic. I don't challenge the Professor's preference of Brown to KDS, but I may observe that Brown is doing the very thing for which I am admonished - a "misdirected" argument looking for history in the wrong place, or looking for mystery in history.
As for Leviticus 12:1-8 and 15:18, the Professor's brief guide-lines seem superficial. Leviticus is ritualistic and serves only to direct one's attention to the ritualistic element in Job's locution. Here indeed loss of blood akin to menstruation is the major element and pertains to child-birth rather than to conception, but all that is needed by me is that the latter
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not be left out. Leviticus 15:16, 18 bear clear witness to my contention: "When a man has a seminal discharge, he must wash his whole body with water and he shall be unclean until evening.... When a woman has slept with a man, both of them must wash and they will be unclean until evening." The Jerome Biblical Commentary (p. 77, col.l) writes on verse 18: "Legal impurity resulted from sexual relations between man and woman whether the act was licit or illicit. The law was concerned with the male's loss of vitality and with the woman's uncleanness springing from contact with the male semen— This cultic unworthiness arising from sexual intercourse was common among the ancients, and its antiquity in Israel is reflected in 1 Samuel 21:4-5."
"Cultic unworthiness" - there we have perhaps a hint of what is explicit in Job, my main concern. Here the Professor is quite off the mark when he asserts: "The uncleanness of 'man born of woman' in Job is that of childbirth especially, if not entirely." I should say that this is to make the Job-uncleanness over-ritualistic, forgetting that all ritualistic uncleanness can be got rid of by certain prescribed measures as shown in Leviticus and that Job has in mind something more fundamental in alluding to man's unworthiness. If a man is born in the midst of some amount of blood he does not become fundamentally unclean and undeserving of God's regard. Job 15:14 asks: "How can any man be clean? Born of woman, can he ever be good?" Again 25:4 - "Could any man ever think himself innocent, when confronted by God? Born of woman, how could he ever be clean?" The term "clean" carries with it the nuance of "good" and "innocent" - "especially, if not entirely", as the Professor would put it. To be sure, merely ritualistic uncleanness falls into second place in Job.
As The Jerusalem Bible (p. 743, col. 2, note c) annotates:
"Job acknowledges man's essential vileness... The emphasis is
laid on the physical (and therefore ritual) uncleanness... But
this ritual uncleanness involves a corresponding moral weakness; a tendency to sin, and Christian interpretation has seen in this passage at least an allusion to what was later recognised
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as 'original sin' passed on from parent to child. Cf. Romans 5:12+." The Jerusalem Bible refers us to the penitential Psalm 51:5 - "You know I was born guilty, a sinner from the moment of conception." On p. 833, note c to this verse sends us not only to Proverbs 20:9 - "What man can say, T have cleansed my heart, I am purified of my sin?' " - but also to Genesis 8:21 where Yahweh says of man: "...his heart contrives evil from his infancy." So Job's "man born of woman" has powerful undertones beyond ritualism and Paul's quotation from Job was bound to bear more explicit suggestions of his developed doctrine of "original sin" transmitted from parent to child - that is, in the sex-act leading to conception. The Professor appears to be quite oblivious of subtle yet inevitable significances.
As he has not said anything on KDS's "argument from Jesus' sinful body", I shall reserve my observations for whatever I have to say about James M. Somerville's letter which is a pleasure to read with its human as well as intelligent discussion of what he is moved to call my "fine paper".
At the very outset Somerville infers from scriptural evidence that there is no sign of the doctrine of virginal conception in the earliest Christianity: "I do think if Paul knew anything about the virginal conception, he would have adverted to it somewhere somehow... And perhaps the early Christians who held the virginal conception did so because they wanted to push back Jesus' sinlessness to his very first moment of earthly existence. But in this case the argument would be a 'logical' one and not based on any kind of revelation. So a good case can be made out for the later development of the virginal conception." By implication these statements assume the Pauline phrase "born of a woman" to mean that Jesus' origin from Mary was like that of any other man not only in his issuing from her womb but also in his beginning to be there.
I am, however, somewhat at a loss when Somerville later says: "Maybe Paul never heard of the Virginal Conception. It's quite possible. He was an outsider among the original 12
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apostles and didn't know everything, esp. some of the more esoteric aspects of the faith. And he was certainly wrong in his stress about the proximate Second Coming of Jesus. So Paul is not infallible. He may be less well informed than we like to believe. And, as for what Jesus taught - his moral doctrine - you can read Paul from top to bottom and learn almost nothing about the material contained in the gospels. Strange. Paul may not be the best witness to all the things early Christians believed, say in Egypt or Mesopotamia which he never visited - or even in Palestine, which he only visited briefly."
True, early Christianity was not single-strained. From Paul's own Letters we know of differences among the early teachers. But can we surmise that Paul never heard of the virginal conception in spite of the doctrine having been held among his contemporaries? This doctrine is not a small one. Paul who visited both Peter, the chief apostle, and James, "the brother of the Lord", in Jerusalem could never have come away ignorant of it if it was a part of their Christianity. Directly from Peter and James he must have heard of the "appearance" of Jesus to them and to the apostles. From it as well as from an "appearance" of Jesus to him he derived the belief in Jesus' resurrection. It is impossible to think that if Peter and James believed in the virginal conception Paul could have been unaware of the doctrine. The doctrine simply could not have been there in those early days. As to what early Christians believed in Egypt or Mesopotamia, not only Paul but nobody on earth can say anything. They are a total blank for all time, for no records exist. All we can learn about early Christianity is from Paul, since his are the first documents of the new religion. Knowledge, as distinguished from conjecture, can be obtained only from what he wrote.
Somerville is right to say that we can gather little of Jesus' moral doctrine from Paul. A few references are there to it, but nothing even remotely about the Sermon on the Mount. I should say that this gap speaks against Matthew rather than against Paul. And so does the absence of biographical ma-
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terial - except for a small number of stray allusions - in Paul. Somerville himself has averred: "...I would go along with Raymond Brown, and others, who do not hesitate to say that the gospels can be used only with the greatest degree of circumspection as a 'historical source'." Somerville is specifically sceptical over the historical value of John's "Maverick Gospel", but how are we to judge between this Gospel and the others? Just because the latter are "synoptic" in many ways they cannot claim greater historical substance than the former. It just means that they drew in large part on certain common traditions. Merely because they were a little earlier cannot confer more historical value on them either. I feel that Somerville will concur with me here since he writes that he agrees with those who "regard the Christ-event as extending beyond the life and death of the Man, Jesus". In explicit language what is meant is that, as Somerville admits, all this "makes the search for the historical Jesus pretty difficult". Thus what he calls "the material contained in the gospels", including the Sermon on the Mount about which, by the way, Mark no less than Paul knows nothing - all falls under scepticism. Paul's ignorance here is actually his negative knowledge: no more than what he offers us about Jesus can be taken as essentially correct. His Epistles are the nearest in time to the life and death of the Man, Jesus, and they were in touch with the information to be gleaned from those who had known Jesus the Man. Apart from Paul there really is darkness, no matter how fascinatingly filled with stories.
In this context it will be appropriate for me to comment on Somerville's sentence towards the close of his letter: "Obviously if one does not believe in miraculous conceptions the scriptures that proclaim it must be wrong." In my opinion, one's belief or not in miraculous conceptions is irrelevant in our sphere of discourse. The pertinent points here for proclaiming Matthew and Luke wrong are: "How does Paul, the earliest witness we have, come to be utterly unaware of the doctrine of virginal conception - why did it surface relatively late and only in two New-Testament writings out of the seven-
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teen or so that are posterior to Paul, including even the earliest and the latest Gospels?"
Now for the problem of Jesus' sinlessness and his sinful body. Somerville attends only to the former topic and formulates the situation thus: "Paul does say that Jesus was sinless (he does not say whether this sinlessness refers only to his life after birth or includes freedom from 'original sin' prior to his birth, e.g. in his conception)." I should think that the second alternative is out of place in Pauline theology. To Paul Jesus is sinless not only after birth but also before it because he was pre-existent in the Divine Reality. Philippians 2:6 tells us about him that "his state was divine" and he had "equality with God"; and, in my view, that is why 2 Corinthians 5:2 calls him "the sinless one", which phrase would suggest his being without sin during earthly life too. A virginal conception is not needed at all, in Paul's vision, for Jesus to be sinless before birth. At the same time it is excluded in order that Jesus may have a sinful body. Philippians 2:6-8 tells us that Jesus "did not cling to his equality with God" but "emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet". The quote from 2 Corinthians speaks of God making, for our sake, "the sinless one into sin" and Romans 8:3 refers to Jesus' body as being "as physical as any sinful body" or, literally, "in the likeness of sinful flesh". There can be no doubt that Paul, wanting to drive home the full reality of Jesus' sacrifice for man's redemption from sin, presents Jesus as becoming a man in the same sense as any Philippian or Corinthian or Paul himself. Although the non-committing of sin, unlike all these people, is necessary to render the sacrifice that of a divine being, yet to act divinely in a body like all "sinful flesh" rather than in a specially conceived frame which would not be "as men are" - this also is a necessity for the completeness of the salvific work.
In Paul's theology the expression "born of a woman" must carry the same significance as it would for all those people and the same background as for them of a sexual parental act. Nowhere in the Pauline Letters is there anything to hint at a
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reservation as in the Apostles' Creed about Jesus being fully man and yet figuring as one
Who was conceived of the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary.
I appreciate Somerville's treatment of my article and the encouragement he gives for its publication in one or another of the scriptural reviews in the USA or in England. His "thinking out aloud" has helped me to attain greater clarity in my own views and I thank him for writing of my work: "What he has to say about his three primary sources and his citations from them are well said." What a difference all round from the summary dismissal by the Professor in the Classics Department:' "Interesting,... but I do not find the argument convincing."
P. S. One point in Somerville's thinking aloud I have inadvertently passed over. He writes about Paul: "...he was certainly wrong in his stress about the proximate Second Coming of Jesus." The word "wrong" is ambiguous. Was Paul wrong because there was no proximate Second Coming? Evidently he was a grossly mistaken prophet there. But was he wrong in the sense that he misrepresented Jesus? I don't think so at all. The synoptic Gospels are at one with Paul in this respect. Each of them represents Jesus as expecting the end of the world and the Son of Man to come in his glory very soon - even in the lifetime of some who were listening to Jesus. If Paul is proved, as Somerville puts it, "not infallible", so is Jesus himself. For, if there is one motif running almost through the NT it is this - beginning with Paul and the Synoptics and ending with the Apocalypse and 2 Peter. That is why it is at times said that Jesus brought an interim religion, a religion of what he conceived to be the earth's final days, and not one intended for ages to come, with a Church meant to last even when, in Macaulay's famous fantasy, a native traveller from Newzealand stands on a broken arch of London Bridge to contemplate the ruins of St. Paul's.
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Did Jesus have Brothers and Sisters?
I
One of the most wide-spread beliefs among the Roman Catholics is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, not only gave birth to him by a virginal conception but also remained a virgin throughout her life. In other words, she had no marital relations with her husband Joseph and, in consequence, Jesus had neither brothers nor sisters.
However, as even the Roman Catholic priest-scholar Raymond E. Brown1 points out, direct scriptural authority is solely for Mary having been a virgin in conceiving Jesus. With equal broadmindedness and honesty Brown2 writes apropos of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the only two books out of the twenty-seven in the New Testament that have infancy narratives mentioning Jesus' virgin birth:
".. .the infancy narratives do not make the slightest connection between the virginal conception and the special value of the state of virginity (a theme that does appear elsewhere in the N[ew] T[estament], e.g., 1 Cor[inthians] 7:8). Mary is depicted as having chosen the married state, and the virginal conception is presented as God's intervention, not as Mary's personal choice... Few today interpret the 'I do not know man' of Luke 1:34 as a vow or resolve of virginity, pace G. Graystone, Virgin of all Virgins (Rome: pio x, 1968). In the long run, as Graystone admits on pp. 147-51, the interpretation depends on whether Mary is to be considered a pious Jewish girl of her times (a situation that militates against a vow or resolve of virginity) or whether, by a special impulse of grace and in view of her future vocation, she broke out of the limitations of her surroundings and resolved to remain a virgin." Then Brown adds: "...most take the former alternative and think that Mary entered matrimony with the same intention as any other girl..."
At another place, Brown,3 facing the same phrase from Luke (1:34) which has often been interpreted in the past (from
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the 4th century onwards) to mean that "Mary remained a virgin all her life, even after the birth of Jesus", notes that a vow of perpetual virginity by Mary "is totally implausible in the context supposed by Luke". Brown4 assures us: "In our knowledge of Palestinian Judaism, there is nothing that would explain why a twelve-year-old girl would have entered marriage with the intention to preserve virginity and thus not to have children. Luke (1:25,48) uses the words 'disgrace' and 'low estate' to express what the Jewish mentality towards such childlessness would be."
Thus, according to impartial Biblical scholarship, perpetual virginity is not to be expected of Mary. This means that brothers and sisters for Jesus are quite on the cards.
In fact, direct scriptural authority can be cited on their behalf. The very Gospel of Matthew, which is the first of the two New-Testament books to narrate Jesus' virginal conception, contains these verses (13:54-57) about Jesus among his own suspicious countrymen:
"And when... he taught in their synagogues, in so much that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
"And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
"And they were offended in him____"5
The natural comment on these verses is surely along the lines of D. E. Nineham's quotation from A. E. J. Rawlinson (Westminster Commentary, p. 75) in relation to the same incident as reported in an earlier Gospel, that of Mark (6:3): "The theory of the perpetual virginity of our Lord's mother had not yet arisen when this Gospel was written. Later ecclesiastical tradition argued that the Lord's 'brothers' were either His reputed half-brothers, children of Joseph by a former marriage (so Epiphanius and Origen), or else His cousins (so Jerome and others). Tertullian and Helvidius among ancient writers
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defended the more natural interpretation."6
Perhaps we shall be told: "What Matthew and, before him, Mark report are words used by the Jews and the former are not responsible for the latter's terms. The Jews may loosely pass off half-brothers and half-sisters or else cousins or any relations as real brothers and sisters."
The answer is simple. In both Matthew and Mark there are earlier references than 13:55-56 and 6:3 respectively. Here the evangelists are speaking in person. Matthew (12:46) recounts on his own: "...behold, his mother and his brethren stood without..." Mark too (3:31) narrates directly: "There came then his brethren and his mother... " Nor in this matter is Luke lacking in straight story-telling, although his reference comes after his brief version (4:22) of the Jews' inquiry. He now narrates: "Then came to him his mother and his brethren..." (8:19).
In addition, we have the Gospel of John testifying in the same vein. The last of the four evangelists writes in persona propria: "After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples..." (2:12). Again, John tells us: "His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest....For neither did his brethren believe in him... But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also unto the feast...." (7:3, 5,10).
The four Gospels are not the only texts to bring in the brothers. The Acts of the Apostles, commonly attributed to Luke, has the passage: "These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, with his brethren" (1:14).
Even before any of the evangelists there is Paul (1 Corinthians 9:5) referring, not in the course of repeating others' evidence but on his own, to "the brethren of the Lord", and anticipating the name of one of those mentioned by Mark and Matthew: his Galatians 1:19 supplies to us the designation: "James the Lord's brother." Interestingly, Josephus, the Jewish historian (first century A.D.), the earliest writer outside
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the Bible to mention Jesus, does so at one place - which is adjudged authentic and not an interpolation7 - by way of mentioning "James... the brother of Jesus who was called Christ" (Antiquities, XX.9,1).
Could Paul and Josephus no less than Mark, Matthew, Luke and John mean half-brothers or cousins of Jesus? A wife of Joseph before Mary and, by that wife, four sons and at least two daughters, who would be half-brothers and half-sisters to Jesus, are a gigantic hypothesis warranted by nothing in the whole New Testament. Matthew and Luke themselves, who provide infancy narratives, are not only silent on Joseph's past but create the strongest impression of his having had no children attached to him before Mary "brought forth her firstborn son" (Matthew 1:25; Luke 2:7). Even the opinion that Joseph was aged when he married Mary "rests on very unsatisfactory evidence".8 The total picture of him as a widower of advanced years with already a substantial progeny when he married Mary is an egregious multiple fiction. The only hope of denying to Mary children after Jesus lies in proving the irrelevance of the term "cousins" or the general label "relatives".
But Paul can be shown to frustrate this hope. When he wants to specify the relationship between a friend of his, named John Mark, and another friend named Barnabas, what does he say? True, the English Authorised Version quoted so far by us reads: "sister's son" (Colossians 4:10). But all subsequent translations are unanimous in setting right the mistake. For example, today's English Version on which the Protestant Canon David Edwards of Westminster Abbey bases his admirable Jesus For Modern Man9 has: "Mark, the cousin of Barnabas." The prestigious Jerusalem Bible, which is a Roman Catholic publication with a "Nihil Obstat" from the church authorities, carries the same phrase.10 Thus very plainly Paul, who wrote in Greek like the rest of the New-Testament authors, makes a difference between "brother" (Greek "adel-phos") and "cousin" ("anepsios" in the Greek original). If James were a cousin of Jesus and not a brother, Paul could
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certainly be expected to draw the distinction. And when he speaks of "the brethren of the Lord" he must be taken to mean what he says and rule out cousinship and all the more the vague implication of "relatives".
Paul's testimony, the earliest in the New Testament, is indeed crucial and decisive. Still, hesitation in a small or great degree can be traced in Roman Catholic scholarship. Look at Brown himself, perhaps the most accurate and modern-spirited exegete in the Roman Church. He is perfectly balanced when he faces the issue on which Rawlinson has commented. His observation11 is that the doctrine of Mary's virginity after Jesus' birth {virginitas post partum) "depends on how one understands the family relationship implied in the reference to Jesus' brothers (and sisters) in Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55; and John 2:12; 7:5. Were they siblings (Tertullian, Helvid-ius, modern Protestants); or were they stepbrothers (Epipha-nius) or cousins (Hegesippus, Jerome, principal Reformers)?"
Out of the three courses supposedly open, the one towards "stepbrothers" is touched upon just once by Brown in a very indirect manner. The second-century Protevangelium of James is mentioned as supporting the virginal conception and given the footnote:12 "Although this apocryphal gospel pretends to come from Jesus' family circle (his stepbrother James), the author was not a Palestinian Jew, for he betrays real ignorance of the Temple and its customs. Writing in mid-second century, he combines the Matthew and Lucan information with imaginative details of another origin." Apparently, the stepbrother-relationship is the claim going with the document: it is not Brown's assessment. The claim is connected with the legend first found in the Protevangelium (9:2) that Joseph was an old man when he married Mary and had already a number of children by his first wife.
Brown elsewhere is not clear whether he opts for "brothers" literally or broadly, for, after referring to Acts 1:14, which distinguishes the Twelve Apostles from Jesus' "brethren", he13 uses the expression: "these brothers or relatives." One wonders why he hesitates and leaves room for thinking of "cou-
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sins" or still further removed members of the family. Not only has he cited Mark 6:3, Matthew 13:55 and John 2:12; 7:5 as listing the brothers of Jesus: he14 has also cited Galatians 1:19 where Paul mentions "James the Lord's brother", as well as Corinthians 15:7 in which Paul alludes to a "James" who was one of the witnesses of the resurrected Jesus and whom Brown identifies with "the Lord's brother" of the Galatians. Besides, has he not tacitly sided with those scholars who hold that Mary entered matrimony with the same intention as any other girl and that there is no sign in the Gospels of a vow or resolve on her part to be perpetually a virgin? Brown's alternative "relative" is absolutely arbitrary and inexplicable.
The same can be averred about the stand taken by The Jerusalem Bible. In the teeth of all evidence its editors,15 while annotating 12:46 of Matthew, whose Gospel is conventionally placed before Mark's in all Bibles, write apropos of Jesus'' "brothers": "Not Mary's children but near relatives, cousins perhaps, which both Hebr[ew] and Aramaic style 'brothers', cf. Gn. 13:18; 14:16; 29:15; Lv. 10:4; 1 Ch. 23:22f." Do not the editors realise how odd it would be for a once-orthodox converted Jew like Paul to speak - as Mark, Matthew and Luke do later - of brothers in connection with the family of Jesus but change over to cousin when dealing with another family? Can we question that Paul knew Hebrew and Aramaic? The Jerusalem Bible16 quotes him as saying: "I was born of the race of Israel and of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents... As for the Law, I was a Pharisee..." (Philippians 3:5). The annotation17 refers to Acts 21:40 and informs us that "Paul spoke Aramaic,... unlike the hellenist Jews" mentioned in Acts 6:lf. Acts 21:40 tells us in The Jerusalem Bible18 how Paul addressed the Jews of Jerusalem : "... he spoke to them in Hebrew." The annotation19 corrects the statement: "i.e. Aramaic: Hebrew was not spoken after the Exile." So Paul, who must have known the Old Testament's alleged habit to style near relatives "brothers" at times, is found not to follow that habit. Surely a vital point is here involved. The argument from Hebrew and Aramaic falls under suspicion and needs to
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be closely examined.
On turning to the texts cited by The Jerusalem Bible we light upon an eye-opening fact. In Genesis 13:6 near relatives are indeed termed "brothers".20 But how does The Jerusalem Bible itself render the other texts? In Genesis 14:16 we have "kinsmen" instead.21 Genesis 29:15 gives "kinsmen".22 Leviticus 10:4 yields "brothers".231 Chronicles 23:22f, however, has "kinsmen" again.24 Evidently, the Old Testament, by The Jerusalem Bible's own confession, does not employ a clear-cut word from which an analogy can be drawn for the New Testament. The words employed by the latter do not seem to admit variable translation. And the reason why is unmistakable the moment we realise the true linguistic situation as between the two Testaments.
The Old Testament is written in Hebrew. The vocable on which The Jerusalem Bible builds its case is "achim" (pronounced "akim"). In Hebrew (and in its dialect Aramaic) it means at the same time "brother" and "kinsman".25 Therefore, "cousin" or any other relative can be indicated by it: the correct shade depends on the context. The New Testament is written not in Hebrew but in Greek and is not at all,a translation from the Hebrew or its dialect Aramaic. The ambiguity of "achim" has no application here. The New Testament writers knew what they were talking about and used Greek words to mean what they wanted to communicate. Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, when speaking of Jesus' family, have written "adelphos" which is the Greek for "brother"26 and which allows in a family-reference no equivocation: literally, it has the sense of being born from the same womb. We may add that Josephus too wrote his Antiquities in Greek and chose the same word for James.
No doubt, one can speak of "brethren" in a general connotation to mean comradeship in the faith or in the work, as at several places in the New Testament (Matthew 5:22-24; 7:3-5; Colossians 1:2; Thessalonians 5:4; Philippians 4:1, etc.). In two places Paul suggests a wider sense. Romans 9:3-4 reads: "... my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are
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Israelites..." Philemon 10:16 pleads with the addressee about one Onesimus who was a "servant" of the former but seems to have run away from him to Paul who has converted him and kept him. Now Paul is returning the runaway and asking Philemon to receive him back: "Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?" (16) The Jerusalem Bible renders the closing phrase: "as a blood-brother as well as a brother in the Lord."27 Paul's meaning in both the places is "fellow-member of the community or nation or race". Onesimus occurs also in Colossians 4:9. The Authorised Version translates: "Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you." The Jerusalem Bible28 supplies a gloss on its "blood-brother" by ending the verse with: "who is a fellow citizen of yours."
Further, it is reasonable to think that in some contexts "adelphos", in the widest connotation, could refer to a fellow-man, another human being like oneself. Or else the term might be used as a mistaken description: one who is not born from the same womb could be mentioned as such because of certain confusing circumstances. From The Jerusalem Bible we can gather two occasions of error in the use of "brother" by the evangelists in their accounts of Judean history in the Roman period.
Thus Matthew writes of the tetrarch Herod Antipas marrying "Herodias, his brother Philip's wife" (14:3).'The annotation29 informs us: ".. .this Philip is not the tetrarch of Ituraea and Trachonitis, Lk 3:1; cf. Mt. 16:13; he is another son of Herod the Great by Mariamne II and therefore half-brother of Antipas..." The same slip is in Mark 6:17 and Luke 3:19.The other slip is in Luke 3:1 where we are told of "Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of the lands of Ituraea and Trachonitis..." The annotation to "Herod" runs: "The Herod referred to is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and Malthake.. ."30 "Philip" is annotated: "Son of Herod the Great and Cleopatra.. ."31 So we have again a half-brother mentioned as full brother. But neither slip can be considered
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a conscious blurring of distinctions, as if it were customary to mix up the two kinds of brotherhood. There was real cause for a capital confusion. The very first annotation we have quoted begins by saying that the Vulgate version - the Latin translation from the Hebrew and the Greek by Jerome, 331-420 A.D., and the earliest to be accepted by the Roman Catholic Church - omits the name "Philip" on account of "the difficulty the name seemed to create". We are further told: "Josephus himself calls him Herod." In fact, the husband of Herodias was known as Herod Philip. Herod the Great whose sons are here concerned was responsible for a lot of mix-up in men's minds and his various sons greatly added to it. "The marriage tangles of the Herod family," comments William Barclay,32 "are quite incredible, and their inter-relations are so complicated that they become almost impossible to work out." Barclay continues that "Herod the Great was married many times". From his five marriages mentioned by Barclay he had, according to the latter,33 seven sons. Naturally it would not be easy always to tell who were true brothers and who half ones.
Apart from the two easily understandable historical inaccuracies in the "brother"-relationship on the evangelists' part, there is no ambiguity in their usage. To quote a few passages from The Jerusalem Bible:34 "As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew.... Going on there he saw another pair of brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John..." (Matthew 4:18, 21) - "Then some Saducees... put this question to him, 'Master, we have it from Moses in writing, if a man's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother.'... (Mark 12:18-19) - "He said to them, 'I tell you solemnly, there is no one who left house, wife, brothers, parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not be given repayment many times over...' " (Luke 18:29-30). In all these passages, the "brothers" are real ones: they are not "half-brothers" or "cousins" or other relatives, and everywhere the Greek "adelphos" has been employed, which has no two
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senses when family-relationship is spoken of.
If half-brothers and half-sisters were intended, the Greek term "amphimetores" or "amphipatores"35 could come into play, depending on the situation - the first one designating brothers and sisters from different mothers but the same father and the second the offspring of the same mother but different fathers. Since a single person is incapable of having different mothers or fathers, these terms have always to be in the plural. Thus Mark who in 6:3 speaks of Jesus in the singular as being "the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon" could not have availed himself of either of the terms. The very fact that a manner of speech was adopted, which rendered them impossible, argues a literal sense of "brother". But in 3:31 Mark could have taken advantage of them, for he speaks of Jesus' "brothers". His abstaining from them now is as strong an argument as 6:3 for their irrelevance, though from a different angle. The same should hold for the reference by Matthew, Mark and John.
Perhaps Matthew and Luke specially abstained because such turns of language would not help their advocacy of Jesus' virgin birth. "Amphimetores" would indicate that, Jesus, while having a different mother than the other members of the family, would still be the son of Joseph who would figure as the father he had in common with James, Joses, Judas and Simon and the sisters. He would be Mary's sole son, yet still a child from Joseph. "Amphipatores" would prevent him from being Joseph's son, but render him true brother to the remainder of the offspring mentioned: then all of these would be Mary's children by Joseph while he alone would be Mary's child by another man than Joseph. Matthew and Luke would compromise their infancy narratives if they brought in either "amphimetores" or "amphipatores". To save the narratives one would have to go past "half-brothers" to a new description.
Would "stepbrother"do? Hardly. For, now Jesus would not need to be Joseph's and Mary's son but he would still be Mary's by a previous marriage of hers. Again, no virgin birth
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would be in the picture, merely a new father brought on the scene. The description required should get past "stepbrother" as much as "half-brother".
There is, for instance, the term "syntrophos" in Acts 13:1 in connection with the prophet and teacher Manaen who "had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch" - a term capable of indicating one who is neither a brother nor a half-brother nor even a stepbrother but a foster-brother: in fact, A. D. Nott36 does translate the Greek noun thus. Had Mark in 6:3 thought of distinguishing Jesus as having with the listed children a relationship as of a brother simply in virtue of living together with them from childhood, he would unquestionably have pressed "syntrophos" into service. Jesus would not then perforce be accounted Joseph's son or anybody else's even though remaining Mary's: the Virgin Birth would be a possibility despite Mark's being completely devoid of any trace of it. But what about Mark in 3:13 or Matthew and Luke in similar contexts or John in his references to Jesus' brothers? The brothers everywhere would be sheer outsiders somehow staying with Joseph and Mary - a very unlikely situation which is dismissible particularly in the face of no less than four of them being there, not to count the two or more girls going with them.
None of the terms we have so far introduced will do. We have to make our peace with the posture that the New-Testament writers have avoided all complexities and made use of the straightforward "brothers". It being impossible to think of half- or step- or foster-brothers, the one alternative left is "cousins" or, in general, "relatives". But, as against "adelphos" for "brother", the word in Greek for "cousin" stands sharply differentiated: it is, as we have seen, "anepsios",37 the word Paul uses for John Mark in relation to Barnabas.
Here we may mention in passing that the Authorised Version's erroneous "sister's son" for "anepsios" is an incongruous interpretation in view of the explicit Greek phrase which we find with that meaning in Acts 23:16. The Authorised Version itself responds with "Paul's sister's son" to a phrase
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of three words "uios tes adelphes" ("son of sister") quite in contrast to the single vocable "anepsios".
The Authorised Version is at fault elsewhere too - now a little loose rather than incorrect. When in Luke 1:36 the angel Gabriel speaks to Mary, the translation begins: "And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth..." What is "cousin" here is "suggenis" in Greek, denoting broadly "of the same stock"38 and Englished correctly by The Jerusalem Bible as "kinswoman".39 This is a term for a somewhat distant or general family-connection. If Elisabeth were a female cousin, she would be called " anep-sia".40 When Mark, Matthew and Luke write of Jesus' "sisters" along with his "brothers", we get for the former the plural "adelphai", the feminine of "adelphoi". As family-members, sisters no less than brothers cannot be jumbled with cousins or the like in normal Greek. If the evangelists had wanted to suggest mere kinsfolk without any particularity, they would have employed a suitable adaptation of the Lucan "suggenis". Then we should have had the broad category "relatives". But everywhere in the New Testament we are debarred from invoking ambiguity in a family-context bearing on Jesus. Jesus has to be a true brother of the persons denoted in association with him and Mary.
A half-hearted attempt by the renowned scholar J. A. Fitz-myer in the monumental Catholic production, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, to water down the Greek adelphos may be noticed here. Commenting on Paul's mention of "James the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:19), Fitzmyer41 writes: "In classical and Hellenistic Greek adelphos means 'blood brother.' In the LXX it translates Hebrew 'ah, even when used in the sense of 'kinsman' (Genesis 13:8; 29:12-15; see AG4215). Greek papyri from Egypt also preserve the wide sense of adelphos, 'relative' (see J.J. Collins, TS43). In view of the NT teaching on the virginal conception of Jesus (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:34) and the Christian tradition about Mary 'ever virgin,' in the Creeds, adelphos is understood as 'kinsman, relative.' "
What is brought home to us directly or indirectly by Fitzmyer is: (1) a wide sense has been employed by the Septu-
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agint (LXX) and some Egyptian papyri, but (2) classical and Hellenistic usage is strictly for "blood brother", by which Fitzmyer evidently signifies "one of the sons of the same mother", and (3) this usage may be considered relevant to Galatians 1:19, but let us ignore this since a sense other than the classical and Hellenistic exists somewhere and since the Church traditionally subscribes to the perpetual virginity of Mary.
Here is rather unconvincing "special pleading", particularly as in a different place in The Jerome Biblical Commentary44 Fitzmyer cannot help marking Paul's Hellenistic background. He is not oblivious of the fact that a reassessment of the influence of this background is called for in certain points of theological thought and theological terminology. However, in his opinion, the reassessment cannot touch the "evidence of the influence of the Greek world in his style... Paul knew Greek and had some sort of Greek training... Paul lived for roughly ten years in a Hellenistic atmosphere... This Greek atmosphere cannot be lightly dismissed. Its influence is seen in the figures and illustrations he uses". It would be indeed a perversion of historical truth to hold that he who could distinguish several family-relationships by means of current Greek terms would signify "kinsman, relative" by adelphos. Nor would he have any theological reason to do so. There is not the slightest hint in Paul of the virginal conception. He never even bothers to mention Jesus' mother by name, leave aside taking any interest in her. Jesus is said only to be "born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4) which is far from suggesting any distinction from common human birth. As for the idea of Mary's being "ever virgin", it can have no relevance to anything in the whole New Testament. Sheer fantasy alone would look for the least bearing of it on Paul, when J. L. McKenzie could affirm in The Jerome Biblical Commentary45 in connection with even a later writer than Paul: "The absence of the infancy narratives in Mark suggests very strongly that these narratives did not exist in the earliest form of the Christian traditions about Jesus and that various traditions about the infancy were formed later."
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II
In spite of all these linguistic facts and scriptural and other references, David Quinlan46 still voices as quite definite the old Roman Catholic pleas that the four named "brethren" of Jesus and the un-named "sisters" are recognisable as cousins from several designations traceable in the Gospels and Acts. He identifies the four "brethren" as follows: "Joseph [=Joses] is stated to be the brother of James and Salome (who thus qualifies to be called a 'sister' of Christ) as well as of Jude [=Juda, Judas] Thaddeus; Simon known as Zelotes and as the Cananaean. These were the children of Alpheus (of the Synoptists, otherwise known as Clopas or Cleophas) by Mary, sister or sister-in-law of the Virgin Mary. Alpheus was the brother of Joseph, foster-father of Jesus. Thus the four men and Salome were our Lord's first cousins." Quinlan goes on: "Alpheus and Mary were among those who 'used to follow Jesus and minister to him' (Matt 15, 40; 16, 1). Of the four, James the apostle is called a 'brother of the Lord' by Paul (Gal. 1,19) and Jude (ch. 1) refers to himself as the brother of James."
Quinlan is taking advantage of the commonness of several names in the Jewry of Jesus' time. A little attention to detail can prove him wrong. Jude begins his Epistle: "Jude the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James..." If this "James" is the same as Paul's "brother of the Lord", why does Jude not call himself correctly yet humbly "the brother and servant of Jesus Christ"? Why bring James in? Again, out of the several James's of the New Testament, who is this James? We know of three persons separately mentioned but bearing the same name: "(1) One of the three disciples who were with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9). The brother of John, a son of Zebedee, he was later killed by Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-2). (2) Another disciple, the son of Alpheus, of whom nothing more is known (Mark 4:18). (3) The brother of Jesus who apparently became an apostle after a special resurrection appearance to him (1 Corinthians 15:7, Galatians 1:19) and subsequently became leader of the
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Jerusalem Church (Acts 15:13-21).47 Both in Luke (16:16) and in Acts (1:13) we find "Judas [=Jude] the brother of a James" (to be distinguished from Judas Iscariot, the future betrayer of Jesus) put among the twelve apostles chosen by Jesus and, if we attend to the just preceding phrase in Luke - "Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon called Zelotes" - the Jude of the Epistle who is James's brother should be another son of Alpheus, but this does not at all identify him with Mark's "Jude" or Matthew's "Judas" who is Jesus' brother, any more than "Simon called Zelotes" and the earlier-mentioned choice of Jesus, "Simon, (whom he also named Peter)" (Luke 6:14) whose "brother" is Andrew (ibid.) can be equated to Jesus' brother Simon. None of those who have the same names as Jesus' brothers can be equated to the latter - especially since Acts (1:13-14) unmistakably differentiates them when, after Jesus' ascension into heaven, the apostles come together: "And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James, the son of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." After this statement, how can any of Jesus' "brethren", whether called James or Jude or Simon or Joseph, be identified with one or another person listed quite separately from them? The four sons of Alpheus who, along with their sister Salome, "were Our Lord's first cousins" stand in the New Testament as absolutely distinct from those to whom Jesus in Mark is a "brother" and who in Matthew and Luke are his "brethren".
A matter of curious interest here is that The Jerusalem Bible, although a mouthpiece of Roman Catholicism trying to make Jesus' "brethren" out to be his "cousins", flatly contradicts Quinlan's identification of them with the apostles hailing from Alpheus's family. We read: "The apostle Jude is not the Jude 'brother' of Jesus, of MT. 13:55; MK 6:3, and brother of James Jude 1). Nor is it likely that the apostle James son of
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Alphaeus was James the brother of the Lord, Acts 12:17; 15:13, etc."48
Even Brown, classifying the various witnesses cited by Paul to the Resurrection of Jesus, one of whom is "James", remarks in a footnote: "in describing James, 'the brother of the Lord' (Gal 1:19) as a new follower of Jesus, I am accepting the common scholarly opinion that this James is not to be identified with either of the two Jameses who are named in the Lucan lists of the Twelve (Luke 6:13-16; Acts 1:13), to wit, James of Zebedee and James of Alphaeus; for Luke explicitly distinguishes the Twelve from the brothers of Jesus (Acts 1:14)."49
Another point to be cleared is also a bit of legerdemain attempted by Quinlan.50 In support of "Mary's perpetual virginity" he resorts to a Gospel-text: "we take John 19, 26, in which the dying Jesus commends his mother to the keeping of John. It is unbelievable that this would have been his disposition if Mary had other children who could have, and should have, cared for her."
Here there are two criticisms to be made. First, Quinlan is unaware that the text's authenticity has been challenged. John's picture is hardly credible. Let us compare it to that in the three earlier Gospels. In two of them two other Marys than Jesus' mother are specifically listed among the women at the crucifixion, "looking on afar off" (Mark 15:40) or "beholding afar off" (Matthew 27:56). The absence of Jesus' mother hits us in the eye. Luke offers no details and speaks of Jesus' "acquaintances and the women that followed him from Galilee" as standing "afar off, beholding these things" (23:49). A little later (24:10) he identifies them as "Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James [the son of Zebedee] and other women that were with them". Even if - per impossibile - the mother of Jesus were taken to be there among the unnamed women in Luke, we could not imagine Jesus addressing her, for all the women were at a distance, and this point of dis-tantness is made in each of the three Synoptic Gospels. It sets all of them at loggerheads with John's statement: "Now there
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stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene" (19:25). And naturally it leads us to be extremely sceptical of John's story of Jesus talking to her as well as to "the disciple standing by, whom he loved" (19:26-27). They would simply be not within call. Furthermore, Nineham,51 commenting on Mark's version, observes: "contrast the claim of John's passion narrative that Christian witnesses were present at the foot of the cross, whereas in fact 'it is intrinsically improbable that friends and relations of Jesus would be allowed to stand near the Cross' (Barrett, St. John [S.P.C.K., 1955], p. 98)." Thus John's touching scene looks inauthentic.
Even if we accept it as genuine we may rightly ask: "Those who in Mark, Matthew and Luke are mentioned as Jesus' brothers and said by all the three evangelists to accompany Mary when she goes to see Jesus among his disciples and sends word to him from the fringe of the group around him (Mark 3:31; Matthew 12:46; Luke 4:22) are surely still alive at the time of Jesus' death? They are openly referred to in Acts 1:14 as being with Mary after the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. They were there, if needed, to take care of her when Jesus died. Identifying them as first cousins cannot radically change the situation. For, their past association with and accompaniment of Mary should show that she did not and could not have lacked her own people to look after her. It is not because of the absence of sons (or else nephews) that she was commended to John's keeping. If the text is genuine, some other reason has to be found: a possibility is that none of them were present when Jesus was dying or else that Jesus did not regard any of them as dependable. As we saw, John himself has four allusions to Jesus' brethren in his Gospel (2:12; 7:3, 5, 10) and in the first, soon after the story of the miracle at Cana, we have the whole family in an ensemble. In the fact of John's own testimony to the existence of Jesus' brothers, Quinlan's argument sounds all the more hollow."
The last lap of our discussion, serving as a final support to our thesis, is what Matthew says about Joseph and Mary
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when Joseph, instructed by "the angel of the Lord" that Mary's unexpected child was of the Holy Ghost, has accepted his wife instead of putting her away (1:19-20). We are told that Joseph "knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son..." (1:25). This informs us that, although Joseph had no sexual intercourse with Mary before Jesus was born, he had it later, and it suggests that Jesus was the precursor of several sons.
Luke too has the telltale "firstborn" in his report on Mary at Bethlehem, when "great with child" she had accompanied Joseph there. Her "days were accomplished" for delivery -"And she brought forth her firstborn son..."(2:7).
Here Quinlan52 puts in a caveat: "... the phrase that Mary knew not Joseph until the birth of Jesus does not imply, as it might do in English usage, that she knew him afterwards. The Hebrew usage is clear from similar statements, that the first raven released from the Ark did not return until the waters dried up (Genesis 8,7) or that the followers of Jude Machabeus rejoiced because not one of them was slain until they returned home____The term 'first-born' needs to be understood in the same sense in which it was used. It did not imply the birth of any later child. God's command that the first-born of every womb be dedicated to him did not exempt children without brother or sister (Exodus 13, 1-2). Luke's reference to Jesus as the first-born of Mary indicates only that he was subject to the Mosaic law of consecration to God (Numbers 3,12ff. and 41-51; 8, 16-18; 18, 16; Exodus 34, 19ff.) and this explains his account of the presentation to the Temple (Luke 2,22ff.)."
One wonders why Quinlan talks of Hebrew usage. All the Gospels, let us repeat, are in Greek, and they are original compositions and not translations from the Hebrew. They employ words as in Greek usage - and not only here but also in another place the same Greek part of speech has been employed by Matthew with the identical meaning. Ironically enough, Quinlan himself cites the text we have in view. Discussing judgments on sin, he53 writes: "He also taught the paying of atonement by the parable of the debtor imprisoned, to whom it was said, 'Believe me,' thou shalt not be set at liberty
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until thou hast paid to the last farthing (Matthew 5, 25)." Clearly we learn from this statement of Matthew's that the debtor would remain imprisoned before he has discharged his liabilities fully and that his liberty would start after the event of full payment. The case is parallel to Joseph's "knowing" Mary not before but only after Jesus' birth. Matthew's Greek "till" has the same implication as the English.
Secondly, Matthew does not narrate any presentation in the Temple: his "firstborn" has no connection with any act of offering the child to God. The term here is merely enumerative and, although the same term is related in certain Biblical texts elsewhere to the Mosaic law of consecration to God, it is not confined to such texts. For instance, in the Genesis story of Jacob, Laban and Laban's two daughters Leah and Rachel, Laban deceives Jacob by sending to him at night not Rachel whom he loves and who has been promised to him but Leah. When Joseph protests, saying: "...did I not serve with thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?" Laban answers: "It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn" (29:25-26). Here there is no question of consecration, and the enumerative character of the expression is openly exemplified. And, as with "until", Quinlan convicts himself out of his own mouth when he54 begins a Note on "Predestination and Reprobation" thus: "God wills that all souls be saved yet Paul wrote that all who from the first were known to him be destined to be moulded into the image of his Son, the first-born among many brethren. So predestined, God called them; so called, he justified them; so justified, he glorified them (Romans 8, 29)." Here "many brethren" are clearly compatible with "the first-born".
It is true that in the matter of dedication Jehovah did not exempt the firstborn child who had no brother or sister and also that the word "firstborn" can connote a birth's taking place for the first time in a person's house, yet by involving a numerical element it must imply either the actuality of follow-up births or else their expectation. As Matthew and Luke are telling a story of the past, their use of the word in the sense
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of expectation at a particular point in the lives of Joseph and Mary ought to signify the evangelists' knowledge that the expectation had been fulfilled.
Matthew's and Luke's "firstborn" cannot be equated in any circumstances to the expression "only son" which occasionally comes in the New Testament about ordinary people (e.g., Luke 7:12: "... there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother...") and about Jesus as a special Son of God (e.g., John 1:14: "the glory as of the only begotten of the Father...").
To justify our general reading of "firstborn" and our particular discernment of its shade in Matthew and Luke we have simply to pursue the line already indicated by Quinlan's quotation from Paul. More than one analogy is to hand. A sequence is projected as a certainty when Paul spoke of Jesus: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation..." (Colossians 1:15). Again, Paul, in the course of hailing Christ's universal primacy, tells us with the resurrected Christ in view as our fore-runner: "...he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence" (Ibid., 1:18). Quinlan's example has a sequence inbuilt too, when Paul, referring to Jesus and his disciples who are termed his brothers in a non-family sense, writes of those "that love God" becoming "conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:28-29). Repeatedly the scripture's "firstborn" calls for successors in his wake. We may quite legitimately apply in a family-sense Paul's phrase from Romans to Matthew and Luke and infer that the son Jesus was "the firstborn among many brethren" as well as the pre-eminent among them.
All things considered, not the slightest misgiving should linger about Jesus having brothers and sisters. Perhaps Quinlan and his ilk and possibly even more enlightened scholars like Brown are unwilling to admit them from fear lest suspicion should attach to their claim to set Jesus apart from all human beings as extraordinarily born by a virginal conception. Extension of natural birth to Jesus does not inevitably
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follow, but in the Gospels of Mark and John, where no virginal conception is spoken of, the presence of brothers and sisters cannot help strengthening the impression that these evangelists put Jesus, for all his exceptional character and mission, on a par with them as a natural member of a human family observed day after day within the common Galilean scene. Then, as Matthew and Luke repeat from Mark the presence of brothers and sisters, one may doubt the authenticity of the infancy narratives and look back on the birth of Jesus in the light of Mary's subsequent relationship with Joseph. Pope Siricius, Epistle 9,3, in the fourth century saw the danger and argued that if one denies the perpetual virginity of Mary one plays into the hands of scoffers who say that Jesus could not have been born of a virgin.55 Be that as it may, Mary's being the mother of James, Joses, Simon, Judas and at least two girls no less than of Jesus cannot on scriptural authority be denied.
31.7.1983
APPENDIX
'To round off our discussion we should not omit reference to an issue raised by Brown in The Birth of the Messiah (p. 398). Annotating Luke 2:7 which he translates "and she gave birth to a son, her firstborn", he writes:
"Although prototokos, 'firstborn', is sometimes clearly equivalent to monogenes, 'only born' (Psalms of Solomon 13:8; 4 Ezra 6:58), some would take this to mean 'firstborn among many'. And so, since the time of Helvidius (A.D. 380), this verse has played a role in the dispute among Christians as to whether Jesus was Mary's only child (because she remained a virgin), or she had other children, born after Jesus (the brothers and sisters of Jesus, mentioned in Mark 6:3)____In the second century A.D. the Cynic Lucian of Samosata (Demonax 29) proposed a dilemma about a philosopher who claimed to be the first and only: 'If the first, not the only; if the only, not the first'; and many have seen fit to quote that here.
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More subtly, Plummer, Luke, 53, argues that the evangelist would not have used ' firstborn' of Jesus if he knew Mary had no more children, so that at least in Luke's time there was no well-known tradition that Jesus was an only child. However, the use of prototokos rather than monogenes proves only that Luke had no interest in presenting Jesus as Mary's only son. Others have seen in 'firstborn' an implication of special affection; yet when Luke wants to imply that, as in the case of the widow of Nain, he uses monogenes (7:12; also 8:42; 9:38).
"Actually the designation prototokos tells us only that there was no child before Jesus, and that therefore he was to have the privilege and position that Hebrew tradition gives to the firstborn (Exod 13:2; Num 3:12-13; 18:15-16). Luke mentions it here to prepare for the dedication of Jesus as firstborn in 2:22-23. That the designation need not imply the birth of subsequent children is clear from the grave inscription of a Jewish woman named Arsinoe, found near ancient Leontopolis in Egypt and dated to 5 B.C. The Greek text reads: 'In the pains of giving birth to a firstborn child, Fate brought me to the end of my life.' If she died in giving birth to her firstborn, obviously she had no more children. Thus, despite Lucian's clever dilemma, in that case the child was the 'first and only'."
Several points call for comment. No doubt, it is possible to connect Luke's prototokos of 2:7 and the Temple-dedication which goes with the firstborn son and which Luke mentions for Jesus in 2:22-23; but it is exaggerative to hold that he initially employed the word to prepare for the later occasion. The natural interpretation is simply that there was no child of Mary's preceding Jesus and that Luke was not interested in putting Jesus forward as her only son. Luke's usage is non-committal and the second part of its implication, leading him not to say monogenes, leaves the door wide open for supposing that Mary had other children as well as that the word "brothers" occurring three times in Luke 8:19-21 along with "mother" is to be taken literally. Also to urge that only monogenes can express affection is to be over-restrictive.
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Brown's example of the grave inscription in Egypt, dating to 5 B.C., is very far from driving home the shade he favours. "Firstborn" is used in it to indicate the occasion on which Arsinoe died. If nothing more than "giving birth to a child" were mentioned, we would be left fn the dark about the precise occasion. What we are made to know is the occurrence of death not merely at any delivery but at the very first delivery: the term "firstborn" comes to focus our minds on this fact. The inscription has no bearing one way or the other on Brown's general problem. It is a limited particularised reference in which the term just had to be present quite apart from the question whether or not it need imply subsequent children.
Nothing hazes off the conclusion at which we have arrived before glancing at Brown's statements.
1.9.1984
1. The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), pp. 27-28.
2. Ibid., p. 40 and fn. 52.
3. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 304.
4. Ibid.
5. The English Authorised Version.
6. The Gospel of St. Mark (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1972), p. 166.
7. Howard Clark Kee, Jesus in History: An Approach to the Study of the Gospels, Second Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), pp. 43,44,45.
8. Encyclopedia Americana (New York: American Corporation, 1966), Vol. 18, p. 346, col. 1.
9. Glasgow: Collins, Fontana Books, 1975, p. 55.
10. The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), p. 346 of The New Testament.
11. The Virginal Conception..., p. 28, fn. 32.
12. Ibid., p. 51, fn. 78.
13. Ibid., p. 94, fn. 160.
14. Ibid., p. 55, fn. 87.
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15. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 35, col. 2, note o of The New Testament.
16. Ibid., p. 238.
17. Ibid., p. 341, col. 2, note p.
18. Ibid., p. 238.
19. Ibid., p. 239, col. 1, note q.
20. Ibid., p. 29 of The Old Testament.
21. Ibid., p. 30.
22. Ibid., p. 48.
23. Ibid., p. 141.
24. Ibid., p. 522.
25. The Megiddo Modem Dictionary, compiled by Reuban Sivan and Edward A. Levensten (Tel Aviv: Megiddo Publishing Co., Ltd., 1972), p. 15.
26. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 11, col. 1.
27. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 371 of the New Testament and note g in col. 2.
28. Ibid., p. 349.
29. Ibid., p. 39, col. 1, note a.
30. Ibid., p. 95, col. 2, note c.
31. Ibid., note d.
32. The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 150.
33. Ibid., pp. 150-51.
34. Ibid., p. 150.
35. Liddell and Scott, op. cit., p. 45, col. 1.
36. St. Paul (London: The Home University Library, Thornton Butter-worth Ltd., 1938), p. 90.
37. Liddell and Scott, op. cit., p. 61. col. 1.
38. Ibid., p. 657, col. 1.
39. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 91 of the New Testament.
40. Liddell and Scott, op. cit., p. 61, col. 1.
41. "The Letter to the Galatians", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond E. Brown, S. S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S. J., Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm. (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, St. Peter's Seminary, 1962, by arrangement with the original Publishers: Prentice Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968), p. 239, col. 2.
42. W.F. Arndt and F.W. Ginrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago, 1957).
43. Theological Studies, 5 (1944), pp. 484-94.
44. "Paul's Background", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 803, col. 1.
45. Ibid., p. 66, col. 1.
46. Roman Catholicism (London: The Teach Yourself Books, The English Universities Press Ltd., 1966), p. 164.
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47. "Biblical Glossary", Pears Cyclopaedia (London: Pelham Books Ltd., 1979-80), S13, col. 2.
48. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 201, col. 2, note o of The New Testament.
49. The Virginal Conception..., p. 94, fn. 160.
50. Roman Catholicism, p. 163.
51. The Gospel of St. Mark, p. 491.
52. Roman Catholicism, pp. 163,164.
53. Ibid., p. 74.
54. Ibid., p. 57.
55. Quoted from Brown's Virginal Conception..., p. 39, fn. 50.
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A Letter and a Reply Apropos of the Article "
Sri Aurobindo and the Kingdom of God"
Mother India, in its issue of December 5, 1970, published "Sri Aurobindo and the Kingdom of God" by Dick Batstone. In one place it carried the following footnote by the Editor: "The author has overlooked one reference in the New Testament, Luke 17:20-21: 'And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Io there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.' Ronald Knox has the gloss to his modern translation:' "Within you": the Greek might also mean "among you."' The Revised Version says in the margin: 'The Kingdom of God is in your midst.
In the course of a letter to the Editor, the author of the article discussed this footnote. We are reproducing his letter and the Editor's reply in view of the importance, in Biblical exegesis, of the point involved.
Dick Batstone's Letter
1 Baskerville Road, London S.W.18, England. 20 May 1971.
Dear Mr. Sethna,
When not receiving an answer from an Ashramite, I never know whether (a) he has not got my letter because of hazards of the post, or (b) he has got it, but, being so absorbed in a phase of concentrated sadhana, he has simply found it irrelevant and scrunched it up.
Never mind! Let me thank you again for publishing my article. Yes, maybe I should have mentioned Luke 17, Vs. 20-21. It was not exactly that I "overlooked" them - it is the quotation that immediately comes to mind on this topic - but it is again an ambiguous passage and, as you point out, can be
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translated in different ways. Scholars won't agree on it, and I suppose I took the easy way by not bringing it in!
Otto says Jesus is pointing to the paradox of the future and present aspects of the Kingdom - not only is it the eschato-logical Kingdom, to come with "flaming lightning, with the appearance of the Son of Man, his angels and the heavenly tribunal", but also it is the here and now Kingdom of power over devils and sickness, and the fellowship of Jesus and his disciples in righteousness, peace, and joy. Always, says Otto, the kingdom is seen as external, transcendent, not immanent, and Jesus has nothing mystical in mind.
Another recent writer, Perrin, says, "... the decisive observation is that if the word entos is to be translated 'within', then we have here an understanding of Kingdom of God without further parallel in the recorded teaching of Jesus."
On the other hand, C.G. Jung in Psychology and Alchemy says, "The Western attitude, with its emphasis on the object, tends to fix the ideal - Christ - in its outward aspect and thus rob it of its mysterious relation to the inner man. It is this prejudice, for instance, which impels the Protestant interpreters of the Bible to interpret entos uinim (referring to the Kingdom of God) as 'among you' instead of 'within you'."
It is a tormenting subject, perhaps best left alone, and the effort used to find the Kingdom for oneself—
With all best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Dick Batstone
The Editor's Reply
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry 2, South India.
23 June 1971.
Dear Mr. Batstone,
Living in erstwhile French India I am inclined to tilt my head sideways, raise my shoulders, open my palms and cry, "I am infinitely sorry!" in answering your letter so late. But
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perhaps the Gallic tendency of "infiniment" has a subtle secret affinity to spiritual India, the Aurobindonian India, in that the greatest seeker and manifester of the Infinite in modern times came to Pondicherry to do his Yoga. The affinity may be seen even more openly when we remember Sri Aurobindo saying that the country which he felt to be a sort of second motherland was not England, where he spent fourteen years, but one in which he never set foot in this life: France. And, of course, the affinity declares itself from the house-tops as soon as we take into consideration France's gift of the Mother, for whose presence amongst us Indians we can say to both that country and the Unknown, in the profoundest sense of the adverb, "Merci infiniment!"
All this talk of infinity, however, does not mean that an Ashramite is too inwardly or upwardly absorbed to notice, or care for, finite things like friends' letters. No doubt, what concerns him is more the spirit than the letter, but he never makes such a universal sweep of a statement as: "the letter killeth." He does not do it even when he is the Editor of Mother India, to whom communications often come in tidal waves, a veritable "sea of troubles" undreamed of in Hamlet's philosophy. And surely the Editor wouldn't do it face-to-face with a bright and graceful undulation of ideas like your letter of last month. Maybe it was a bit cheeky of me to write in that footnote that Luke 17:20-21 had been overlooked (or should it be "overLuked"?) by you. I might have guessed from the well-knownness of the verses that you had a purpose in not bringing them in. But I am in a way glad I perpetrated the impudence, for otherwise I should never have received so interesting a discussion.
May I tell you what strikes me in this matter? Otto and Perrin have more support than Jung from the language used by Jesus in general. And, if the emphasis is to fall on the language elsewhere, we must translate our Luke-passage by "the Kingdom of God is among you" rather than "...within you". But here we may attend to a remark of Sidney Spencer's.
"Although there is little," observes Spencer,1 "in the teach-
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ing of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels which bears a specifically mystical character, yet the total impression which the gospel story leaves upon us is of one who lived in the constant awareness of the divine Presence." And where is this Presence with Jesus? Is it just a supreme Glory from a heaven above, which is now all about him active like an accompanying nimbus since that moment of his life when he was baptised in the Jordan and "he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove" (Mark 1:10)? We may note that at that moment Jesus heard, as Mark recounts (1:11), "a voice from heaven saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'" Here is evidently an intense spiritual awakening or self-recognition, by which Jesus realises his Messianic mission: the divinity he had come on earth to manifest is now no longer latent but dynamic in his person. Spencer2 refers to the'"Western text of Luke 1:22" where "the words are said to have been: 'Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten thee.'" The event suggested by this text was sometimes described in the early Church as "Christ's second nativity". And, if we may pay heed to an ancient MS of Mark which speaks of the Spirit descending not "upon him" but "into him",3 we may have a composite picture of the Spirit alighting upon Jesus from beyond to penetrate him and enkindle his inmost self, and thus equip him for his world-work. But surely in this experience nothing entirely new was given to Jesus? He was already the Son of God: divinity was in him already, born with him, and it was this divinity that was now made to be born again, so to speak, and brought forth into action in the world by the Spirit.
The inner divinity is strongly indicated by the Fourth Gospel: "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:10). The transcendent God is immanent here without the immanent God's excluding the transcendent. And with John such a phenomenon has a wide bearing. To him, Christ is the Logos (a la Philo), the universal Word, an immanent principle of eternal Life and Light as well as a personal being, the Son of God. It is also "the Light of men" (1:4), "the true light that
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enlightens every man" (1:9). And the work of Christ as the incarnate Logos, the Word made flesh, is, as Spencer4 aptly puts it, "to bring to men the life and the light which are the inmost principle of their being."
In view of the Logos-doctrine, which is after all the philosophical core of the doctrine of Christ's Sonship common to the other Gospels, would we be mistaken in thinking of the Kingdom of God as within men no less than among them in those verses of Luke? It is what is within that shall be among - the outer life manifesting the inner God-principle which is one in all and therefore capable of effecting an outer corporate organised spiritual kingdom. If, behind the language of Jesus' teaching in the Synoptic Gospels, there is a play of genuine mysticism, may we not discern in the Luke-passage one of the glimmerings-out of that background radiance? Jung, with his sense of the "inner man", may be here a better and more illuminated exegete than Otto and Perrin.
An eminent student of Comparative Religion, R.C. Zaeh-ner, has some pertinent things to say in the fourth part, "Unity in Diversity - Vedantin and Christian", of his most recent book.5 He starts with the Chhandogya Upanishad's two terms ksetrajna and a-ksetrajfia, "knower of the field" and "non-knower of the field" and goes on to quote from it the passage (8.3.2): "Just as [a group of people] who do not know the country (aksetrajnd) might wander about and pass over a hidden hoard of gold time and again without finding it, so do all these creatures go on day after day without finding the Brahman-world within them, for they are led astray by unreality." Zaehner comments: "To find this treasure within is the overriding passion of Hindu and Buddhist alike; for 'this is the Self, exempt from evil, untouched by age or death or sorrow, untouched by hunger or thirst, [the Self] whose desire is the real, whose idea is the real.6'" Then Zaehner turns to Christiaraty and, saying that "we find precisely the same simile in the Gospel of St. Matthew", he quotes 13:44: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off happy, sells
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everything he owns and buys the field." Zaehner's comment7 now runs:
"The treasure which Jesus calls the 'kingdom of heaven' is also 'discernment' (viveka), the 'fear of the Lord' (meaning almost exactly what Hindus understand by bhakti), and the 'knowledge of God' (jnana). For we read in Proverbs on which the passage from Matthew is based:
If your plea is for clear perception,
If you cry out for discernment,
if you look for it as if it were silver,
and search for it as for buried treasure,
you will then understand what the fear of Yahweh is,
and discover the knowledge of God.8
"This surely is the Self whose desire is the real, whose idea is the real and this is the 'kingdom of God within you'9,... the
true abiding Self anchored in God____And it is also the 'self
of which Jesus speaks: 'what gain,' he asks, 'is it for a man to have won the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self?'10"
The last quotation is from Luke. So, if we follow Zaehner, two of the Synoptic Gospels, of which one is Luke itself, allude to a Kingdom of God which is not only to be formed by a communion of the faithful with Jesus the Messiah but also to be animated by a core of spiritual inwardness in each individual.
To be able to enlist Luke is perhaps the crucial test for my contention, for this Gospel is the immediate context in general of the phrase that is our problem. And I may add a still more direct chapter and verse. Just ponder over Luke 18:16-17 - "But Jesus... said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." A particular inner attitude or state of receptivity, a happy harmonious within, appears to be implied as a prerequisite of the Christ-centred new world which has to take shape.
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Perhaps here I cannot do better than bring in Sri Aurobindo, whom the title of your article couples with the Kingdom of God. I shall draw upon the last passage of Sri Aurobindo's booklet on Heraclitus. The passage tries to sum up the drift of the Heraclitean vision, one expression of which is caught in that saying of his, "the profoundest of all Heraclitus' utterances, 'the kingdom is of the child.'" Sri Aurobindo's passage runs: "... Force by itself can only produce a balance of forces, the strife that is justice; in that strife there takes place a constant exchange and, once this need of exchange is seen, there arises the possibility of modifying and replacing war by reason as the determinant principle of the exchange. This is the second effort of man, of which Heraclitus did not clearly see the possibility. From exchange we can rise to the highest possible idea of interchange, a mutual dependency of self-giving as the hidden secret of life; from that can grow the power of Love replacing strife and exceeding the cold balance of reason. There is the gate of the divine ecstasy. Heraclitus could not see it, and yet his one saying about the kingdom of the child touches, almost reaches the heart of the secret. For this kingdom is evidently spiritual, it is the crown, the mastery to which the perfected man arrives; and the perfect man is. a divine child! He is the soul which awakens to the divine play, accepts it without fear or reserve, gives itself up in a spiritual purity to the Divine, allows the careful and troubled force of man to be freed from care and grief and become the joyous play of the divine Will, his relative and stumbling reason to be replaced by that divine knowledge which to the Greek, the rational man, is foolishness and the laborious pleasure-seeking of the bound mentality to lose itself in the spontaneity of the divine Ananda; 'for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' The Paramhansa, the liberated man, is, in his soul balavat, even as if a child."11
In the above, Sri Aurobindo makes a combined allusion to Luke 17:20-21 and 18:16-17, and endows both with a mystic colour. In an old conversation he is reported to have opined that the Kingdom of God within may denote a moral king-
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dom.12 A moral rather than a mystic colour may be more plausible from the surface indications of the Synoptic Gospels; but if the within-ness of God's Kingdom is accepted, there can be no definitive bar to a hint of genuine mysticism, particularly with a crosslight provided by a passage on children, whose innate innocence, free from wrestlings of the will over virtue and vice, would seem to fall outside the moral universe of discourse, and point, as Sri Aurobindo himself says, to a mystic liberation of soul.
If all that I have submitted has any cogency, the question arises: How is the Greek word entos, which the Authorized Version translates as "within", to be correctly rendered in its double inner-outer suggestion? "Among", which the original permits, goes to the other extreme. The Revised Version's marginal note for the full turn is: "in your midst." Possibly this is not quite bound to an external sense and may imply each individual's central being, his soul-core, the heart of his self, but the usual understanding of "your midst" is "among you". At a pinch I can only propose as a double-toned translation of the entire phrase: "the Kingdom of God pervades you."
Or perhaps we can indicate the double tone more faithfully by putting a hyphen between the two syllables of the Authorised Version's own word, thus: "with-in"?
With kind thoughts, Yours sincerely, K.D.Sethna
1. Sidney Spencer, Mysticism in World Religion (Harmondsworth: A Pelican Original, 1963), p. 214.
2. Ibid., p. 212.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 220.
5. R.C. Zaehner, Evolution in Religion: A Study in Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 92.
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6. Chhandogya Upanishad, 8.1.5.
7. Zaehner, cp. cit., p. 93.
8. Proverbs, 2.3-5.
9. Luke, 17. 21.
10. Luke, 9. 25.
11. Sri Aurobindo, Heraclitus (Calcutta: 1947), pp. 60-61.
12. Mother India, August 15, 1971, "Sri Aurobindo at Evening Talk", compiled by V. Chidanandam, p. 452.
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As the result of several years of strict scientific examination of the famous Shroud which is now kept at Turin (Italy) by the Roman Catholic Church and which shows the figure, front and back, of a crucified man as if on a photographic negative, we are at last certain that the Shroud was not worked upon by any painter. It carries a genuine image produced by means unknown to science today: some sort of radiation effect beyond our current technology may be presumed.
The crucified man, about five feet ten inches tall, with a beard and long hair is of the Caucasic type - more precisely, like a Sephardic Jew. The fibres of the Shroud's linen have yielded 48 samples of pollen of a kind found only in Palestine, Southern Turkey and a few parts of Europe. So at some point of time they must have been exposed to the air of any of these locations. Dr. Robert Buckley, the deputy medical examiner and forensic pathologist of Los Angeles County, has listed the lesions suffered by the crucified man. There are blood flows from numerous puncture wounds on the top and back of the scalp and on the forehead. There is a wound on the left wrist, the right one being covered by the left when both the hands were placed together just below the abdomen. Scourge marks can be observed as if caused by a Roman whip called a flagrum. A swelling is apparent on both shoulders, with abrasions that indicate the carrying of something heavy and rough across them before death on the cross. A narrow incision is to be seen in the right side and the sign of a spike driven through both the feet.
Enthusiastic students of the Bible at once drew parallels between this report and the Gospel accounts and the Shroud was taken to be the linen in which the body of Jesus was said to have been wrapped after the crucifixion. The past history of the Shroud as well as the fact that it was not an artist's forgery seemed to lend credibility to their claim. Although the Shroud
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was first recorded as late as 1389 when the widow of the French nobleman, Geoffrey de Charney, held a public showing in Lirey, France, it was reported to have been confiscated in a raid on Palestine during the crusade of 1204.
However, it is curious that at the time of its first exhibition, the local Bishop of Troyes denounced it as false. He cited the charge which a predecessor of his had made that "after diligent inquiry and examination he had determined the cloth was cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who painted it". Obviously, in the light of modern findings the predecessor was misled in speaking of any artist having painted it and having confessed his trick. But the accusation of falsity holds in the sense that recently a special Carbon-14 test made independently by three laboratories, each in a different country, has proved the Shroud to date with 95 per cent certainty between 1260 and 1390. The earliest date possible is 1200. And it is interesting that the announcement of the dates was made by the Turin Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero in October last year, thus upholding the declaration of the Shroud's falsity by the Roman Catholic Church's first spokesman. The Cardinal termed it a medieval fake.
Still, devout Christians are loth to give up their faith. They urge that somehow the present scientific chronology may turn out mistaken. Their plea is to the effect: "How can we not believe the Shroud to be Christ's when there are so many points of agreement between the scientific assessment of the crucified man's lesions and the details of the Crucifixion-story in the Gospels? Do we not know that Christ was made to carry the cross on his shoulders and had been whipped and forced to wear a crown of thorns before the crucifixion and, after his death, received a Roman soldier's lance-thrust in his side?"
Even Dr. John Heller, a key-member of the team of investigating scientists and the chronicler of their various decisive investigations in the fascinating Report on the Shroud of Turin which was published before the triple Carbon-14 test made in 1988, said in that book: "Nothing in all our findings over three years contained a single datum that contravened the
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Gospel accounts." He was simultaneously careful to add, face to face with the question as to exactly whose body had been represented: "Science has no way of determining the answer. We just do not know." As he remarked a little earlier, quoting his co-worker Ray Rogers, "In science, you're entitled to any hypothesis you choose... But if you don't have a test to examine that hypothesis, it's not worth anything. We do not have a test for Jesus Christ." Yes, there is a distinct reservation here, but the full assent to the alleged correspondences in the Gospels is striking.
It is worth looking into the popular pro-Christ claim. First, we must observe that there are four Gospels - Matthew's, Mark's, Luke's and John's. The first three are designated "synoptic" because of the substantial agreement among them in content and in form despite several divergences in details. The fourth stands rather apart. Most of its matter is peculiar to itself and its differences from the Synoptics are great enough to permit the question whether it can be classified in the same literary form of "Gospel". And it is by its differences that it provides much of the parallelism popular Christianity puts forth. Thus it is the only Gospel which mentions nails as having been used in the crucifixion. As the Roman Catholic authority John L. McKenzie says in his Dictionary of the Bible,1 the fastening of a condemned man's limbs to the cross was done either by ropes or by nails. Nowhere in Matthew, Mark or Luke do we have a reference to either ropes or nails. Only in John do we learn of nails when Jesus is said to appear before his disciples after his death and to show his wounds (20:25). John alone recounts of Jesus when he had died: "... one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side and forthwith came there out blood and water" (19:34). This second detail is crucial in any comparison of Jesus with the man in the Shroud. So we may legitimately affirm that John's is the Gospel which is most relevant.
But once this inevitable conclusion is drawn we are in for a couple of surprises which too can be considered crucial. In John, after the apostles in the absence of Thomas have seen
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Jesus appear before them and show them wounds, Thomas said: "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe" (20:25). And Jesus, when he appears to Thomas along with the other apostles, says: "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing" (20:27). With this clear reference to hands, let us attend to some words of Dr. Buckley, on whose information we have already drawn: "There is a wound in the left wrist, the right one being covered by the left hand. This is the typical lesion for a crucifixion. The classical and legendary portrayal of a crucifixion by nails through the palms of the hands is spurious: the structures in the hand are too fragile to hold the weight of a man." John does not bring in wrists anywhere. Palms are made prominent.
Even more serious than this discrepancy is the same Gospel's story of the disciples going to the sepulchre of Jesus: "Then cometh Simon Peter... and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie. And the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself" (206-7). The Shroud of Turin is one single piece covering both body and head. Jesus, according to John, had his body and head wrapped separately. The other Gospels do speak of only one linen piece - Matthew 27:59; Mark 15:46; Luke 23:53 - but as they are "synoptic" and derive centrally from a common source, their evidence here is not really threefold: it is one testimony quoted three times. Except for this solitary agreement with the Turin Shroud, they have nothing to match John's pronouncements. But John fails at the heart of the possible parallelism.
Nor does he give his evidence of separate wrappings in one context alone. There is the story of the resuscitation of Lazarus after he has lain in his tomb for four days. Jesus calls him out. "And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin" (11:44).
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What is further worth noting is that even the body was not wrapped in a shroud. The word employed is not sindon as in the Synoptic Gospels, connoting an all-enveloping single piece of linen: it is othonia both when Joseph of Arimathea wraps the dead body of Jesus (19:40) and when Peter looks into the tomb. McKenzie2 comments: "The nature of the wrapping is not clear; the word used by John suggests that the body was wound in linen bands. A similar word keiria is used of Lazarus (11:44), and such binding is further suggested by Jesus' command to untie him."
Finally, to those who would make much of the single shroud mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke, what J.A.T. Robinson has written may be repeated. This Biblical scholar, who has attempted to reconcile othonia with sindon, has yet honestly raised a serious obstacle in the way of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The Jesuit scholar Raymond E. Brown3 presents the situation very well: "... the othonia ('cloth wrappings') of John are sometimes assumed to be a collective which could possibly be the same as the sindon; or the soudarion ('piece of cloth') of John is either identified with the sindon or interpreted as a chin band which some find depicted in the Shroud. Be all of that as it may or may not, J.A.T. Robinson has a point when he says that only with great difficulty from a reading of the Gospels would one imagine the burial cloth of Jesus to be in the form in which the Shroud is preserved. The lengthwise image of front and back, so that the Shroud is folded over the head rather than folded sidewise, is rather startling granted the Gospel descriptions." So even the burial cloth of Matthew, Mark and Luke hardly tallies in the mode of its use with the Shroud.
Surveying the general field, Brown4 adds: "In his excellently balanced book, Ghiberti makes a point that a true biblical critic cannot assume that any of the Gospels necessarily gives us exact details about the burial of Jesus. Each evangelist may be describing that burial (which took place decades before the Gospels were written) in terms of the Jewish customs he knows in his time and in his area. Therefore, lack of agreement between the Shroud and the biblical accounts
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is really not a major feature if one argues that the Shroud is the historical burial garment, even though most Shroud enthusiasts seem to think that agreement with the Gospels is a matter of life and death. More important is the issue raised by Robinson which may be used in an inverse way. If the Shroud were known to any of the evangelists, would he describe the burial in the way he did? Certainly the Synoptics should have described a wound in the side of Christ, and John should have been more clear about the nature of the burial cloth. But above all, any evangelist who knew the Shroud should have mentioned the marvellous preservation of the image of Jesus. Silence on this point is particularly startling in the Fourth Gospel which makes a point of describing the burial clothes left by Jesus in the tomb. (I for one do not find convincing that a conspiracy of silence existed among the early Christians lest they give offense to the Jews about having a human image of the Saviour in their midst.) In the early argumentation about the resurrection, the Shroud would have been a marvellous apologetic proof over against the Jews; but no mention of it is found in the Gospels, nor even a description that betrays a knowledge of it. This argumentation does not disprove the Shroud but should make us aware that the history of its preservation is more mysterious than one could guess from discussions of where it was before exhibition in France in the 14th century."
All in all, it seems futile to hope that the Carbon-14 result will be faulted in the future and a concordance brought about between the scientific observations and the Biblical evidence from any source. The mystery remains, but all members of the various Christian Churches would be well advised to concur with the authoritative proclamation of Cardinal Belestrero in tune with the laboratories of Switzerland, England and the U.S.A.
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1. John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (Bangalore: Indian Edition by Asian Trading Corporation, 1984), p. 162, col. 1.
2. Ibid., p. 110, col. 2.
3. Raymond E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis and Christian Doctrine (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), p. 154.
4. Ibid., pp. 154-55.
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The Time of Christ's Second Coming
Biblical scholars have been at variance as to the time which the New Testament visualises for the return of Jesus Christ from heaven in glory to mark the end of the earth and establish the Kingdom of God. Among the representatives of one view the most prominent figure is Albert Schweitzer, author of the famous book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. In general terms Schweitzer's position is that Jesus pinned everything on the miraculous Kingdom of God coming or being made to come in the very near future. Another opinion, apparently favoured by the majority of commentators, is that, on the whole, we cannot derive any indication of the exact time. A third notion, urged by hot-gospellers, sees our own epoch as heading towards the apocalyptic event. According to the present writer, the dice is loaded definitely in favour of a Schweitzerian standpoint.
Let us begin with St. Paul, whose epistles are the earliest Christian documents* In 1 Thessalonians 4:5 he has the phrase: "... we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord." A little later, in the same epistle (5:23) he writes to his followers his prayer to God that their spirit, soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first phrase evidently expects the Second Coming to happen within Paul's own lifetime and the lifetime of those to whom he preached. The second statement brings a momentous precision by the mention of the body. William Barclay, a distinguished Bible scholar, comments that the obvious implication is that Paul expected the Thessalonians to be in the body when Christ came and that the coming of Christ
* The text used everywhere in this article is the one originally published from Cambridge in 1899 as The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, according to the received Greek text together with the English Authorised Version (Photographic Reprint, 1922).
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would be within the span of their lives and his own.1
Paul makes a broad reference to the same situation in Romans 13:11: "... now is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed— " This is in accord with the more explicit assertion in 1 Corinthians 7:29: "But this I say, brethren, the time is short." Here Paul introduces a passage in which he not only believes in the imminence of the Second Coming but also advises all the men whom he is addressing to arrange and order their lives on the assumption that this event is going to happen at any moment now. 1 Corinthians 16:22 sings the identical tune but with a more violent voice: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha." "Anathema" is the Greek for "accursed", and "Maranatha" the Aramaic for "The Lord is at hand" or "Come, Lord!"
Some Bible-students urge that Paul had no idea when the Last Day would arrive. In 1 Thessalonians 5:1 he says: "... of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write to you." But these words occur just before he says: "For yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." Here simply the suddenness of the Day is stressed and against it the Thessalonians are alerted with the admonition: "therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober" (5:6). What is signified is: "The Last Day, although sudden, will dawn in our midst any time now and we should be ready for it."
Even the suddenness is not unqualified. Referring to the thief-simile, Barclay2 observes: "That was not to say that [the Lord's Day] would not be preceded by signs (1 Thessalonians 5:2). There would be a time of falling away, and a final contest with evil..." So Paul's flock would be not quite taken by surprise. The sole surprising factor would be the exact instant of the Second Coming's quite early date.
Another anti-Schweitzerian point sought to be made is that according to Paul the Last Day would not come until all the pagans were converted. The reference is to Romans 11:25 where the Jews are told they would not lose the "blindness
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in part" that "has happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in". Surely the concluding phrase need mean nothing more than that the process of converting the Gentiles should reach a proper rounding-off. The epistle to the Romans is one of Paul's latest and he has been at the job of pagan conversion for years and looks forward to a satisfactory fulfilment in the evening of his life. The phrase cannot mean that the conversion of the whole pagan world is the pre-condition for the Last Day's advent. If that were so, we would not have the same Epistle telling us: "... Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed" (13:11). Indeed it is nearer because Paul, the arch-apostle to the Gentiles, has attained a near-plenitude in his labours.
At all places and from beginning to end Paul's picture is basically uniform. The only change noticeable over the years is that at first he expected he would live to see the Last Day (1 Thessalonians 4:17; 1 Corinthians 15:51); later he realised he might die before it (2 Corinthians 5:3; Philippians 1:23). This makes no fundamental change in its imminence.
Turning to the three Synoptic Gospels, we may quote what Mark, the author of the earliest, has to say apropos of the Pauline theme: "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye and believe the gospel" (1:15). One may ask what Mark means by "at hand". His answer is plain in the words he gives to Jesus: "Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power" (9:1). Again, there is the same clarification: "this generation shall not pass till all these things be done" (13:30).
Matthew confirms Mark, altering only the manner of expression as fits his own editorial need: "There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (16:28). Luke follows suit in his own style: "I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of God" (9:17). Matthew has also put into the mouth of Jesus the
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words: "I say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come" (10:23).
One group of the anti-Schweitzerians will fling against all this testimony another saying from Matthew, which is anticipated in Mark. Mark says of the Second Coming: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the Angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (13:32). Matthew's version runs: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (24:36). The inference drawn is that we are forbidden to speculate about the manner, the date, the time of the Second Coming - in short, that the Second Coming is not to be fixed to the period immediately succeeding the death of Jesus: it might be then or it might be centuries or even millennia later.
The inference is fallacious. What is unknown, except to God, is simply the precise day of the End. There is no hint that the End would not come in the lifetime of Jesus' first followers. Within that period the End may arrive at any moment: the moment is hidden but the period, which is several times affirmed in the Gospels, remains unchanged thereby.
The full light on this point is shed by some words of Paul we have already quoted: "... the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." The sense we have ascertained is that, although the time was imminent and even some signs would herald it, nobody could tell the precise moment of its striking. This explains what the Gospels signify by saying that none knows the date. The single quantity unknown except to the Father is the exact day of the End. But Jesus is clear that the End is very close.
It is notable that the uncertainty of knowledge of the exact day is mentioned by both Mark (13:32) and Matthew (24:36) in the very context which insists in Mark that "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (24:34). There is no cleavage of periods at all. The anti-Schweitzerian interpretation we have cited is an argument in the void, with no roots in the actual locus of the words.
Further, Paul's thief-simile reappears in one form or an-
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other in both Mark and Matthew in the very contexts of the supposedly uncertain period. Mark says: "Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crow, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping" (13:35). Matthew brings in even the word "thief" when he reports Jesus: "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this that if the Goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh" (24:42-44). Surely the End is to be awaited by the hearers themselves.
Possibly, as a final shot against the cumulative evidence available, two other statements from Matthew will be pressed into service - and these in order to emphasise our own epoch when there is a very wide-spread activity of Christian missionaries. The first passage occurs in the parable of the field. It is the phrase: "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man: the field is the world...." (13:37-38). The second is more direct in its bearing on the issue: "And the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come" (24:14). The question will be raised: "How can the End be imminent for Matthew's Jesus if the world is to be the soil for his good seed and if the nations of the whole world are first to be acquainted with the Good News of God's Kingdom?"
The reference in the parable-context is really too general to be of any use. The word "world" indicates nothing more than the material setting of Jesus, which, no doubt, is larger than a mere field of the ordinary sower but need not cover the entire extent of the earth. The generality of the word becomes clear in the phrase almost immediately after it: "...the harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the angels" (13:39). Here "world" is unmistakably a broad manner of denoting the physical milieu, with its living as well as its non-living objects, within which Jesus is at work.
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What is meant by Matthew in the more direct statement becomes seizable from two great announcements by Paul. Galatians 3:26-29 runs: "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ"... In Colossians 3:11 Paul adds another pair of categories - "Barbarian, Scythian" - growing one, since "Christ is all, and in all." Men and women of all kinds and of all countries and races are covered by the passage. The implication is that Paul has met examples of them and converted them. As the Bible testifies, he has preached to Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians and Romans. We know also of the various travels he made to places far removed from one another. Thanks to him, the Gospel has been preached for such "a witness" as Matthew's words have in mind. And yet Paul unhesitatingly watches for the advent of Jesus the second time. What Matthew intends by his sweeping phrase is that not merely the Jews but the members of many other races - "all nations" - hailing from many countries - "all the world" known to Jesus and his followers - shall be baptized as Christians before the End. This does not necessarily render the End distant.
A general light is thrown on the word "world" by Luke's announcement: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed" (2:1). It is obvious that "all the world" can mean no more than the Roman Empire: Caesar Augustus cannot tax any further world.
A more particular illumination on this point can be drawn from the eminent Roman Catholic scholar and priest Raymond E. Brown3 when he contends against the very date - the 60s A.D. - sought for the Gospel of Luke who is commonly taken to be the author too of that history of the early church known as Acts. Brown favours a date after 70 since Luke depends on Mark and the earlier hypothetical document Q. The arguers for the early date posit also Rome for the composition of both the Gospel and Acts on the ground that if Luke wrote
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elsewhere after Paul's death he would not conclude the story [in Acts] with Paul as a captive in Rome. Brown4 argues back: "But Luke is not interested biographically in either Peter or Paul, the two main figures of Acts. He thinks of them as instruments in the plan of God whereby witness to Jesus should be borne 'in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth' (1:8). Peter dominates the first half of Acts because he was a major apostolic figure in the mission to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. However, once Peter is instrumental in approving Paul's mission to the Gentiles (Acts 15), Luke be-trays no more interest in Peter. The focus in the second half of Acts shifts to Paul who is brought to Rome, the capital of the Empire, and thus symbolically fulfils the promise of witness 'to the ends of the earth.' The ending of the story at Rome tells us about the purpose of Acts, not about the date of its composition." Brown's date for Acts as well as Luke's Gospel is "in the 80s, give or take ten years".
What we can definitely infer from the prophecy taking into account witness "to the ends of the earth" is that the Second Coming should be not too long after the death of Paul: a time soon after the composition of Acts is indicated.
Here an extra shade of significance is that the mission commanded in Acts 1:8 is explicitly said to be not for future men but for the very companions of Jesus. So "the ends of the earth", of Brown's translation, which the Authorised Version renders with "the uttermost part of the earth", amounts to what they knew of the earth's extension and what was within reach of them during their remaining life-span and according to their capacity of movement: again the Roman Empire. Taken thus, the hyperbolic expression loses its extremism and diminishes in no way the nearness of the Second Coming.
Actually, Palestine itself cannot be regarded as exclusively Jewish rather than a melting-pot of prominent types from everywhere, "all the world" in miniature. I may quote some passages from the book, The Man from Nazareth, by the well-known American Bible-scholar, Harry Emerson Fosdick:5
"In Jesus' day Palestine was set in a matrix of Graeco-
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Roman cities. Syria to the north; the coast cities along the Mediterranean such as Jappa, Caesarea, Tyre and Sidon, Tran-sjordania, as the ruins of temples and theatres in such towns as Jerash and Amman still show, were all predominantly influenced by Hellenistic culture.
"Moreover, within Palestine itself some areas apparently were so Gentile in population as to be out-of-bounds for stricter Jews. When Jesus, sending his disciples on their first mission, said, 'Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans' [Matthew 10:5], the implication seems plain that there were recognized Gentile districts in Palestine-Tiberias and Taricheae, for example, cities on the Sea of Galilee, Scythopolis south of the Sea, and Sepphoris just north of Nazareth.
"Galilee, thus surrounded by and infiltrated with Hellenistic influence, was certainly in some degree bilingual. Business could hardly have been carried on around the Sea of Galilee without the use of Greek....Moreover, Jerusalem too must have been bilingual. The most thorough study yet made of the use of Greek in ancient Palestine6 concludes: 'The degree of a person's Hellenistic culture depended on his social standing. Probably the upper class knew Greek literature, the middle class was less conversant with it, while the knowledge of the lower class was limited to the vernacular only'...
"There was, indeed, at least one Greek-speaking synagogue in the holy city. "The synagogue of the Freedman (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia' [Acts 6:9]. The milieu in which Jesus worked was far more cosmopolitan than has generally been supposed.
"Even in its central citadel Judaism had never been impervious to foreign influence. The orthodox Jewish angelology and demonology of Jesus' time had come mainly from Persia, and, as for the Essenes, 'Pythagorism, Orphism, Chaldean astral religion, Parsiism and, apparently, even Buddhism all contributed ingredients much transformed on their way to the Jordan Valley.'7 The idea of a capsulated Palestinian Judaism
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unaffected by the world's life and thought is a myth...
"The passage in John's Gospel where 'some Greeks,' pilgrims at the temple festival, come to Philip, saying, 'Sir, we wish to see Jesus' [John 12:20 f], has been usually interpreted as representing a later situation - the Gentile world becoming the object of Christianity's mission - read back into the days of Jesus. Such may well have been the motive of this passage in John's Gospel, but in the story itself there is nothing inconsistent with the known situation in Palestine.
"Jesus, while facing the narrower type of Palestinian Judaism, faced, as well, the wider outlook of Hellenistic Judaism, and to suppose, as some critics hold, that words such as "The field is the world' [Matthew 13:38], could not have been his, seems unwarranted...
"At Pentecost, almost immediately after Jesus had gone, the audience which was reported to have heard the disciples preach in Jerusalem contained 'Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappado-cia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians' [Acts 2:9-11]."
The long and short of my contention is that there is nothing in the Matthew sentence to alter the expectation of a near-at-hand Second Coming. Jesus could have meant by "all the world" and "all the nations" the numerous types of non-Jews within Palestine and its environs, to whom the Gospel was to be preached. The shift of focus seen in Matthew shows, as Fosdick8 says, "that Jesus first offered his gospel to the Jews, that he thought of his mission as the preparation of his own people for the world-wide Kingdom's coming, and that only after their rejection of him did his movement turn to the Gentiles". The Gentiles are not to be understood in the sense in which we would understand them now - as far-scattered peoples to be reached by a global proselytising mission. Even as the goals of the early Church's spreading activity to Christianise pagans, they are not to be taken as objects of operations
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entailing long periods of time. Jesus' work on the Gentiles no less than on the Jews could have concerned the representatives of the then-known world present in Palestine and in the matrix in which it was set. The work was such as never to contradict his clear-cut vision of a Second Coming very soon after his ministry.
Proof positive of his vision stares us in the face from the latest document (about 150 A.D.) to be included in the New Testament, known as the Second Letter from Peter. It says: "...knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were, from the beginning of the creation" (3:3-4). Here is the confrontation of a keen crisis of faith. The period considered "the last days" is running to its close. The "fathers" of the first Christian generation are dead. What should have happened while they were alive has not taken place. Everything is going on as usual. The cause of the crisis of faith is that the Second Corning which had been promised as an early event has failed to materialise.
To think of original Christianity as viewing the arrival of the world's End at any other time than in the immediate wake of Christ's life in the first century A.D. is to fly in the teeth of the New Testament's evidence.
As a corollary we may add a word of warning about the interpretation of whatever cryptic prophecies the New Testament contains. These prophecies relating to various powers and personalities and occurrences preceding the world's End cannot logically be applied to any epoch subsequent to the first couple of Christian generations. As we have observed, there is a strong tendency among certain enthusiasts to read in our own times the signs set forth in vivid figure by the Revelation of St. John the Divine. No doubt, the look-forward to a wonderful consummation of human history is a legitimate
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one for all religious visionaries and can be said to hold true broadly in every epoch for believers in God's providence. But even for them the apocalyptic antecedents pictured in the New Testament should remain untransferable from the milieu in which the author of Revelation lived, inspired with the certitude of Christ's return within a short time to annihilate the evils of the contemporary world.
Revelation was written about 95 A.D. on the island of Patmos which at that time was used by Rome as a place of detention for prisoners whom the emperor ruling from his mighty city, built on seven hills, compelled to work in quarries to procure stone for his building projects. St. John the Divine must have been condemned to labour there, suffering a form of Christian martyrdom as part of the horrible persecutions by the Emperor Domitian who had come to the throne in 81 A.D. Domitian enforced on all his people the worship of himself as a God. Whoever refused to share in this gross official cult had either to die or be punished severely. Both Christians and Jews who found the royal religion a revolting sacrilege were the main victims. The persecutions reached their climax between 93 A.D. and the year 96 when the cruel emperor died. Especially dire were the tribulations of the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea in the Roman provinces of Asia, to whom John sent his message with the aim of encouragement in the midst of the horrors and plagues visiting the earth: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand" (1:3).
Once more we have the sense of the "last things" being round the corner - "the time is at hand" - and therefore of the exclusive applicableness of the described eventualities to the period concerned. Otto A. Piper, in his article "Antichrist" in A Handbook of Christian Theology,9 sketches well in a brief compass the semi-religious semi-political significance of the writing: "The Beast that arises from the Abyss (Rev. 11:7; 13:1) symbolises the powers by which the Church is persecuted
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(13:7). In its second appearance the Beast is pictured with features of the Antichrist. It looks like a lamb, i.e., Christ (13:11), yet speaks like a dragon, i.e., a ruler (13:15). The second Beast is accompanied by the false prophet (16:13; 19:20; 20:10), and through him, i.e., under a false religious pretext, organises the nations of the earth for the final battle against God at Armageddon (16:16). The Beast and the false prophet are characterised as deceiving people (13:14; 19:20). For the Seer, the Beast is identical with Rome (cf. 17:9) and more generally with all the governments of the earth who follow its instigation." The identity with Rome emerges from the phraseology of the reference given about the seven-headed Beast: "The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth." The woman symbolises the imperial power centred in Rome of the seven hills. One of the most graphic passages of Revelation describes her and alludes to the destructive judgment passed on her in heaven. An angel tells the Seer: "Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication" (17:1-2). Then John continues: "So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filth-iness of her fornication: and upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus... "(17:3-6).
The vision of Rome's destruction follows: "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen... And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning..." (18:2, 9). Then "the merchants of
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the earth" are beheld mourning over the fall of "that great city Babylon, that mighty city", since no man any longer buys her merchandise of silk and ivory, cinnamon and ointment, frankincense and chariots, slaves and the souls of men (17:10-13). Finally, the magnificent disclosure of a new heaven and a new earth is made by the angel who is sent by God "to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done" and to tell them, "Behold, I come quickly..." (22:6,7). The book concludes with Jesus himself saying, "Surely I come quickly" and the Seer answering, "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus" (22:20).
Abundantly the Second Coming is proved to have been fixed, by everything in the New Testament, round about the first century A.D. and connected only with the Christians face to face with ancient imperial Rome.
A startling corollary ensues: Christian history after c. 100 A.D. is a phenomenon not envisaged or intended by Christ.
1. William Barclay, The Mind of St. Paul (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1972), p. 105.
2. Ibid., p. 169.
3. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 236, fn 3.
4. Ibid., p. 236.
5. Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Man from Nazareth (New York: Pocket Books Inc., 1953), pp. 163-4,166,167,170.
6. Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, p. 21.
7. Salo Wittenayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (Columbia University), I, p. 156.
8. Fosdick, op. cit., p. 171.
9. A Handbook of Christian Theology, edited by Marvin Halverson and Arthur Cohen (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1962), p. 19.
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A Letter to the Madras Daily, The Hindu
I have been following the lively debate over St. Thomas and his visit to India. Mr. T. R. Vedanthan strikes me as the most knowledgeable among the various controversialists. But even he has slipped up over the words "all the world" in Mark 16:15.
He feels that they go against his contention that Jesus wanted his mission to be very restricted - indeed to the Jews alone, as Vedanthan concludes from Matthew 10:5-7. Hence he thinks it important to note that the verse in Mark is considered by Biblical scholars to be an interpolation. But he forgets that Matthew himself has the verse: "And the gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then the end will come" (24:14). What is to be realised is that Matthew 10:5-7 refers only to the first mission on which Jesus sent his apostles and that ultimately the Gentiles are not excluded. However, this does not mean that any Apostle would go on such a long journey as to India, for the connotation of the phrase "all the world" is really limited, as becomes evident from Luke 2:1: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." Surely, Caesar Augustus could not institute a census for taxable purposes except within his own dominion: the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire and nothing else is signified by "all the world". Places like India are out of the question.
The limitation under which the missions of Jesus worked is borne out even by the travels of St. Paul who made himself the champion of preaching to the Gentiles. As the Bible testifies, he preached to the Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Romans - all strictly the people of the regions contained within the Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus's successors Tiberius and Nero whose reigns covered Paul's ministry. No matter how much to the
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non-jews Christianity or, as Mr. Vedanthan would have it, Paulinism masquerading as Christianity was preached in the immediate wake of Jesus' lifetime, none of the Apostles can be thought of as having had an eye on a country as distant as India.
Another equally strong argument against an Indian mission is in Mr. Vedanthan's statement: "There are plenty of references in the Bible to show that the disciples of Jesus expected him to come again and usher in the Messianic Kingdom any moment into Jerusalem." No doubt, as the Scripture says, the exact hour and day are known only to God and the Kingdom may arrive like a thief in the night, but the sense of its imminence and of its certainty in the very near future is everywhere obvious. St. Paul first believed it would occur within his own lifetime. When his health began to fail, he wasn't so sure. But there is no sign that he believed it to be at all far. It is unthinkable in the context of such notions among the early Christians that any Apostle would leave for India in the first century A.D., during which the Second Coming was expected. And after that century no Apostle would be in a position or condition to leave: all would be either dead or too old.
Even apart from these two arguments, there is very little to base ourselves upon with any assurance. Two conflicting legends, dating no earlier than the third century A.D., face us. One holds that St. Thomas preached Christianity in the dominions of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophernes, dated between 20 and 48 A.D., and was there martyred. The other alleges that he was martyred at Mailapur (Mylapore) near Madras. As the historian Vincent A. Smith remarks: "Both stories cannot be true; even an apostle can die but once." Although on the material available Smith considers southern India as a better candidate for the martyrdom, he adds: "But it is by no means certain that St. Thomas was martyred at all. An early writer, Heracleon the Gnostic, asserts that he ended his days in peace." Smith's final judgment runs: "The subject has been discussed from every possible point of view, and
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immense learning has been invoked in the hope of establishing one or other hypothesis, without reaching any conclusion approaching certainty. There is no reason to expect that additional evidence will be discovered" (The Oxford History of India, Third Edition, p. 146).
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The Friends of Paul - Luke and Mark
Did They Author any Books in the New Testament?
Popular Christian belief, especially Roman Catholic, and even a fair part of Biblical scholarship take the Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as the double work of the Luke who figures three times in the Epistles of Paul (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy 4:11). Similarly they accept, as the author of the Gospel that passes under the name of Mark, another friend of Paul's named Mark whom he mentions in his Epistle to the Colossians (4:10) as the cousin of Barnabas and who features in Acts (13:4-13) as the assistant of Barnabas and Paul in the mission to Cyprus.
On rare occasions a voice is raised from the Roman Catholic fold against the first ascription. Thus, apropos of the attempt by an over-orthodox expositor to contradict the impression we get from Paul (Galatians 4:5) that unlike Luke he attributed a normal and not a virgin birth to Jesus, the notably fair-minded scholar Father Raymond Brown1 speaks of "the unverifiable assumption that Luke, Paul's companion, was the evangelist, an assumption that vitiates much of R. J. C. Cooke's
Did Paul know of the Virgin Birth?____" But even Brown does not go further than suspending judgment on the question of Luke. And several of his notes to the Infancy Narratives in the New Testament seem to suggest Acts to be the composition of whoever is responsible for the Lucan Gospel. About the alleged connection of the Evangelist Mark with his namesake in the Epistles of Paul and in Acts, Brown has expressed no opinion. Here silence appears to be consent and, along with his general attitude to Luke/Acts, it places Brown in a large company of exegetes Protestant no less than Catholic.
The thesis in the present essay is threefold: (1) Paul's Luke was not the Evangelist; (2) he did not write the Acts of the Apostles either; (3) the Mark who gives his name to a Gospel could not be Paul's companion. The problem whether the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were penned by
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the same person is not discussed. It is left for another essay: the current belief in the same person does not affect our first and second conclusions, while it is irrelevant to the third.
To soften up the common assurance about Luke's Gospel we may begin by glancing at some critical remarks in a recent edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.2 We find Krister Stendahl pronouncing: "the author has been identified with Luke, 'the beloved physician,' Paul's companion on his journeys, presumably a Gentile.... There is no Papias fragment concerning Luke [as about Mark in c. 130 A.D.], and only late-2nd-century traditions claim (somewhat ambiguously) that Paul was the guarantor of Luke's Gospel. The Muratorian Canon refers to Luke, the physician, Paul's companion; Ire-naeus depicts Luke as a follower of Paul's Gospel. Eusebius [early 4th century] has Luke as an Antiochene physician who was with Paul in order to give the Gospel apostolic authority. References are often made to Luke's medical language, but there is no evidence of such language beyond that to which any educated Greek might have been exposed. Of more import is the fact that in the writings of Luke specifically Pauline ideas are significantly missing; while Paul speaks of the death of Christ, Luke speaks rather of the suffering, and there are other differing and discrepant ideas on Law and eschatology. In short, the author of the Gospel remains unknown."
In regard to the claim for Luke the Evangelist as a medical man we may support Stendahl's criticism by quoting, from The Scientific American, November 1979, p. 39, part of a review of Literary Detection by A. Q. Morton: "Once it was held that the Gospel of Luke was written by a physician, since medical terms were frequent in it. The context of the words, however, was nonmedical, and their use was shared by the historian Josephus (1st century A.D. like Luke), never a physician. In the Book of Acts the same compiler, judging by his vocabulary, has become an old salt displaying much knowledge of shipwreck.
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Nouns notably mark the topics and not the author."
At one place in his commentary on Luke's infancy narrative, Raymond Brown afrords us an example of how facilely some scholars read the doctor in Luke. The passage concerned is Luke 1: 41: "the baby jumped in her womb." Brown3 writes: "Grotius and others have raised the possibility that [the original Greek word] skirtan might have been a technical term for movement within the womb and thus confirm the theory that Luke the physician (Colossians 4:14) was the author of the Gospel. But it is a general verb for skipping or leaping as of sheep in a field, and is applied to a baby already in Genesis 25:22."
The language employed by Luke may not be incompatible with the old tradition of the author having been a doctor, but if we do not already assume his medical profession on the basis of Paul's Luke, as the reports of the late 2nd century and of periods still later almost certainly did, nothing can set him apart from the other Evangelists as a follower of it. Perhaps G. B. Caird,4 who is not adverse to that tradition, assesses best the general situation neutralising the brief for doctorship. Referring to the medical terms said at one time to be especially present in the writings ascribed to Luke, he states: "It has since been shown that the same argument would make doctors of almost all the writers of antiquity, and that the whole thesis is in any case ill-founded, since Galen himself claimed not to use a medical jargon but to write in the common parlance of ordinary men."5 With the mention of Galen we have the testimony of the greatest medical authority in ancient times proving the alleged medical terms to be no specialist distinguishing lingo at all.
To return to Stendahl. His comment6 on Acts goes: "In the latter part are several sections known as the 'we-passages' (e.g., 16:10; 20:5; 21:1, 8; 27:1; 28:16) that appear to be extracts from a travel diary, or narrative. These do not, however, necessarily point to Luke as a companion of Paul - as has been commonly assumed - but are rather a stylistic device, such as that noted particularly in itinerary accounts in other
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ancient historical works (e.g., Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana). Though the pronoun changes from 'they' to 'we', the style, subject matter, and theology do not differ. That an actual companion of Paul writing about his mission journeys could be in so much disagreement with Paul (whose theology is evidenced in his letters) about fundamental issues such as the Law, his apostleship, and his relationship to the Jerusalem church is hardly conceivable...Acts presents a picture of Paul that differs from his own description of himself in many of his letters, both factually and theologically.... The account of Paul's relation to Judaism in Acts also differs from that in his letter...In Acts Paul is not called an Apostle except in passing, and the impression is given, contrary to Paul's letters, that he is subordinate to and dependent upon the twelve Apostles."
Even an advocate of the orthodox Luke-Paul companionship cannot but feel rather pulled up at least at one very important juncture. J. B. Phillips7 ruminates: "Perhaps we are not supposed to speculate, but one cannot help wondering why there is no mention of the incident which Paul recorded in Galatians 2:11 and ff., and where it fits into this story. It was indeed a crucial moment for the Church. Peter, it will be recalled, unhappily exhibiting that same fear of other people's opinion which led him to deny his Master, was refusing to eat his meals with the Gentile Christians. Paul immediately saw what was at stake and publicly condemned Peter's action. Since Luke was such a close associate of Paul's it is a remarkable thing that no mention is made of this momentous reprimand."
Perhaps the most dramatic instance of the inconsistency of Acts with Paul's own Epistles is in the famous "conversion" of Paul from persecutor to preacher of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible8 annotating Acts 9:3-9 says: "Crucial event in the Church's history. Luke gives three accounts whose discrepancies of detail are explained by their differing literary forms: the second and third accounts are found in Paul's discourses. See also Ga 1:12-17." Even about the first account and
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its sequel (9:1-30) we are informed that "Paul himself could have told Luke" of his "conversion".9 How then is it that both here (9:15) and in the second account (22:14) Paul's mission to work among the Gentiles is revealed to him by a man named Ananias of Damascus and is made explicit, according to the second account (22:21) in the Temple, whereas Paul's own direct assertion (Galatians 1:11-21) is that for his mission he was not responsible to anyone except Jesus and needed neither telling nor confirming of it by human beings? The Jerusalem Bible10 translates Paul: "The fact is, brothers, and I want you to realise this, the Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learnt only through a revelation of Jesus Christ... God... called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him to the pagans. I did not stop to discuss this with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were already apostles before me, but I went off to Arabia at once and later went straight back from there to Damascus. Even when after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him for fifteen days, I did not see any of the other apostles; I only saw James, the brother of the Lord, and I swear before God that what I have just written is the literal truth." It is clear that Paul could not have given the author of Acts either the first or the second account, although the latter is made out as if Paul himself were relating his experience to the Jews of Jerusalem.11
The third account is again put into Paul's own mouth, now as told to King Agrippa in Caesarea. Here Jesus, not Ananias, sends Paul to the Pagans to open their eyes (26:17-18).12 So a contradiction is introduced in Acts itself between two accounts which are both ascribed to Paul. And even the third is not wholly "found in Paul's discourses". In the discourses we find nothing to correspond to the story of Jesus appearing to Paul on the road to Damascus nor anything answering to the statement: "After that, King Agrippa, I could not disobey the heavenly vision. On the contrary I started preaching first to
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the people of Damascus, then to those of Jerusalem and all the countryside of Judaea..." (Acts 26:19-20)." In Galatians we are expressly informed that Paul did not "go up to Jerusalem" but "went off to Arabia at once". The mention of going "straight back from there to Damascus" does imply that Damascus figures in the "crucial event": still, it is as if it took place in this city itself where he was staying before going off to Arabia and not on the road to Damascus.
The road, however, is not quite ruled out. The third account in Acts, which seems the least out of accord with Paul's Galatians-statement, depicts the antecedents of the experience thus: "...I once thought it was my duty to use every means to oppose the name of Jesus the Nazarene. This I did in Jerusalem; I myself threw many of the saints into prison, acting on authority from the chief priests, and when they were sentenced to death I cast my vote against them. I often went round the synagogues inflicting penalties, trying in this way to force them to renounce their faith. My fury against them was so extreme that I even pursued them into foreign cities. On one such expedition I was going to Damascus, armed with full powers and a commission from the chief priests, and at midday as I was on my way, your Majesty, I saw a light brighter than the sun come down from heaven..." (26:9-13).14 On turning to the autobiography in Galatians we find the same antecedents to the "revelation" connected with Damascus: "You must have heard of my career as a practising Jew, how merciless I was in persecuting the Church of God, and how enthusiastic I was for the traditions of my ancestors" (1:13-14).15
In passing, we may contradict the excuse offered for "the discrepancies of detail" in the three accounts as being due to "their differing literary forms". In the first account, after "the light from heaven" had shone around Paul, the men travelling with him "heard the voice" addressing him but "could see no one" (Acts 9:7).16 The second account makes Paul say about Jesus: "The people with me saw the light but did not hear his voice as he spoke to me" (22:9).17 What has literary form
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to do with hearing the voice in one account and not hearing it in another? Again, in the former where no one is seen in the midst of the light it is natural that Paul was temporarily blinded by the light and his fellow-travellers "had to lead him into Damascus by the hand" (9:8).18 But in the latter account they saw the light and yet Paul is reported as saying: "The light had been so dazzling that I was blind and my companions had to take me by the hand; and so I came to Damascus" (22:11).19 Why were they not equally dazzled into blindness? The third account records Paul's words: "I saw a light brighter than the sun come down. It shone brilliantly round me and my fellow travellers. We all fell to the ground" (27:13-14).20 Now all should have been blinded, yet there is no reference to any effect on any one's eyes, including Paul's. Why should consideration of literary form demand such an unlikely lack of result? The simple fact is internal haphazardness no less than dissonance with Paul's ipsissima verba in the Epistles.
We may close with the remark that all the accounts in Acts show the "crucial event" to be partly shared by Paul's road-companions. Galatians discloses his experience to be strictly individual and solitary - a unique one for a specific purpose. The only other reference to it - 1 Corinthians 15:8 - comes at the tail-end of a tally of Christ's appearances after death to many of his followers: "...and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though I was born when no one expected it."21 Here the declaration falls into one of the two categories Paul makes, though not systematically. He mentions (15:5-7) the appearance "to the Twelve", "to more than five hundred of the brothers" and "to all the apostles" and by contrast we have it "first to Cephas", "then... to James"22 and finally to himself. There is a collective appearance and there is an individual one to a person all alone. Obviously, Paul's Damascus-vision occurred when no one was about.. The list does not include anybody accompanying him.
A still more subtle aspect may be noted. The broad impression we have so far considered is of a vision that had objective reality in the sense of having been a spiritual being's
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physical-looking "appearance" in front of the beholder as if outside him. But the very passage in Paul (Galatians 1:11-21), which speaks of Christ giving him directly his mission to the Gentiles and which we have balanced against the vision in Acts on the Damascus-road, has the sentence: "God... called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me..." The last two words - "in me" (en emoi in the original Greek) -suggest an inward revelation, as though Christ's "appearance" was witnessed in a trance or in some sort of communion with an indwelling divine being.
In the Epistles the "appearance" is not said to be the occasion for the mandate to preach to the non-Jews. Here, contrary to what Acts conveys, the two events seem likely to be distinct from each other. Doubtless, the "appearance"-event, like that of the mandate, is linked with an allusion (1 Corinthians 15:9) to Paul's past persecution of" the church of God", and it brings in the idea of a strange birth - "as though I was born when no one expected it" - just as the mandate-event is preceded by a phrase (Galatians 1:15) about God specially choosing Paul while he was still in his mother's womb;23 but there is not a word in the appearance-event about Paul's being spiritually allotted the wider task outside Jewry. Indeed the Encyclopaedia Britannica,24 remembering Galatians' turn of speech (1:15) about God calling Paul through his grace, indicates the mandate in a way which tends to bring home a probable distinction between the two events: "Paul viewed himself as chosen to be an instrument to take the message of God and Christ to the Gentiles, a call rather than a 'conversion-experience.' Hand-picked as God's servant (slave), he received a revelation -not from men but by secret knowledge from God - that the Gentiles will come to the Christian faith without the Law, the Torah of the Jews."
In every significant point, whether clear-cut or presumably valid, the author of Acts emerges as somebody who had no acquaintance with Paul.
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As a parting word on the subject we may point out how incongruous it would be to associate the author of the Gospel according to Luke with Paul in view of the situation the lat-ter's Colossians displays to us. This Epistle, like all the others except the one to Philemon, was dictated by Paul and only at the end he said: "Here is a greeting in my own handwriting." Before putting pen to the document he has communicated, among messages from those around him, one as follows: "Greetings from my dear friend Luke, the doctor..." (4:14).25 Evidently, Paul's Luke, along with some others whose greeting too the Apostle conveyed, was on the spot to hear the latter make the dictation, starting in his own name and Timothy's and concluding with good wishes from everybody present. If such is the position, the contents of the Epistle acquires a special bearing on our subject. Broadly, we may take Paul's Luke, as well as all his other companions, to have been under the influence of the great preacher's personality and of his religious outlook. But there is Paulinism in general and there is Paulinism in particular. In the second category would fall certain central doctrines. Colossians in its opening part contains a poem which is one of the centre-pieces of the Pauline Weltanschauung and which prompts The Jerusalem Bible to say that this late Letter retains Paul's "basic ideas".26 In that case, Luke's direct association with it as hearer and greetings-sender must allow us to consider him imbued not only with Paulinism in a general sense but also with Paul's most characteristic Christology as it declares itself in the grand poem here on Christ:
He is the image of the unseen God
and the first-born of all creation,
for in him were created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers -
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all things were created through him and for him.
Before anything was created, he existed,
and he holds all things in unity.
Now the Church is his body, he its head.
As he is the Beginning,
he was first to be born from the dead,
so that he should be the first in every way;
because God wanted all perfection
to be found in him
and all things to be reconciled through him and for him,
everything in heaven and everything on earth,
when he made peace
by his death on the cross.27
As The Jerusalem Bible notes, "The subject of the poem is the pre-existent Christ," though "considered only in so far as he was manifest in the unique historic person that is the son of God made man..."28 We are referred to the note at Philippians 2:5+, where we read about the poem in verses 6-11: "... Each stanza deals with one stage of the mystery of Christ: divine pre-existence, kenosis [self-emptying] in the Incarnation, his further kenosis in death, his glorification, adoration by the cosmos, new title of Lord. This hymn is concerned solely with the historical Christ in whose personality godhead and manhood are not divided..."29 Elsewhere we are informed of Philippians 2:6-11: "...this poem is our chief proof that the early Church believed in the divine pre-existence of Jesus."30 This "pre-existence" is something typical of Paul and the Evangelist John and the writer of one other portion of the New Testament which will shortly get mentioned. The mode in which it becomes a problem, in relation both to the Evangelist Luke and to whoever is the author of Acts may be focused with the help of a few words from Brown.31
We may leave aside the steps by which the highest "chris-tological emphasis" moved from "the return of Jesus at the
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end of time" to the exalted status "already at the resurrection" in contrast with "a ministry of service and lowliness" and then to "the public ministry" itself. What concerns us is the picture as between Luke and Paul. Brown writes: "In Matthew and Luke we have the christology moved back to Jesus' infancy in Mary's womb, for an angel proclaims that from the moment of his conception he was already the Messiah and the Son of God. On the other hand, in hymns quoted in the Pauline epistles (Philip 2:6-7; Col 1:15-17), in Hebrews (1:2), and in John (1:1; 17:5) the christology is moved toward pre-existence." Next Brown remarks: "The NT authors did not have the difficult task of reconciling these two 'pre-ministry' christologies, one centred on conception, the other on pre-existence; for we have no evidence that the proponents of one were aware of the other." What Brown tells us is that Matthew and Luke are not only devoid of the vision of Jesus' divine pre-existence but also unaware of such a vision occurring in the Epistles of Paul, in Hebrews and in John's Gospel. He is absolutely right. Luke's Gospel no less than Matthew's contains no trace of the Pauline Christology just as Paul's letters contain no sign of the Virgin Birth. But how is ignorance possible to the Evangelist Luke as well as to the Luke of Acts if he was present when Paul dictated to Timothy the poem of pre-existence meant for the people of Colossae? The conclusion stares us in the face that this Luke and Paul could never have been together.*
III
Side by side with the disqualification of Paul's Luke from being the man generally taken to be behind the third Gospel and Acts, there is involved the disqualification of Paul's John
* In fairness it must be stated that a few Protestant exegetes regard Colossians, along with Ephesians, as a post-Pauline composition by a Paulinist, dating to the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd. But the majority are of the opposite opinion. All Catholic commentators, while recognising some problems, uphold the Apostle's authorship.
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Mark from having the identity which The Jerusalem Bible,32 following "traditional dating from the 2nd century", gives to him: "John Mark, a disciple from Jerusalem (Ac 12:12) who assisted Paul in his apostolic work (Ac 12:25; 13:5, 13; Phm 24; 2 Tm) and Barnabas his cousin (Ac 15:37, 39; Col 4:10) and Peter (1P 5:13), whose 'interpreter' he was, put Peter's preaching down in writing at Rome." But the book called "The Gospel according to Mark" could not be the work of John Mark to whom Paul refers towards the end of his Colossians: "Aristarchus, who is here in prison with me, sends his greetings, and so does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas..." (4:10).33 For, like Paul's "dear friend Luke, the doctor", John Mark is shown by the "greetings" sent in his name to have been listening while Colossians, with its poem on the pre-existence of Jesus, was composed by Paul with Timothy as his scribe. By contrast, the author of "The Gospel according to Mark" lacks the pre-existence Christology and favours the Christology describable broadly as Adoptionist, in which at the baptism of Jesus there was an adoption of him as God's Son: "No sooner had he come out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you'" (1:10-11).34*
What, then, are we to make of the old tradition reported by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (III.39) in the 4th century A.D. from Papias, a 2nd-century bishop of Hierapolis, on which The Jerusalem Bible relies to figure Mark as an associate of Peter and thus the same Mark whom Paul knew? D. E. Nineham35 has a very appropriate comment:
* We say "describable broadly as Adoptionist", because, strictly speaking, Adoptionism came to connote the stance of the "heresy" known as Gnosticism and Docetism which held that at Jesus' baptism a supernatural being entered one who was not himself divine and worked through him as a receptacle for a time and left him before the Crucifixion, so that Jesus was merely a "seeming" or "phantasmal" Son of God and not truly born as such in the flesh.
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"It may well be that some of the material in the Gospel does derive ultimately from Peter, but in the last forty years or so Papias's statement has come in for a good deal of criticism, and most contemporary scholars agree that in places St Mark's material bears all the signs of having been community tradition and cannot therefore be derived directly from St Peter or any other eye-witness. But once that admission has been made about some of St Mark's material, it seems only logical to go on and make it about all his material, for,... all of it, without exception, seems to bear the characteristic marks of communal tradition."
This means "that the tradition on which the Gospels are based was handed on during the greater part of the oral period in the context of public and formal occasions; that is to say, the people by whom it was passed on were preachers and teachers, speaking at meetings for public worship or addressing groups of catechumens and the like".36 The grounds for this important claim are set out convincingly in such works as R.H. Rawlin-son's History and Interpretation in the Gospels, especially chapter II. The result is that, although an amount of information in Mark is such that it can be termed reminiscence, at a second or third remove, from Peter, there is a distinct distance from Peter's time or Peter's own words. A straightforward bearing of the Apostle on the contents here collected cannot be attested at all.
This conclusion vitally affects the problem of the Evangelist's identity. Nineham,37 again, has very apt words on the problem. He sees no reason to doubt the tradition that the Evangelist's name was Mark. "No one of that name is known to have been in specially close relationship with our Lord or to have been particularly prominent in the early Church, so there would have been no good reason for attributing the Gospel to Mark unless he had been known to have written it. It is less certain that the tradition is right in identifying the Mark who wrote the Gospel with the John Mark of Acts (e.g. 12:12, 25, etc.) and the Mark of 1 Pet. 5:13 (cf. also Col. 4:10, 2 Tim. 4:11, Philem. 24). The early Church was in the habit of assuming that all occurrences of a given name in the
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New Testament referred to a single individual, but when we remember that Mark (Marcus) was the commonest Latin name in the Roman Empire* and that the early Church must have contained innumerable Marks, we realize how precarious any assumption of identity is in this case. In favour of identifying the Evangelist with the Mark of 1 Pet. 5:13 it is often pointed out that the Mark there referred to is expressly associated with Peter, as the Evangelist is by Papias, and that the two are associated together in Babylon, the code name often used by early Christians for Rome, the traditional birthplace of the Gospel. For its full force this argument rests on the belief that 1 Peter was written by Simon Peter [the chief of the Apostles chosen by Jesus], a belief not shared by many scholars; and even if it was, we must reckon very seriously with the possibility that the Papias tradition is itself a deduction from the verse in 1 Peter taken together with the fact that the Gospel was known to have been written by someone called Mark.** In favour of the Evangelist's being the John Mark of Acts it is pointed out that the latter was a native of Palestine and so his authorship would account for the knowledge of Palestine and its conditions which the Gospel betrays. Certainly, as the commentary will show, the general picture in the Gospel is remarkably true to the conditions of Palestine in Jesus' day, and from time to time Aramaic expressions are quoted in the original; but it is not clear how far all this is due to the Evangelist and how far to the tradition; and numerous vaguenesses and inaccuracies are most naturally explained if the Evangelist was not directly acquainted with Palestine." (See the commentary on e.g. 5:1; 6:45; 7:2-4; 7:31; 8:22; 10:1; 11:1.)
Nineham38 ends on the note that certainty with regard
* Cf. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Marcus Brutus, Marcus Aurelius, Mark Antony, etc., etc.
** See H. J. Cadbury, The Making of Luke-Acts, pp. 85ff, who rightly points out how largely second-century statements about the authorship of biblical books was based on conjecture.
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to the author is clearly unattainable. However, if 1 Peter is taken as the crucial point, Nineham's mention of scholarly uncertainty on its authorship can be modified radically by an argument in the "Biblical Glossary" of the 1979-80 edition of Pears Cyclopaedia (S21, col. 2), dealing with the two letters alleged to be from the Apostle Peter whose death is traditionally put during Nero's persecution of A.D. 64: "The first letter is written to encourage Christians in Asia Minor who are suffering or are likely to suffer for their Christian faith. If this were written during a specific period of persecution it would almost certainly have been that under the Roman emperor Domitian (A.D. 81-96), since Nero's persecution does not appear to have extended far beyond the capital, and this would rule out authorship by Peter if he had died in A.D. 64."
A plausible alternative, even more explicitly against 1 Peter being from the chief Apostle's pen, is in a comment in the Encyclopaedia Britannica:39 "The milieu of the letter seems to reflect the time and temper of the correspondence of the emperor Trajan with Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia (c. 117) [in Asia Minor]. Pliny requested clarification as to the punishment of Christians 'for the name itself or for crimes supposedly associated with being a Christian. 1 Peter, chapter 4, verse 15, appears to reflect this situation: that a Christian be blameless of all crimes and, if punished, be persecuted only 'as a Christian'____The warning in 1 Peter, chapter 3, on a Christian's manner of defense and submission to authority points to a date in the first quarter of the 2nd century. Such a date does not preclude reflection on earlier persecutions, such as those under Domitian."
It is extremely unlikely, if not downright impossible, for Paul's John Mark to have authored the Gospel. Christolog-ically, however, this Gospel, which is nearest in time (the 60s A.D.) than any other to Paul, is not so different from the Pauline view as is Luke's. The latter not only lacks the Pauline Christology of pre-existence: it also introduces the Virgin-Birth doctrine of which Paul has no trace: indeed, as Brown40 admits, "Paul never mentions Mary by name and
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shows no interest in her" and, when Paul speaks of Jesus in relation to his mother, he has the phrase "born of a woman" (Galatians 4:5) which, according to Brown41 "is meant to stress what Jesus shared with those whom he redeemed, precisely because it is applicable to everyone who walks this earth", as Brown42 himself exemplifies by quoting Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28 where we read of Jesus telling his disciples: "Among those born of women, none is greater than John the Baptist ..." Mark, in this connection, is Pauline in more than one respect. Apart from his utter omission of Jesus' infancy and boyhood as if there were nothing of note about them, he creates - unlike Luke - situations absolutely out of accord with Mary having any extraordinary grace from God. Brown43 has not failed to take account of them. He refers to Mark 6:4 "where Jesus compares himself to a prophet without honor in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house." Next, Brown44 writes: "A similar low estimate of the relations between Jesus and his family is found in 3:21, 31-35. There Mark first tells us that 'his own' thought that Jesus was beside himself (or frenzied) and went out to seize him; then Mark tells us that Jesus' mother and brothers came and, standing outside the place where he was, sent in to call him. Apparently, Mark includes Jesus' mother among the 'his own' who thought he was frenzied. Mark goes on to have Jesus distinguish his natural family, who are standing outside, from those inside listening to him, a family constituted by doing the will of God. Such an uncomplimentary view of Mary's relationship to Jesus is scarcely reconcilable with a knowledge of the virginal conception." Elsewhere Brown45 has touched on the same context and commented on its light upon Mary: "...the Marcan scene in which she features is scarcely favourable to her."
Thus Mark of the Gospel is doctrinally not so far as Luke from Paul, but the absence of the Christology of pre-existence from his work and, instead, the broadly Adoptionist posture and, furthermore, the total lack of objective evidence to equate him with his namesake known to Peter - all these factors
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undermine the case for identifying him with the Mark of Paul's Epistles.
1. The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), p. 57, fn. 91.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia (1977), Vol. 2, p. 954, col. 2.
3. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 332.
4. The Gospel of St. Luke (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1975), p. 17.
5. H. J. Cadbury, Harvard Theological Studies VI, "The Style and Literary Method of Luke"; cf. The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. Foakes Jackson and Lake, II, pp. 349-55.
6. Enc. Brit., Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 957, cols: 1 & 2.
7. The Young Church in Action: The Acts of the Apostles in Modern English (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1966), p. 19.
8. The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), The New Testament, p. 215, col. 1, note a.
9. Ibid., p. 196 (Introduction to the Acts of the Apostles).
10. Ibid., pp. 322-23.
11. Ibid., pp. 238-39.
12. Ibid., p. 244.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 214.
15. Ibid., p. 244.
16. Ibid., p. 322.
17. Ibid., p. 239.
18. Ibid., p. 215.
19. Ibid., p. 239.
20. Ibid., p. 244.
21. Ibid.,p.307.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 322.
24. Enc. Brit, Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 962, col. 2 and p. 963, Col. 1.
25. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 349.
26. Ibid., p. 261 (Introduction to the Letters of Saint Paul).
27. Ibid., pp. 344-45.
28. Ibid., p. 345, col. 1, note e.
29. Ibid., p. 339, col. 1, note d.
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30. Ibid., p. 260 (Introduction to the Letters of Saint Paul).
31. The Virginal Conception..., p. 44.
32. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 5 (Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels).
33. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 340.
34. Ibid., p. 65.
35. The Gospel of St. Mark (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1972), p. 27.
36. Ibid., pp. 39-40.
37. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
38. Ibid., p. 40.
39. Enc. Brit, Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 969, col. 2.
40. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 340.
41. Ibid., p. 519.
42. Ibid., fn. 5a.
43. Ibid., p. 520.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., p. 340.
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Did the Evangelist Luke Write
Acts of the Apostles?
In Biblical scholarship it is a commonplace that "Luke", the reputed author of the third Gospel, penned also the book known as Acts of the Apostles and that both the compositions date to the 80s A.D. as two parts of a single work. Is this currently accepted position correct? Are there no serious flaws to be found in it, calling for reconsideration and raising the possibility or even the probability if not the sheer certainty, of another view?
The general case for common authorship may be stated in the words of the Roman Catholic writer Caroll Stuhmueller:1 "Luke not only parallels the ministry of Jesus in his Gospel with that of the Church in Acts, but he sees a fulfilment of Jesus' prophetic ministry in the Church. The following parallels can be noted: baptism of the Spirit (Lk 3:21f; Acts 2:lff,); preaching about the Spirit (Lk 4:16-19; Acts 2:17); rejected (Lk 4:29; Acts 7:58; 13:50); cure of multitudes (Lk 4:40f.; Acts 2:43; 5:16); glorification (Lk 9:28-36; Acts 1:9-11)____An overarching plan reaches from the Gospel into Acts. Each begins in messianic Jerusalem with the imparting of the Spirit (Lk 1:5-2:52; 3:21f., Acts 1-2). The Gospel then presents Jesus' Galilean ministry (4:1-9:50) and his journey to Jerusalem (9:51-19:28). Acts subsequently takes up the early ministry of the apostles, confined for the most part within Judaism (Acts 8-15), followed by Paul's journey to the center of the world, Rome. Each ends with a rejection of Jesus by his own people, which leads to a world-wide apostolate. Not only is there this parallel between the Gospel and Acts, but we also find that Acts continues where the Gospel leaves off. In Lk Jesus never preaches immediately to Gentiles, nor is the kingdom fully established with Jesus. The Kingdom must include the Gentiles, but this universal scope is realized only after Jesus' ascension, in the ministry of the Church, as described by Acts. Luke repeatedly reminds its readers that the time of the parousia is quite indefinite; the
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kingdom did not appear in full glory with the resurrection of Jesus, nor with the fall of Jerusalem; now, within the Church it is gradually but surely being revealed - in anticipation of the final fulfilment of all promises and hopes."
Stuhmueller has made out a good case for linking Acts with Luke in certain significant doctrinal attitudes. An overall continuity of narration and exposition is established. The writer of Acts certainly had the Lucan Gospel as his background so far as these doctrinal attitudes and a broad line of historical development are concerned. Still, to be proved identical with the writer of that Gospel, much more is needed. He must be consistent on the whole and we must have evidence of the original physical unity of the two books. Grave charges against the brief for the alleged identity can be framed.
To begin with: Krister Stendahl,2 eminent Protestant commentator, who subscribes to the popular outlook on these books, proffers yet the curious information: "in no manuscripts or canonical lists is Acts attached to the Gospel." The well-known Roman Catholic exegete, J. A. Fitzmyer,3 notes: "The earliest attribution of both works to Luke may be found in the Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Luke (dated by some scholars ca. A.D. 160-180): 'afterwards the same Luke wrote Acts of Apostles'." Another Catholic researcher, perhaps the most eminent in the Roman denomination today, Raymond E. Brown,4 outlines the critical situation at some length:
"The traditional view is that Luke composed Luke and Acts at the same time, i.e., in the 80s (although some scholars prefer the 60s because the story of Acts comes to a close at that time). However, Luke and Acts were not preserved as a unit. Marcion accepted only Luke, and it is interesting that Acts really came into frequent use after Marcion's error [in opposing certain orthodox doctrines* ]____J. Knox5 believes that
* Under "Marcionism" The Catholic Encyclopedia by Robert C. Brod-erick (Nashville-Camden-New York: Thomas Nelson, 1976), p. 371, col. 1 says: "Begun in 144 by Marcion, this was the heresy that held that the God of the Jews was not the God of the Christians nor the Father of Christ...."
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Acts was written much later than Luke (ca. 125) to counteract proto-Marcion misuse of the Pauline letters and Luke. A work such as Acts, which gives prominence to the Twelve, holds them up as a standard of apostleship, and shows a continuity from them to Paul, was precisely the work to offset Marcion's one-sided emphasis on Paul.
"We are uncertain when Acts, a history of the works of Jesus' disciples, was put on a plane with the Gospels, an account of Jesus himself; but such an evaluation shows a mature understanding of the role of the Church in continuing the role of Christ. There is every evidence that Acts was accepted as canonical from 200 A.D. on."
We may sum up these views by saying: "There is every evidence that Luke and Acts existed separately and independently at the start, never from the beginning as a single author's double composition. The earliest declaration of Luke's authorship of Acts is as late as c. 160-180 A.D. Even if Acts was written earlier than the time of Marcion (144 A.D.), Marcion felt himself under no compulsion to accept it as Luke's sequel to his Gospel. If its claim for credence had always been put on a par with the Gospel as the latter's continuation, it would not have won canonicity as late as the end of the second century."
And yet, along with Stendahl and the majority of scholars, Fitzmyer and Brown are inclined to consider it Luke's work. What in it, in addition to a suggestive but inconclusive parallelism in some respects such as Stuhmueller surveys, has impressed them as Lucan?
The most apparent point is that both the scriptures are dedicated to someone named Theophilus (meaning "beloved by God") who is supposed to be a Roman official with Christian sympathies and who is reminded in the dedication to Acts that the author gave him in his first book an account of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the time of his ascension. An additional strong point here is that, among the twenty-seven documents of the New Testament, only in Luke's Gospel at the end and in Acts at the commencement do we have the mention of Jesus ascending bodily into the sky. Theophilus in
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common plus this exclusive mention appear to bind the two books solidly to each other and are taken to provide a prima facie case.
But there is a glaring flaw in it. In all honesty Brown6 himself has asked in relation to Jesus: "How are we to reconcile what is said at the end of the Gospel (his departure/ascension on Easter night) and what is said at the beginning of Acts (ascension forty days later)?" A footnote7 tells us: "To solve the problem it has been suggested that Luke did not write Acts 1:1-5, and that it was the awkard composition of an unknown Christian scribe, necessitated when Luke-Acts, originally one book, was split into two. The scribe, supposedly, wrote an introduction for the second book by imitating the style of the introduction to the first (cf. Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1). Another suggestion is that Luke the theologian wrote one way when terminating the Gospel-story of Jesus, while Luke the would-be historian wrote another way when beginning the Acts-story of the Church. By associating exaltation and ascension more closely with resurrection, the Gospel was truer to the original theological understanding of the resurrection, while Acts divided resurrection from ascension in order to make both a part of a continuous story."
Neither of the solutions reported by Brown is satisfactory. The second, in the form in which it has been stated, is entirely capricious, with no genuine explanation for the author's change of mind and method. Elsewhere Brown8 has tried to be elucidatory: "P. Benoit (Revue biblique 56 [1949] 161-203; also Theology Digest 8 [1960] 105-10) has made a very important distinction in the concept of ascension which helps to solve the problem. If one is speaking of the terminus of Jesus' frequent appearances among men, then this took place some time (40 days) after the resurrection, perhaps in the symbolic form of a levitation as Acts describes. If one is speaking of ascension theologically, i.e., as a return to the Father or as a glorification in heaven at God's right hand, this exaltation was an integral part of the resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead to glory, and he appeared to men after the resurrection as one
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already glorified with supreme power (Matthew 28:18; Luke 24:26). The intimate and immediate connection between the resurrection and the ascension so understood is spelled out in John 20:17ff. and is implicit in many other New Testament texts (Acts 5:30-31; Ephesians 4:10; 1 Peter 3:21-22; Hebrews 4:14; 1 Timothy 3:16)." Benoit is ingenious but beside the mark. Jesus' state when he makes appearances to men is never called an ascension to a seat at God's right hand: indeed it is never shown as an ascension at all. There is only one ascension, not two, in Luke and Acts and the period preceding the single ascension in Luke (one day) is irreconcilable with the period preceding it in Acts (forty days). To identify resurrection with ascension in the sense of exaltation and glorification does not do away with the span of a whole day of appearances in the case of Luke: it is this length of time that we have to explain vis-a-vis the forty days. Such a length is as much historical and as little theological as the other. Not two universes of discourse but a discrepancy in the same universe - namely, the historical . - is what cries out for explanation. Benoit has shown acute theological insight, but missed the real issue.
As for the notion of an awkward Writer constructing a second introduction when a composite double book was divided into two sections, we have already argued that not a scrap of documentary evidence permits us to think of an originally single book getting split. What we have is a pair of separate books to which an "unknown Christian scribe" has supplied some introductory lines repeating the name "Theophilus" and trying to pass off a distinct work as a continuation by the author of the Lucan Gospel. Perhaps the lines were introduced after the time of Marcion in nearly mid-second century: else how could that heretic have so easily brushed Acts aside while accepting the Gospel? Anyway, the scribe's intrusion must be taken to stop short of "forty days"; for they are not foreign to the new book but supported by a later verse in it. Acts 13:31 says that after his death Jesus was seen "many days". This is sufficient contradiction of the Gospel's meagre Easter Sunday. Surely, the forty days are an alternative in its own right. They
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do not invite lame excuses on our part as if for the maladroit manufacture of a colossal inconsistency at the very opening of a book declaring itself Lucan. They direct us away from Luke, even though the story begun is the progress of Christianity from where Luke leaves off.
But here a quirk in the minds of the pro-Lucans must be indicated. They are prepared to grant a new hand in the introduction. Why are they reluctant to extend the alien element to the rest of Acts? If at the outset itself we have somebody who is not considered Luke, why not doubt whether Luke is everywhere else? Besides, the introduction is the main direct and explicit impetus to believe that Acts was authored by the same person as was responsible for the third Gospel. The moment we entertain the idea of the preliminary passage being by an unknown hand, there should be no call to assign the remainder of the book to the Gospel's Luke-especially when we are aware that the Gospel and this book initially existed as distinct entities. The natural mood should be to look for other discrepancies than the chronological to which Brown has drawn attention.
Indeed it is not the only puzzle fingerposting us to a non-Lucan hand. The deeper, the more radical problem arises from the posture attributed to Acts in relation to Luke's Gospel. To generalise Brown's locution, the former book is understood to combine with the latter to make "a continuous story". William Barclay9 also calls "the book of Acts... the second chapter of a continued story". Referring to its predecessor, he10 comments: "in the first volume; which was his Gospel, Luke had told the story of the life of Jesus upon earth, and now he goes on to tell the story of the Christian Church." But if Luke is the writer of both the volumes, we should expect nothing in the second to run counter to the deliverances of the first. Least of all should Acts miss any opportunity offered for the feature which most distinguishes his Gospel along with Matthew's, a feature found only in these two documents out of the twenty-seven in the New Testament - namely, the Virgin Birth of Jesus from Mary. Luke's Gospel goes even beyond
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Matthew's in its elaborate narrative (1:26-38) of this extraordinary theme. Why has Acts not the slightest glimmering of it in spite of a speech (10:34-43) on Jesus' life and work by the apostle Peter who knew Jesus personally and is shown in Acts to know his mother Mary and his brothers as well (1:13-14)? If the Evangelist did not author Acts, the striking lacuna is intelligible. But if he did, he not only gives proof that Peter's omission shows absence of knowledge where it should have been vividly present and thus that there was no Virgin Birth to be known: he also contradicts his own narrative and demonstrates its contents to be a new-fangled thing, a pure fiction, with no foundation in the original Christianity. Luke totally against himself and nullifying his most Lucan Evangelism: this is what we confront on considering Acts to be his.
Here we can go a step further in detail. The Roman Catholic commentator John H. Dougherty11 enlightens us in a very significant matter: "Gospel first meant the living word of preaching and only later referred to writing. Can we reconstruct the history that lies between the preached Gospel and our four written Gospels?... Peter's sermon in Acts 10:34-43 may serve as an example of the primitive oral catechesis. Observe the outline of the sermon: 1) the preaching of the Baptist and the Baptism of Jesus; 2) the Galilean ministry; 3) the passing from Galilee to Judaea and Jerusalem; 4) the passion, death, and Resurrection. It is interesting that we find the same plan in the Gospel of Mark. Now a very early witness, Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, affirms in about 130 A.D. that 'Mark, having been the interpreter of Peter, wrote down carefully, though not in order, all that he remembered, both words and deeds of the Lord... he took care to omit or falsify nothing which he had heard [from Peter].' The correlation of these texts suggests an intimate link between the preaching of Peter and the written Mark."
Recent research12 has tended to sever a direct harking back to Peter in Mark but leaves something basic to Peter as still very likely at one or two removes. Dougherty's picture is not
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essentially changed and in any case his parallelism between the Gospel of Mark and Peter's sermon in Acts runs against Luke's Gospel with its prominent Virgin-Birth revelation preceding the baptismal disclosure of Jesus' divine Sonship. It confirms the earliest of the four Gospels which is Mark's, with its complete lack of an infancy narrative and its emphasis on the disclosure during baptism as the intitial one. The Evangelist Luke in the role of Acts' author simultaneously negates his own Gospel and affirms Mark's on the authority of the Apostle who was Jesus' familiar and whom Jesus put at the head of his followers.
Against the anomaly of such self-replacement in toto on top of utter self-abandonment, can any argument for the commonplace of Biblical scholarship avail?
Certain items of an outstanding character repeated in the two books may be stressed. One we have already mentioned: the Ascension. It is indeed narrated in an open manner and as a physical movement in only the Lucan Gospel (in the words we have quoted) and in Acts (1:9): "He was lifted up before their eyes till a cloud hid him from their sight."* But this item is grievously flawed by its contradictory time-aspect in the two books. What is not similarly excluded from serious consideration is the repeated feature in them - which is to be traced nowhere else - of Jesus eating and drinking with his disciples after his Resurrection (Luke 24:41-43; Acts 10:41). Here is a striking coincidence, but the mere physicality of Jesus' post-Resurrection appearances is not confined to Luke and Acts: John has Jesus showing the nail-marks in his hands to the disciples (20:20) as well as asking Thomas to put his finger in the wound at his side (20:27). With such bodily gestures present elsewhere, the particularity of eating and drinking loses something of its prominence although the fact of its
* Mark 16:19 also speaks of Jesus being "taken up into heaven", but modern scholarship unanimously assures us that the last twelve verses (including this) of Mark's Gospel, as it now stands, were not part of the original Gospel but a later addition.
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occurring only in Luke and Acts demands attention. However, on the strength of it in whatever diminished singularity, can we ascribe the identical authorship to that pair of books?
Much would depend on differences sticking out between them. The stark disparity in regard to the infancy narrative showing divine Sonship from birth in one and its utter omission in favour of a merely baptismal sign of divine Sonship in the other is not the sole difference. There is the famous Joseph of Arimathaea. He is found in all the four Gospels and in Luke (23:50-51) he is, as Brown13 puts it, "a good and righteous man who had not consented to the action of the other members of the Sanhedrin in condemning Jesus..." This Joseph applies to Pilate, begs the body of Jesus, takes it down from the cross, wraps it in linen and lays it in a sepulchre hewn in stone and unused so far (Luke 23:52-53). What do we find in Acts? The Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible14 translating Acts 13:27-29, tells the story of Jesus' condemnation, death and its sequel thus: "What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every sabbath. Though they found nothing to justify his death, they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out everything that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb." Mark the words in verse 27: "the people of Jerusalem and their rulers." All the actions are theirs, the expression of a collective unanimous will. There is no individual from Arimathaea standing out either in opinion or in activity. And everything is done in a spirit of hostility. Nor is it likely in the least that the hostile people and their rulers would give a special and honourable burial rather than a nameless grave, an unidentifiable "tomb", to a man hanged on a "tree", an accursed criminal according to Jewish law (Deuteronomy 21:23, which Paul's Galatians 3:13 echoes). Acts 13:27-29 makes a complete break with Luke 23:50-53.
A similar break occurs in the matter of the empty tomb which is said in Luke 24:1-10 to be discovered by Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women, and
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reported by them to the Apostles. The Protestant theologian, Bernard W. Anderson,15 well notes: "The apostolic sermons preserved in Acts do not mention the testimony of the women at the sepulchre, and in this respect accord with Paul's summary of the 'received' tradition." Whether Paul's "tradition" and the report of Acts are correct or incorrect, and whether there was one reason or another for their non-mention of the empty tomb is not the issue here: the issue simply is the testimony of Acts in conflict with Luke on a very momentous topic. And the conflict may be deemed inevitable as soon as Joseph of Arimathaea can nowhere be on the scene in Acts. For, with the Jewish enemies of Jesus not only crucifying him but also taking him down from the cross to throw his body into a common grave of malefactors, there can be no identifiable tomb and so the question of its being found empty is meaningless.
We may add that the very women who are said by Luke to discover the empty tomb have no existence in Acts. Acts 13:31, in a speech by Paul, says: "...for many days [Jesus] appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and it is these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people."16 The Apostles are the "witnesses": it is they who came with Jesus to Jerusalem from Galilee, whereas in Luke 23:55 and 24:1 the women who find the tomb empty are those who have done so. Evidently, Luke and Acts are telling radically different stories.
In spite of multiple hurdles of a crucial kind in the way of attributing Acts to Luke, how is it that the late legend of c. 160-180 A.D. still wins support? The answer is: "On literary grounds." But let us see whether the grounds are decisive.
B. Phillips17 tries to cash in on "the same doctor's precision in the use of medical language" in Luke and Acts. But this statement has, in the first place, for its background what, to say the least, is, as Brown18 remarks, "the unverifiable assumption" that Luke the Evangelist is the "dear doctor" Luke who was Paul's friend (Colossians 4:14). H. J. Cadbury19 has once for all proved as ill-founded the whole thesis that
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the employment of medical terms in the Lucan Gospel and in Acts evinces their authors' doctorship, for he has shown these terms to be prevalent in most writers of antiquity and demonstrated on the testimony of Galen, the greatest ancient authority on medicine, that the words in question are seen in Galen as a result of his avowedly avoiding medical jargon. Phillips is on better ground in pointing to some fifty words that have nothing to do with medicine but are shared by the two books attributed to Luke and not found elsewhere in the New Testament. Brown also attends to several linguistic turns to suggest the same authorship of the two works. As, unlike Phillips, he goes into detail we may pick out some outstanding examples and consider them in the context of other locutions which too he notes.
Thus the word enopion ("before") as in Luke 1:15 occurs thirty-seven times in Luke/Acts, once in John and never in Matthew and Mark.20 The particular Greek way of expressing "from of old" as in Luke 1:70 is found elsewhere in the New Testament only in Acts (3:21; 15:18).21 Again, the verb ody-nasthai ("worried") of Luke 2:48 occurs four times in Luke/ Acts and nowhere else in the New Testament.22 The verb hypostrephein, for "returned" (Luke 1:56) occurs thirty-seven times in Luke/Acts as contrasted with four times in all the other New Testament books.23
Such facts are impressive, but even in the linguistic sphere can they be taken as conclusive of the Evangelist's authorship of Acts? We have to look also at some counter-indicators. There are a number of typical Lucan words appearing on rare occasions in other books than Acts. Thus parachrema ("immediately") of Luke 2:13 comes seventeen times in the Gospel and twice elsewhere but not even once in Acts.24 The verb ainoun ("praising") of Luke 2:13 is found six or seven times in the Gospel yet never in Acts although it has two non-Lucan usages in the New Testament.25 Then there is the Lucan speciality, speudein ("with haste"), in the Gospel (e.g., 2:16), used in a classical intransitive sense whereby it becomes almost an adverb accompanying another verb: it has no parallel in the
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New Testament, not even in Acts where we would expect it as a distinguishing mark of its Lucan authorship.26 On the other hand, the verb egeneto ("it happened") in the classical Greek construction where it is followed by an infinite is found fifteen times in Acts and only five times in Luke, for Luke adopts the Septuagint form (egeneto followed by a finite verb without kai) which occurs twenty-two times here but never in Acts.27 If we consider not merely individual words but -as with "from of old" - a phrase we shall be struck by an important divergence. Stendahl28 points out: "The title Son of Man [for Jesus], used frequently in Luke, is used only once in Acts, at the death of the martyr Stephen, when he is granted a vision of the Lord in glory." The number of times in Luke is twenty-five.29 And in Acts it has a singularity stressed by Fitzmyer:30 "Aside from John 12:34 this is the only occurrence of this expression in the NT, when it is not on the lips of Jesus himself." All in all, the argument from words or phrases repeating in Luke/ Acts which are infrequent in the remaining New-Testament documents is indecisive in view of several contrary linguistic peculiarities.
Neither is there enough uniformity of general manner in Luke/ Acts. The traditional-minded Jerusalem Bible itself, which submits that the vocabulary, grammar and style of Acts are "characteristic of the third Gospel"31 has to admit that "there is a considerable variation in the literary style" of the author, which is sought to be traced to "the various sources used".32 In several passages "the Greek is excellent", whereas elsewhere "the language becomes full of semitisms, clumsy and even inaccurate".33 The Third Gospel too has inequalities, but when it is said that the writer "out of respect for his sources... incorporates their imperfections" he is taken to do so "after polishing them a little".34 The Evangelist is obviously a more skilful composer.
Significant differences in the basis of the two authors' language may also be gathered on attending to Stendahl's estimates. On the Evangelist he35 writes: "Luke uses a good literary style of the Hellenist Age in terms of syntax. His
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language has a 'biblical' ring in its own time because of his use of the Septuagint style; he is familiar with the Septuagint, which was written in Greek for Greeks; he seldom uses loanwords and repeatedly improves Mark's wording." Stendahl36 on the author of Acts runs: "Acts was written in relatively good literary Greek (especially where it addresses Gentiles), but it is not consistent, and the Koine (vernacular Greek of the first century) was apparently more natural to him." There is a subtle dividing-line between the two pens which is not to be expected if Acts is a continuation of the Gospel at the hand of the same author.
Finally, in this connection, there is the general possibility that some books of the New Testament may have between themselves observable affinities without identical authorship. Just as affinities have been discerned as regards Luke's Gospel and Acts, "some scholars have associated Luke with the Pastoral Letters [1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus] and the Letter to the Hebrews either as author or as amanuensis because of linguistic and other similarities with the Gospel and the Acts".37 The majority opinion even among orthodox Roman Catholic critics rules out Luke as their author. His role as amanuensis too has to be dismissed: the New Testament always mentions the amanuensis employed and no Luke is named for any of the four books concerned. Can we be dogmatic then about Luke/ Acts because of their linguistic and other similarities?
On balance the old simplistic solution is on all counts unacceptable - but a new perspective is not easy to define. Peter's sermon in Acts 10:34-43, judged by its substance which is unexpectedly innocent altogether of the Evangelist Luke's Virgin-Birth doctrine, may be considered as dating to the period (the late 60s) of Mark whose outlook on Jesus it reflects in general. It is quite on the cards that its reporter had read Mark. Although ignoring Luke's infancy narrative, he knew Luke well and was influenced by him, for something of the literary mode of that Evangelist cannot be divorced from the writer of Acts, nor can we forget that Acts aims at prolonging the story of early Christianity into the apostolic age and keeps certain
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broad doctrinal themes of Luke running from the earlier to the later time. But his work was based on various records both Lucan and pre-Lucan. There is no sign of his knowing either Matthew's or John's Gospel - and, as little as Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, is he conversant with Paul's Letters.
The Pauline theology differs in a number of points from what he makes Paul say. An instance, related to Acts 24:1-21, may be cited from Fitzmyer:38 "Paul tries to assure [the Roman Governor] Felix that even if he is a member of the sect of the Nazoreans [= followers of Jesus of Nazareth], this is still in line with all that the Pharisees [= members of Paul's original sect] hold most dear.... He is at pains to show that his allegiance to Christ is not arbitrary, but the logical outcome of Pharisaism. I worship the God of our fathers: Lit., 'the paternal [ancestral] god'....The God whom he worshipped as a Pharisee is still the same as the one he now worships, all that is written in the Law and the Prophets; Christianity is thus presented... as the fulfilment of Judaism...Paul in his letters would not express his position just so; see 2 Corinthians 3:6-18....."A profounder difference is the theme of Jesus' pre-existence which is found in Colossians (1:15) and Philippians (2:6): there is no hint of it in Acts. Again, Paul's own reference (Galatians 1:11-16) to his "conversion" or the "call" he received to preach to the Gentiles diverges significantly from the two accounts put directly into his mouth in Acts (22:1-16; 26:9-18) as well as from the one given indirectly (9:15). Even the narrative into which the sermons or speeches of Paul are set fail to chime with Paul's report of certain important happenings. For example, his crucial opposition to Peter recounted in Galatians 2:11-14 should be in Acts 15 but is totally missing. From Fitzmyer39 we may draw another dissonance in connection with the same chapter. Acts 15:2 records a "dissension" at Antioch between "some men from Judaea" and Barnabas and Paul. The author of Acts "gives this motivation for the sending of Barnabas and Paul to Jerusalem [for a decision], but in Galatians 2:2 Paul speaks of a 'revelation' as the reason for the visit to Jerusalem". In view of a good number of variations, Fitzmyer's general
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verdict40 is: "Whenever there is a question of deciding between Lucan or Pauline data, the preference must be given to the latter." This verdict should lead us to think that even if the Gospel's Luke penned Acts, the Luke of Acts cannot be the namesake mentioned by Paul as his medical companion, although in some respects he is closer to Paul and thus to Paul's Luke since neither he nor Paul knows of any Virgin Birth whereas belief in it is integral to the theology of the Gospel's Luke.
Being post-Luke in composition, which does not necessarily mean so in material, Acts may be dated anywhere between the late 80s and the period when Paul's Letters became fairly public. Fitzmyer41 informs us: "The collection of Paul's canonical letters was apparently made towards the end of the 1st century A.D...The reference in 2 Peter 3:15-16 to 'all the letters' of 'our dear brother Paul' may be an allusion to a corpus of some sort [perhaps between 100 and 125 A.D.42]. The earliest indication of such a corpus comes to us from Marcion who drew up at Rome ca. A.D. 144 a canon into which he admitted ten Pauline letters—"
On rejection of Luke as the author of Acts, all this is as far as we can surmise of the real anonymous writer.
9.2.1985
1. "The Gospel according to Luke", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Raymond E. Brown, S. S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S. J., Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, 1982), The New Testament, p. 116. col. 2 and p. 117, col. 1.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1977), Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 956, col. 2.
3. "Acts of the Apostles", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 165, col. 1.
4. "The Canon of the New Testament", ibid., p. 528, col. 2.
5. In Studies in Luke-Acts, ed. L. E. Keck and J.L. Martyn (Nashville), pp. 279-87.
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6. The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), pp. 102-03.
7. Ibid., p. 103, fn. 171.
8. "The Resurrection of Jesus" in "Aspects of New Testament Thought", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 795, col. 2.
9. The Acts of the Apostles, translated with an Introduction and Interpretation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1955), p. 1.
10. Ibid.
11. Searching the Scriptures (New York: Image Books, 1963), p. 116.
12. D. E. Nineham, The Gospel of St. Mark (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 26-27 with fn.
13. The Virginal Conception..., p. 115, fn. 196.
14. The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), The New Testament, p. 222.
15. Rediscovering the Bible (New York: A Haddon House Book, Associations Press, 1951), p. 221.
16. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, pp. 222-23.
17. The Young Church in Action: The Acts of the Apostles in Modern English (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1966), p. 23.
18. The Virginal Conception..., p. 57, fn. 91.
19. Harvard Theological Studies VI, "The Style and Literary Method of Luke".
20. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 261.
21. Ibid., p. 371.
22. Ibid., p. 475.
23. Ibid., p. 338.
24. Ibid., p. 370.
25. Ibid., p. 403.
26. Ibid., p. 406.
27. Carroll Stuhmueller, CP, "The Gospel according to Luke", in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 116, col. 1.
28. Enc. Brit., Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 957, cols. 1 & 2.
29. DM. Stanley, "Titles of Christ", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 773, col. 2.
30. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 195.
31. Ibid., p. 196.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., p. 14.
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35. Enc. Brit., Macropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 954, col. 2.
36. Ibid., p. 957, col. 1.
37. E.E. Ellis, ibid., p. 178, col. 1.
38. "The Acts of the Apostles", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 208, col. 2.
39. Ibid., p. 195, col. 1.
40. Ibid., p. 191, col. 2.
41. "New Testament Epistles", ibid., p. 225, col. 2.
42. Brown, "The Canon of the New Testament", ibid., p. 529, col. 2.
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Part Two
"RAISED FROM THE DEAD"
An Approach to the Problem of the Resurrection of Jesus
from the Descriptions of His "Risen" Body
Introduction: The Heart of the Problem
"The unique and sensational event on which the whole of human history turns" - that is how, in an address on April 5, 1972, Pope Paul VI characterised what the doctrine which has been central to Christianity from the very beginning affirms: the Resurrection of Jesus' crucified body. This doctrine is meant to convey the sense of an unparalleled intervention by God in our world's affairs, converting an absolute-seeming defeat - Jesus' death on the cross - into a mighty triumph over mortality, a triumph which declared him God's elect and the supreme hope for mankind's salvation.
Such being the claim, one need hardly wonder at the spate of books carrying discussions of the subject from various sides. The excuse for another study can only be to bring out some important shades felt to have been missed or at least insufficiently stressed. But before we launch on it we must remind ourselves of what we are talking about, so that we may get to the heart of the problem.
We are not referring merely to the miracle of a corpse having been resuscitated, such as we read of in Jesus' dealing with Lazarus (John 11:1-44) or Jairus's daughter (Matthew 9:18-26) or the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17). We have in sight an alleged event in which, along with resuscita-tion, the once-dead body continued in a form that acquired new qualities describable as superhuman. Nevertheless the crucial question is: "Was there a resuscitation?" For, without it, it would be meaningless to speak of extraordinary qualities manifesting in the original body itself. To come to a proper answer we should seek out evidence as near as possible in time to the death of Jesus.
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1
The Significance of the Earliest Evidence
The Protestant theologian Bernhard W. Anderson1 writes:
"The earliest literary witness of the Resurrection is given to us by Paul, especially in 1 Corinthians 15. The historical value of this chapter is great, for though 1 Corinthians was written around A.D. 56-57, Paul claims to hark back to the time of his conversion, perhaps within ten years after the Crucifixion. Moreover, Paul insists that he passed on to the Corinthians the gospel he had received from early preachers and witnesses:
..... that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [that is, Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me (verses 3-8)."
Alongside Anderson's statement we may put the words of the eminent Roman Catholic priest and commentator Raymond E. Brown2 apropos of the four-clause formula in Paul's "Corinthian correspondence", each clause beginning with "that" and the whole formula ending with the word "appeared":
"Not only is it the only N[ew] T[estament] testimony to the resurrection written by one who claims to have seen the risen Jesus, but also it is one of the most ancient NT references to the events that surround the resurrection. Although Paul wrote 1 Corinthians about the year A.D. 56, he tells the Corinthians (15:3) that what he transmitted to them (presumably when he
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first came to Corinth about 50) was information that he himself had received at an earlier period. The verbs 'transmit' and 'receive' are almost technical terms in the vocabulary of Judaism for the handing on of tradition so that we are dealing here, at least in part, with a primitive tradition from Paul's early days as a Christian (mid-30s)."
Anderson presents Paul as the first scriptural writer to attest the Resurrection of Jesus. Brown is a little ambiguous in language, but when he calls Paul's testimony in 1 Corinthians "one of the most ancient NT references" he is not hinting at anything outside Paul, since elsewhere he3 speaks of Paul as "our earliest written evidence" about "the appearances". He means the same thing as Anderson who picks out 1 Corinthians as a special witness among the earliest ones, all of which are given by Paul. Even without that phrase from another place in Brown's book, we can deduce his chronological outlook on Paul, for he is no subscriber to the view which long made the Roman Catholic Church accord primacy in time among the four Gospels to the one called Matthew's and which as late as 1966 the prestigious Catholic production, The Jerusalem Bible, was still loth to abandon.4
The view is that the Greek Matthew, our present text, is based on the Greek translation of a primitive version of it in Aramaic composed by Matthew the publican, one of the Apostles mentioned in our present version (9:9; 10:3) as chosen by Jesus. Our text is said to supplement the Aramaic Gospel with material drawn from other sources, some of them peculiarly its own, notably in the Infancy Narrative, and it is granted to have its own spirit and purpose, yet held to be fundamentally a development of the original. The original is taken to have been most probably composed between 40 and 50 and hence to antedate the Pauline Epistles, depriving them of the status of being the first Christian documents. Brown touches decisively on the controversy about Matthew.
On the chronology of the four Gospels he5 takes the stand: "I accept the common scholarly opinion that Mark was the first of our written Gospels" - and he provides us as well
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with a neat precis:6 "The majority scholarly opinion is that Mark was written in the late 60s; Matthew and Luke in the 80s; and John in the 90s - the approximations allowing a five-to-ten-year margin of error." Brown7 further writes: "The author of the Gospel that we call 'according to Matthew' was not the tax-collector and companion of Jesus, but an unknown Christian who used as his source Mark's Gospel (and other traditions)..." The "other traditions" are indicated by Brown8 when he speaks of "Matthew's dependence on Mark (and upon Q, a body of Jesus' sayings in Greek, known also to Luke)..." In pointing to Q (from Quelle, German for "Source"), as does the bulk of Protestant scholarship, Brown sets little store by old orthodox attitudes. He9 informs us: "Roman Catholics were among the last to give up defending officially the view that the Gospel was written by Matthew, one of the twelve - a change illustrated in 1955 when the secretary of the Roman Pontifical Biblical Commission gave Catholics 'full liberty' in reference to earlier Biblical Commission decrees, including the one which stipulated that Greek Matthew was identical in substance with a Gospel written by the apostle in Aramaic or Hebrew. A group of Protestant scholars (mostly American, e.g., W. B. Farmer) who have argued that Matthew was not dependent on Mark do not interpret Matthean priority to mean that the evangelist was an eyewitness."
What the editors of The Jerusalem Bible rely on and elaborate is, as we can gather from the Catholic expositor of Scripture John J. Dougherty,10 a dictum of "Origen in the first half of the third century": "The Gospel according to Matthew, who was first a publican and later the Apostle of Jesus Christ, was the first to be written; it was written in the Hebrew [Aramaic] language for the believers from Judaism." But nothing in Matthew's Gospel as it stands shows the compiler depending on an eye-witness account. One with access to eye-witness memories would not - to quote Brown11 - "draw so totally upon 'secondhand' collections" such as Mark and Q.
Brown12 does not lend support even to a piece of information said to hail from a Bishop of Hierapolis who flourished
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about 130 A.D.: "Whether or not Papias of Hierapolis was factual when he reported that Matthew [the apostle] collected the sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III. xxxix. 16), no such collection was preserved for us; and there is no way of knowing whether canonical Matthew drew even indirectly (through translation) on such a collection." We may add that even if Papias, as quoted by Brown, were to be credited, what would be pre-Paul is only logia - to use the Hierapolitan Bishop's own Greek term: that is, words of teaching attributable to Jesus and not an account concerning his life, death, burial or resurrection.
It has been argued that at times the term can cover something like a Gospel. But it is wise to note in that monument of Roman Catholic exegesis, The Jerome Biblical Commentary,13 J. L. McKenzie on Papias's logia: "Papias... says that each one translated (or interpreted?) them as best he could." Obviously, "translated" (or "interpreted") does not lend itself to a Gospel-sense. Besides, McKenzie makes a point which has been obscured by Brown's use of the expression: "the sayings of the Lord." In the original of Papias the logia are not attributed to anybody. They stand unqualified. So McKenzie is able to continue:"... the logia may mean a collection of Old Testament texts, a handbook of texts for apologetic use." The type of book. McKenzie has in mind he14 indicates in connection with the source of the various OT quotations in the Synoptic Gospels: "Some are quoted according to the LXX, some according to the Masoretic Text, and some according to neither of the two. That Matthew (or the other authors) used either the MT or the LXX at random or always quoted from memory seems highly improbable. Several scholars have postulated a handbook of OT texts devised for the use of Jewish Christians from which it could be argued that Jesus is the Messiah of the OT (cf. J.-P. Audet, Revue biblique 70 [1963] 381-405). The existence of such a handbook would explain the lack of consistency in the texts that are quoted in one Gospel or in all the Gospels taken together." So Papias need not even relate to Jesus' sayings, leave aside to a proto-Gospel about him.
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All things considered, we cannot go further back than the Pauline Epistles and dispute their primacy in conveying to us Christianity's sense of "the risen Jesus". And what is to be most remembered here is the fact which Brown emphasises - that Paul testifies at first hand. But can Paul be regarded as testifying definitively to Jesus' Resurrection? Was it the resuscitated Jesus whom he saw? What he claims is that Jesus appeared to him no less than to several others. As the appearance was after Jesus' death, the implication is that it was the resurrected Jesus who was witnessed by Paul. However, the immediate actual testimony is only to the appearance.
Whether or not we shall understand the appearance to be of the very body of Jesus that had died and had now been resurrected, involving a real resuscitation, would depend on Paul's account of the nature of what had appeared to him. No doubt, listing Jesus' death, burial, rising and appearing as a sequence, he personally believed that what had appeared was in continuity with the crucified body. And indeed a number of later books of the NT - those of Luke and John in particular - depict the appearance in a most physical manner directing our minds to that body. If in any respect we find Paul the eyewitness using analogous terms for the appearance, we may conclude that the earliest attestation of it, being the sole direct one, is a proof of a bodily resurrection of Jesus.
We may arrive at such a conclusion all the more because of two momentous points: (1) all the other witnesses of the post-burial appearances cited by Paul were his own contemporaries whom the people addressed in his Epistle could meet and question; (2) three out of the six appearances were to more than a single person and one of these three appearances was to a huge collectivity (evidently at a general yet private convention of the faithful), most of whose members were expressly said to be alive as if Paul were challenging his congregation to go and substantiate for themselves the truth of his statement.
The outstanding feature emerging from the Pauline account is not only the implied verifiability of it but also the sheer objectivity of the event related; for, when more than one
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individual and most eminently when more than five hundred individuals could see the risen Jesus "at the same time", there could not be a purely subjective inner experience, however true in its own field. We have before us a phenomenon "out there" of a supernatural order but projected into our space-time world on a few special occasions.
Yes, were we able to trace any physicality in the miraculous objective appearance Paul records, physicality such as some of the Gospels impress on our minds, the bodily resurrection of the buried Jesus would be demonstrated with absolute finality. But, even were we to fail to trace it, the converse would not completely hold. Indeed, a very strong presumption would be created that the body which had been buried had not risen and that some mysterious event other than this body's resurrection had occurred. Yet to firmly establish its non-resurrection we would have to demonstrate the error of Paul's inference to the contrary, and also get over a few hurdles deriving from post-Pauline scripture..
2
The Reports of Appearances in the Gospels
Brown15 writes: "... the verses that conclude the Gospel of Mark in most Bibles (Mark 16:9-20, called the Marcan Appendix or the Longer Ending of Mark) were not the original ending of the Gospel but were added because of the abrupt termination in 16:8____Mark mentions no appearances of Jesus, although 16:7 indicates that Peter and his disciples will see him in Galilee." The Marcan Appendix does narrate some appearances16 but there is nothing to make us recognise distinct physicality in them.
Matthew pictures Jesus meeting Mary of Magdala and another woman-disciple after his death: "And there, corning to meet them, was Jesus. 'Greetings' he said. And the women came up to him and, falling down before him, clasped his feet" (28:9).17 Here the resurrected Jesus is physically tangible.
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Luke goes much further with the following scene in which the Apostles figure: "They were still talking... when he himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you!' In a state of alarm and fright they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, 'Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.' And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them, 'Have you anything to eat?' And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes" (24:36-43).18
Similarly, in the Gospel of John (20:20) we have Jesus visiting his disciples after his death and showing them his hands where the nails at the time of the crucifixion had made holes and his side which had been pierced by a Roman soldier's lance to make sure he had died. To the apostle Thomas, who was not present on the first occasion and who doubted the story of the other disciples, a special appearance was granted. We are told that Jesus again came in and spoke to Thomas: "Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe" (20:27).19
However, in both instances John notes that Jesus entered the room although "the doors were closed" (20:19, 26).20 Luke too reports the strange way of his appearance to the disciples: Jesus suddenly came up and as suddenly vanished (24:15, 31, 36) and finally "withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven" (24:51).21 This means that he was considered exempt from the usual laws of space. Luke also mentions that when Jesus first came up to two of the disciples on the road to Emmaus "something prevented them from recognising him" (24:13, 16).22 Obviously, there was a degree of change in Jesus' look. So, as Brown23 has remarked, while the Lucan and Johannine stories imply a rather physical understanding of what has occurred in the raising of Jesus' body, the same
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two Evangelists supply a counteractive to a crass physical understanding. Yes, to them the appearances are not crassly physical, but there is no denying that the body which had suffered death is for them the one which has appeared and acquired supernatural faculties. Simultaneous with these faculties it betrays an extreme-physicality.
3
How Far are the Gospels Credible?
Before we proceed further, let us ask what value exactly is to be attached to Gospel evidence. Except for one piece of observation from the Protestant quarter, we shall advert to Brown, a most open mind and yet a representative of an institution not easily prone to give up old habits of thought. Thus we shall have a balanced outlook, modern without exposure to the suspicion of being too rash or radical.
Brown24 draws our attention to the process of Gospel development from Jesus through the early traditions to the Evangelists: "This process... is spelled out for Catholics in Dei Ver-bum (v. 19) of Vatican II and in more detail in the 1964 Pontifical Biblical Commission Instruction 'On the Historical Truth of the Gospels' (conveniently available in a Paulist pamphlet with an important commentary by J. A. Fitzmyer). The instruction distinguished three stages: the work of the historical Jesus, the period of the apostolic preachers, and the period of the sacred writers [=authors of the Gospels]. It pointed out that there was already a tremendous development in the apostolic period because after the resurrection a perception of Jesus' divinity colored the memory of what he had said and done. And the sacred writers not only selected and synthesized the traditions that came down from the apostles - they also 'explicated' those traditions in light of the church situation. Thus it would be within the lines laid down by official Church teaching to interpret words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels as examples
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of explication by the evangelists, if our evidence warranted such a conclusion."
The above passage is a footnote evoked by the start of a paragraph in which we are told:25 "The Gospels... are not simply factual reporting of what happened in Jesus' ministry but are documents of faith written to show the significance of those events as seen with hindsight. As an example of what that might mean..., the fact that according to the Synoptic (first three) Gospels Jesus predicted his crucifixion and resurrection and in increasing detail (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34) does not necessarily mean that the historical Jesus had such exact foreknowledge of his future. Actually Jesus may have made more general statements expressing an assurance that God would not desert him but would make him victorious; and knowing the outcome of his life, Church preachers and evangelists may have reformulated these statements and supplied detail in light of actual occurrences of the passion."
After the word "victorious" we are pointed to a footnote:26 "For instance we may compare to the detailed predictions of Mark the three vague predictions in John about 'lifting up' of the Son of Man (3:14; 8:28; 12:32-34). For the reasons why scholars think that the details of the Marcan predictions were supplied by the Church rather than coming from Jesus, see J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology (New York: Scribners, 1971), pp. 277-86; and G. Strecker, 'The Passion and Resurrection Predictions in Mark's Gospel,' Interpretation 22 (1968), 421-42."
Next, Brown buckles down to meet a likely protest against the sceptical attitude he has outlined and which his Church would once have opposed tooth and nail. He27 writes: "An obvious objection is that even if the evangelists themselves were not eye-witnesses, the continued survival of eye-witnesses would have prevented much creative development of the Gospel tradition over such a short period of thirty to sixty years. This argument cannot be discounted as support for the general lines of Gospel historicity, but it will not hold for many details of the Gospel accounts. In our time, despite the much greater control exercised by exact written and oral records, we
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have seen a tremendous growth in the tradition about figures such as Pope John and John F. Kennedy within ten years after their death, so that one can speak of a difference between these men as they were in history and as they are in the popular evaluation."
According to Brown,28 "the recognition that the Bible can be fallible as regards details of historical accuracy is very important" for "discussions" like those in his book. He offers instances of how the new outlook would work. One of them is relevant to a vital point which will come up in our comparison between Paul and the Evangelists in relation to the "empty-tomb" topic: so we shall postpone its treatment by Brown to the right time. In the other instance he29 touches on Matthew and Luke: "... Matthew and Luke give very different accounts of Jesus' conception and birth. In times past we would have assumed that because these infancy stories were recounted by inspired writers, both were accurate and had to be harmonized. Today, if the evidence is strong enough, we would be free to consider either or both of the narratives as not historical. Obviously this is a conclusion that should not be reached quickly; but we cannot deny a priori the possibility that since there were no apostolic eye-witnesses for the events accompanying the birth of Jesus, traditions about that birth could have been produced by popular imagination."
Later, Brown30 reverts to the subject: "... our problems deepen when we compare the two infancy narratives one to the other; for despite ingenious attempts at harmonization, the basic stories are virtually irreconcilable (cf. Matt 2:14 and Luke 2:39). They agree in so few details that we may say with certainty that they cannot both be historical in toto. Even the lists of Jesus' ancestors that they give are very different, and neither one is plausible." The final adjective could be refused equally to both the accounts. As Brown's subsequent remarks31 make plain, there is no criterion for choosing between them for plausibility. Elements which we could dub "folkloric and imaginative" abound in Matthew; "literary artistry and organisation" in Luke with "a delicate
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balance" among elements which are only a little less folkloric make Brown say: "obviously this is not the atmosphere of purely historical reportage." The best one might aver is that some of the sources are non-historical while others may carry genuine tradition. Nevertheless, one must admit that "the general context of the infancy narrative", in which the supposedly genuine tradition may have been preserved, "does nothing to increase our confidence in historicity".
Not that Brown ultimately brands as unhistorical the virginal conception itself which is the common factor in the midst of the many contradictions between Matthew and Luke. The contradictions relate even to the circumstances directly bound up with the common factor. Thus in Matthew (1:18-21) the Lord's angel assures Joseph of Mary being with child by the Holy Spirit and prevents him from divorcing her, while Luke (1:26-33) has the angel announce to Mary that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and there is no hint of Joseph worrying about any possible scandal. Besides, Matthew (2:1) shows Jesus conceived as well as born in Bethlehem, the birth occurring in Joseph's own house; Luke (2:4-7) makes Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth, where Jesus has been conceived, to Bethlehem in order to attend a census under Augustus Caesar, which, in Brown's words,32 is "a Lucan device based on a confused memory" and "almost surely represents an inaccuracy", and it is there that the time comes for Jesus' birth: he is born in a manger because his parents find no room at the inn. Brown, though aware of all the contradictions, all the folkloric and fictitious elements, yet tilts to the positive rather than the negative side in the controversy, but his choice should be traced to considerations outside scripture in spite of his avouching that he is deciding "scripturally".33 For such a posture flies in the face of his own stance34 at the end of his scriptural investigation: "My judgement, in conclusion, is that the totality of the scientifically controllable evidence leaves an unresolved problem." A theological insight into Jesus' exceeding the significance of mere human birth seems to have been popularized in an imaginatively literal form just before
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the writing of Matthew's and Luke's Gospels and to have invested Mary with supernormal importance. The bar to an alternative view is that evidence for a virginal conception could stem only from Jesus' family and that, if there was any such family tradition, how should we explain "the failure" -as Brown35 puts it - "of that memory to have had any effect before its appearance in two Gospels in the last third of the first century"?
What Brown has in mind here is "the early Christian situation" as judged "from our earliest writings, the Pauline letters and Mark".36 Leave aside any "explicit reference", there are in them no "implicit references" either. "In Galatians 4:4-5 Paul says, 'When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law.' Influenced perhaps by the (mis)use of the term 'virginal birth' some (Zahn,- Miguens) have immediately thought of a virginal conception here, since only the mother is mentioned. To be precise, however, Paul is speaking about the reality of Jesus' birth, not about the manner of his conception. The phrase 'born of a woman' is meant to stress what Jesus shared with those whom he redeemed, precisely because it is applicable to everyone who walks this earth..."37 "See Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28: Among those born (begotten) of women none is greater than John the Baptist."38 To the argument from Paul's use of the verb ginesthai, "born", rather than gennan, "begotten", Brown's answer is already in the sentence just quoted. And he adds that neither is "specific about the manner of conception": even "Matthew, who believes in the virginal conception", is shown to "use the verb gennan of Jesus, once, at least, clearly with the meaning 'begotten' (1:20...). Without further indication of Paul's mind, it would be abusive to read a knowledge of virginal conception into Paul's use of ginesthai."39
As for Mark, Brown40 refers not only to 6:4 "where Jesus compares himself to a prophet without honor in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house". He refers also to 3:21, 31-35: "Apparently, Mark includes Jesus'
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mother among the 'his own' who thought he was frenzied. Mark goes on to have Jesus distinguish his natural family, who are standing outside, from those inside listening to him, a family constituted by doing the will of God. Such an uncomplimentary view of Mary's relationship to Jesus is scarcely reconcilable with a knowledge of the virginal conception." We may top off Brown here with his observation:41 "Paul never mentions Mary by name and shows no interest in her, and the Marcan scene in which she features is scarcely favourable to her."
Sticking sheerly to scripture Brown42 finds "formidable difficulties" facing the only proposal worth discussing: namely, that the Matthean and Lucan information may have derived from Jesus' family. He43 even tells us: "The arguments against a family tradition have been strongly advanced by the Roman Catholic scholar A. Vogtle, 'Offene'." Indeed Joseph is for Brown quite out of the running since he is nowhere during the period of Jesus' ministry when he might have transmitted the vital news to Jesus' friends who later became his preachers. Mary is the sole candidate theoretically thinkable. Here the main difficulty, according to Brown,44 "about a preserved family (Marian) tradition of the virginal conception of Jesus is the failure of that memory to have had any effect before its appearance in two Gospels in the last third of the first century". Evidently, the original Christian proclamation went without the least word from Mary informing the Apostles, who knew Jesus personally, of any unusual circumstances attending his entry into the world. In no pronouncement attributed to Peter, the foremost of the Twelve Apostles, is the Virgin Birth hinted at: in fact, it is totally out of the picture in all the sermons put into Peter's mouth in Acts as well as in 1 Peter which Roman Catholics sometimes incline to regard as his document.
Apropos of the play of imagination in the Gospels we may, in passing, cite Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of York. Contrasting Mark and Matthew on the alleged miracle at the tomb, he45 writes: "The possibilities of embellishment in the tradition will be apparent at once to a reader who will examine
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in turn the accounts of the visit of the women to the tomb in Mark and Matthew. In Mark the miracle is implied but not described. The story is told in utter simplicity. The women arrive wondering who will move the stone so that they may enter. They see that the stone is no longer there. They enter. The tomb is empty. A young man in a white robe tells them that Jesus is not there, and bids them tell the disciples that He will go before them into Galilee. They flee in fear, and tell no one. The reticence of the story tells us of the great event which has come to pass. How great a contrast is seen in Matthew's narrative. In place of the quiet implication of a miracle there is an elaborate description. There was a great earthquake; an angel of the Lord descended and rolled away the stone; his appearance was like lightning, and the soldiers on guard trembled and became as dead men. Such is an editor's embroidery of his source; and if elaboration of the tradition took place in the written stage it is reasonable to think that it took place in the oral stage too."
On the Matthean passage concerned, Brown46 has a brief yet significant remark: "This is an instance of Matthean dramatic midrashic technique at work, elaborating earlier and vaguer traditions." The significance stares out on our realising what a midrash is. In the same volume that holds Brown's remark, another Roman Catholic scholar, Addison G. Wright,47 tells us: "Midrash can take the form of a verse-by-verse commentary, a homily, or a rewritten version of a biblical narrative." The last form is applicable here, and the epithet "dramatic" by Brown leads us to Wright's further elucidation of a midrash-character: "the biblical material is handled creatively. Details are altered to fit the purposes of the author and events are idealized and even embellished upon with legendary and imaginative material to make them more ample, vivid and edifying."
While we are about Matthew and his exaggerations, a short footnote from Brown may also be in place. It passes no judgment but exposes a "tendency" in the Gospels to give rein to all kinds of fanciful narration to serve what may be termed
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theological motives. Referring to the fact that "while there was an expectation among many Jews of the Resurrection of the dead in the last times, there was no expectation of the resurrection of a single man from the dead, separate from and preliminary to the general resurrection", Brown48 observes: "The tendency to unite Jesus' resurrection with the general resurrection is exemplified in Matt 27:53 where we are told that after Jesus' resurrection many of the saints came out of their tombs and went into the holy city of Jerusalem and appeared to many."
Ramsey's impatience and dissatisfaction with Matthew is quite understandable. It is no surprise to find him preferring Mark in the particular situation before him, the tomb-scene, but at the close where he contemplates the certainty of elaboration at the oral no less than at the written stage he leaves room for possible embroidery and embellishment everywhere, even in Mark. What Ramsey does not leave room for supposing is the possibility of tampering with Mark and others by later authorities. The point is not relevant to his context but is otherwise quite legitimate. We have already noted through Brown the Church's hand in altering Mark.
We may round off our brief digression with four more quotations - two on the Evangelist John, the third on a discrepancy of localisation in the four Evangelists and the last on the same subject in general with a glance at Paul. Brown49 tells us: "I assume here the common position of Johannine scholars, Catholic and Protestant, that the statements attributed to Jesus in John Often reflect the theology of the evangelist at the end of the century rather than an exact historical memory of the words of Jesus during his ministry." The second quotation exemplifies very impressively the free story-telling which Brown reads again and again in the Gospels as theologically motivated. He50 writes:"... only John reports that Thomas was absent when Jesus appeared to the Twelve and so John has Jesus appear to Thomas a week later. In my commentary on John [The Gospel According to John, XXII-XXI (New York: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 1031-33], I suggest that this second appearance may
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be the evangelist's dramatization in which Thomas serves to personify an attitude. The other Gospels mention fright or disbelief when Jesus appears, but John transformed this doubt to a separate episode and personified it in Thomas. Such free dramatization is characteristic of the Fourth Gospel."
The final quotation deals with the geography of Jesus' appearance in the Gospels. The Gospels do not agree as to where Jesus appeared. "Mark mentions no appearance of Jesus, although 16:7 indicates that Peter and his disciples will see him in Galilee. Matthew mentions an appearance to the women in Jerusalem (28:9-10) that seemingly contradicts the instruction to go to Galilee where Jesus will be seen (28:7). The main appearance for Matthew is in Galilee... (28:16-20). Luke narrates several appearances in the Jerusalem area... In John 20, as in Luke, there are appearances in the Jerusalem area... in John 21 [a later addition] there is an appearance... in Galilee at the Sea of Tiberias. Finally, in the Marcan Appendix [also a later addition] there is a set of appearances all seemingly in the Jerusalem area... "51 Looking at all these localisations, Brown52 observes: "Paul says nothing about where the appearances occurred. The fact that our earliest written evidence does not locate the appearances raises the possibility that the variant Gospel localisations (a variance that is a real problem...) may stem, in part at least, not from a historical tradition but from the evangelists' attempts to supply a setting."
When we assess Brown's several comments on the Gospels we cannot help being struck by the resort to dramatisation in them or by the Church's interpolations for doctrinal ends. Repeatedly in them we come across minds prone to fantastic exaggerations. In Matthew 17:24-27, for instance, we are told of Peter asking Jesus whether the customary tax to the Temple is to be paid and Jesus replying that Peter, when he goes fishing, will get what is needed: a shekel will be found in the mouth of the first fish caught. Brown53 observes: "It is a most difficult miracle story, for it is one of the few miracles of Jesus that closely resemble magical action, worthy of the most popular tales of the Hellenistic miracle-workers. Many scholars
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would regard it as a popular tale." Brown's turn of speech -"one of the few miracles" - implies some other similar items in the Gospels. Particularly the entry of such items into them but, generally speaking, the narration of many incidents intended to cause a sense of wonder bespeaks the propagandist attitude of the men who wrote these works - an attitude carrying on and even intensifying the credulous creativeness of the earlier unwritten preachment. A Gospel like Matthew's which, out of the four, has been the most favoured by the various churches and by their adherents throws into greater relief the undependable nature of the Evangelical traditions believed down the ages.* Here is a religious zeal desiring to make Jesus as superhuman as possible at any cost. Notable narrative power the Evangelists commanded, but merely a power of this kind exercised in the interests of a picture that came to be constructed in the popular imagination of Jesus-cultists in the midst of several other religious bodies in rivalry with them is no guarantee of fact.
One may even dare to ask: "Are the Gospels at all factual in the main?" We have seen Brown - despite his belief in the Bible's being God-inspired - willing to allow, with his own Church's consent, any exegete to regard time-hallowed episodes in the NT as fictitious if grounds could be provided for doubt. His introductory pronouncement54 in this connection is worth heeding: "Within the Bible are historical writings of varying degrees of accuracy, poems epic and lyrical, sermons, letters, parables, fiction, etc. As the Constitution on Divine Revelation of Vatican II insisted (Dei Verbum, iii.12), anyone who wishes to discover the intention of the biblical writers must pay attention to such 'literary forms.' Each style of literature must be judged for accuracy according to its own
* Vide A. Wikenhauser who points out that in and from the time of Irenaeus, towards the end of the 1st century A.D., both the early Church and Christian literature in general were more deeply influenced by Matthew's Gospel than by any other book (New Testament Introduction, London: Nelson; New York: Herder & Herder, 1958, p. 198).
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standards; and so, sweeping statements about the inerrancy of the Bible are inapplicable. Biblical fiction and parable (books like Judith, Esther, Jonah) remain fiction and parable even though the composition was inspired by God; inspiration does not turn fiction and parable into history." Then Brown explains that the truth wanted by God to be put in the books of Scripture, and not that truth's literary form, is now the Church's concern in respect of the "sacred writings" being "without error".
It seems not inconceivable from the psychology of the Evangelists and of their oral predecessors that all the four Gospels are grand novellas except for a few details of Jesus' life which are broadly attested by Paul who, after his conversion, was acquainted with Jesus' own surviving circle, such details as are not exposed in themselves - like the Resurrection - to sceptical scrutiny. Thus we know from Paul that Jesus was born like all men subject to the common retributive Law (Galatians 4:4), was descended from Abraham (Galatians 3:16) and David (Romans 1:3), had brothers (1 Corinthians 9:5), with one brother named James (Galatians 1:19; 1 Corinthians 15:7), had twelve Apostles (1 Corinthians 15:5), two of whom were Cephas - that is, Peter - (1 Corinthians 15:5; Galatians 1:18; 2:9) and John (Galatians 2:9), was meek and gentle (2 Corinthians 10:1), self-denying (Romans 15:3), most lowly (Philippians 2:5-7), yet could work miracles (Romans 15:17-18), left several sayings behind which served as guide-lines (1 Thessalonians 4:2, 15; 1 Corinthians 7:10; 9:14; 13:2; Romans 12:14; 13:9; 16:19), was betrayed and on the night of the betrayal instituted the Eucharist, a memorial meal of bread and wine (1 Corinthians 11:23-25), was crucified (Galatians 2:20; 3:1; Philemon 2:5; 1 Corinthians 2:2, 8), died and was buried (1 Corinthians 15:23-24) and, though nobody saw him rise from the dead, there were appearances of him after his death to a number of people (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). 1 Timothy, which is directly in the Pauline tradition, if not Paul's personal writing in toto, alludes to Jesus' testimony before Pilate (6.T3). The most important of the acceptable items is, of course, the death by
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Crucifixion. This event under Pilate is reported not only by the Gospels but also by the Roman historian Tacitus (Annals 15:44, 2) at a later date. Josephus, the Jewish historian (1st century A.D.), refers to "James... the brother of Jesus who was called Christ" (Antiquities XX.9,11) - James who is mentioned in two out of the four Gospels. Facts like these could make a general base for a proliferating structure of fascmating fantasy in the hands of post-Pauline writers. Apart from that base, one may well plead the novella-character of almost the whole Marcan, Matthean, Lucan and Johannine literature.
Anyway, in regard to the nature of Jesus' body in the appearances, the prima facie case against the Gospels' historical credibility - because none of the Evangelists was an eyewitness like Paul - is strengthened by the play of imagination in them whether drawn from oral sources and increased in the written form or else originating from the fervent theological minds of the Gospel-makers themselves. The extreme physicality which Luke and John assign to Jesus' post-burial appearance is highly suspect.
It would be acceptable only if Paul anticipated it. We should expect him to do so from the fact that he agrees with them that it is Jesus' dead body which has appeared. But does his record provide a descriptive justification for the continuity he posits in common with the Evangelists?
4
The Evidence of Paul
In 1 Corinthians 15 there is no straightforward description of Jesus' body in the six appearances Paul has listed. But by trenchant implication of some words of his we are led to know exactly its nature. For Paul, dilating upon the resurrection of the faithful Christians at the world's end, links it with that of Jesus and regards both as inter-reflective (15:12-17). He asserts that Jesus being "raised from the dead" is "the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep" (15:20).55 Jesus' resurrection is
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the arch-example of every succeeding resurrection. Therefore, from what is said to happen to the bodies of "those who belong to him" at the Second Coming (15:23)56 we can know Paul's notion of what must have happened to Jesus himself on the third day of his death. Our inference is ratified by the open assertion in Philippians 3:20-21 about "our Lord Jesus Christ" whom "we are waiting for": "...he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body."57 The source, in 1 Corinthians 15, of our mediated yet clear-cut knowledge reads in The Jerusalem Bible58 as follows: "Someone may ask, 'How are the dead raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come back?' They are stupid questions. Whatever you sow in the ground has to die before it is given new life and the thing that you sow is not what is going to come; you sow a bare gram, say of wheat or something like that, and then God gives it the sort of body that he has chosen: each sort of seed gets its own sort of body (35-38).
"...It is the same with the resurrection of the dead: the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable; the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit.
"If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment. The first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul; but the last Adam [=Christ] has a life-giving spirit. That is, first, the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit. The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven. As the earthly man was, so we are on earth; and as the heavenly man is, so we are in heaven. And we, who have been modelled on the earthly man, will be modelled on the heavenly man.
"Or else, brothers, put it this way: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God: and the perishable cannot inherit what lasts for ever. I will tell you something that has been
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secret: that we are not all going to die but we shall all be changed. This will be instantaneous, in the twinkling of an eye, when the trumpet sounds. It will sound, and the dead will be raised, imperishable, and we shall be changed as well, because our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and the mortal nature put on immortality" (42-53).
The Jerusalem Bible has some enlightening notes to these passages. As regards the phrase "when it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit", the annotation59 explains that the body which is sown is called psychikon in the Greek original, while the body which is raised is called pneumatikon. Psychikon is said to connote "physical",* and pneumatikon "spiritual". We are further told of all the senses in which psyche is used in the New Testament. We shall attend only to the various Pauline meanings: "In Paul, as in the O.T., psyche (Hebrew nephesh cf. Genesis 2:7) is what gives life to animals, to the human body, 1 Corinthians 15:45; or it is the actual life of the body, Romans 16:4; Philippians 2:30; 1 Thessalonians 2:8, its 'living soul', 2 Corinthians 1:23. The term can also mean any human being, Romans 2:9; 13:1; 2 Corinthians 2:14. As it only gives natural life, 1 Corinthians 2:14, it is less important than pneuma by which a human life is divinised by a process that helps, begins through the gift of the Spirit, Romans 5:5+; cf. 1:19+, and is completed after death. Greek philosophers thought of the higher soul (the nous) escaping from 'the body', to survive immortally. Christians thought of immortality more in terms of the restoration of the whole person, involving a resurrection of the body effected by the Spirit or divine principle which God withdrew from human beings because of sins, Genesis 6:3, but restored to all who united with the risen Christ, Romans 1:4+; 8:11, who is the 'heavenly' man and the life-giving Spirit, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49. The
* Brown, while quoting Paul, notes: "The Revised Standard Version accepts the translation 'physical'; the New American Bible has 'natural'; the New English Bible has 'animal'" (The Virginal Conception..., p. 86, fn.147).
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body is no longer psychikon but pneumatikon, it is incorruptible, immortal, 1 Corinthians 15:43, glorious, 1 Corinthians 15:43; cf. Romans 8:18; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Philippians 3:21; Colossians 3:4... Psyche can be used in a wider sense as the opposite of the body to indicate what it is in a human being that behaves and feels, Philippians 1:27; Ephesians 6:6; Colossians 3:23..." We may add that when the wider sense does not fuse psyche with pneuma, for the Greek original of Philippians 1:27, unlike The Jerusalem Bible's free English rendering by means of the single word "unanimous",60 employs the two terms side by side - en eni pneumati, mia psuche - expressing Paul's hope to hear that his followers are standing fast in one spirit, with one soul.
To the phrase "became a living soul" from Genesis 2:7, we get The Jerusalem Bible's short note:61 "Something that is alive because it has a psyche giving it a merely natural life, subject to decay and corruption."
Finally, the phrase "we are not all going to die, but we shall all be changed" receives the gloss:62 "I.e. those who will be alive at the time [of the Second Coming], among whom Paul could theoretically have been included, cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:1+."
One further annotation, though not from The Jerusalem Bible, of a particular turn of speech may be in place for the sake of clarity. To the "stupid questions" Paul begins his answer by saying "Whatever you sow in the ground has to die before it is given new life and the thing that you sow is not what is going to come..." Paul is making use, as David Edwards63 reminds us, of the ancient belief that a seed died in the earth before a plant emerged, and trying to show that what came after a seed's death was at the same time different in character from the seed and existed bodily in its own way.
Now to our immediate purpose. What we can gather about Jesus' resurrected body in Paul's thought is neatly summed up in Brown's comment64 on the Corinthian text: "Clearly Paul rejects a crassly material conception whereby the risen body would resume the qualities of life as we know it - a conception
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that was current in Paul's time, as we see in 2 Baruch 50:20: 'For the earth shall then assuredly restore the dead____It shall make no change in their form; but as it has received them, so it shall restore them.' Paul seems to posit a transformation and spiritualization of the earthly body." So, to Brown,65 Paul makes us "wonder whether he would be in agreement with Luke (who was not an eye-witness of the risen Jesus) about the properties of the risen body. Certainly, from Paul's description one would never suspect that a risen body could eat, as Luke reports. Moreover, Paul distinguishes between the risen body that can enter heaven and 'flesh and blood' that cannot enter heaven - a distinction that does not agree with the emphasis in Luke 24:39 on the 'flesh and bones' of the risen Jesus____Most scholars maintain that, by way of apologetics against those who would deny a bodily resurrection, some of the evangelists, especially Luke and John, have presented too physical a picture of the risen Jesus."
Here Brown66 is careful not to create the impression that Luke and John are "employing a falsified argument": he takes them to have received about the risen Jesus "an already existing picture... of whose detailed accuracy they did not have control" but he does admit: "Some of the objectification of the body of the risen Jesus is the proper work of the individual evangelist." This means that the tradition anterior to both Luke and John was already "crassly material" and they accepted it, only exercising their narrative artistry, their dramatic faculty. But their readiness to incorporate a tradition of crass materiality in order to oppose critics who made out the resurrected Jesus to be a phantom, a ghost, is apparent, as also their proclivity to imaginative reconstruction of the incorporated matter.
Before we go further we may do well to attain perfect precision about Paul's "flesh and blood". These words are to be found in Paul in two other places than 1 Corinthians. Galatians 1:16 has him saying that in regard to his mission he received a revelation to preach to the pagans and that he consulted no "flesh and blood" - that is, no human being.67 In
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Ephesians 6:12 he tells his followers: "our battle is not against flesh and blood" but against "principalities and powers" and "the rulers of this world".68 The distinction is between human beings and subtle occult agencies. The Corinthian reference, however, is not just a generality signifying man as a bodily entity. It is counterpoised to "the kingdom of God" consequent on the resurrection, a life of perfection at the end of the world, and yet, by that counterpoising, it does not become a mere metaphor for a human condition divided from that kingdom by the action of sin. As the assertions preceding it show, the expression means "the corruptible body of man" which, without being transformed from its natural state, cannot share in "the life of glory", "the kingdom of God".69 "Flesh and blood" designates specifically man's corporeality along with a suggestion of its frailty and transitoriness. Thus the words have a literal bodily bearing, a shade exceeding Pauline usage elsewhere and focusing on a particularity. This is the first basic point peculiar to the words in 1 Corinthians.
The second point emerges when we set them side by side with the same in John's Gospel. There (1:13) they figure in a passage where "John insists emphatically" that men's new birth as "children of God... has nothing to do with human generation [i.e., birth by physical means and from sexual activity], but is a special gift of God".70 The phrase denotes "mankind and human potentialities" outside the life of divine grace brought by adherence to Christ. That Grace is held to effect a central change taking us beyond "flesh and blood" while we are still not dead. "Implicitly, we are told here that this new birth is that of the Spirit, as in 3:6."71 The later Johannine text to which we are referred informs us of a process during our lives when we are born "from above" (3:3 and 7) and we learn that "unless man is born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (3:5).72 The term "water" is interpreted by The Jerusalem Bible73 as an allusion to "baptism and its necessity; cf. Romans 6:4+". Paul too in several places speaks of the life of the Spirit before death. We may recall The Jerusalem Bible's words about "pneuma by which a human life
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is divinised by a process that begins through a gift of the Spirit, Romans 5:5+; cf. 1:9+, and is completed after death"74 - in the future when the dead will be resurrected. But Paul's mention of "flesh and blood" in connection with the same theme as John's - entering or inheriting the kingdom of God - does not have in view, as does the Evangelist, a group excluding recipients of the Spirit. For, indeed Paul himself who is such a recipient is among those waiting for the Resurrection, and his "flesh and blood" as much as that of any other person is barred from inheriting or entering God's kingdom while alive. Besides, he is writing to fellow-Christians: they may err in some of their doctrines but they are fundamentally his converts. All human beings, even those who are baptised and share the Christian life, are subsumed under the rubric "flesh and blood". The rubric covers all circumstances and points to every man's physical reality, the concrete body of him which is made of living matter characterised by corruptibility. We have a sweeping universality standing starkly over against an opposite type of bodily existence which is realisable only at the Resurrection and which, unlike the present one, will participate in God's splendour and be incorruptible.
Paul's special sense in 1 Corinthians springs out distinct not only in comparison with John 1:13. All other non-Pauline occasions of the phrase in the Bible have also the same difference though in varying contexts. The Old Testament has only Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) 14:18 and 17:31. In the former "the lesson is resignation to the fact that men and creatures are ephemeral".75 In the latter we have "thoughts of flesh and blood". The comment is: "The text is uncertain; the CCD [ = Confraternity of Christian Doctrine translation of the Bible] indicates man's inability to understand God's design."76 Here The Jerusalem Bible77 translates: "Flesh and blood think of nothing but evil." The New Testament offers two occasions. Matthew 16:17 shows Peter as receiving his revelation about Jesus' Messiahship not from "flesh and blood" but from Jesus' "Father in heaven": man in general is meant, with an emphasis on "his material, limited nature as opposed to that of the spirit
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world."78 From the context of Hebrews 2:14, where "blood and flesh" instead of "flesh and blood" occurs, we gather that Jesus by his incarnation made himself one with the rest of his fellows in their common humanity as descended from Abraham and subject to the power of the devil.79 Everywhere man's weakness both inner and outer in his bodily existence is kept in mind, but again no special prominence is given to his corruptible body as such nor are two types of body set in absolute contrast.
The next natural step to our realising this contrast is to recognise how apart Paul is in his vision of Jesus' resurrected body from the picture by Luke and John, with whom Matthew would not refuse to concur. Luke and John display that body as combining the qualities of the body Jesus had before his death with those of a new and rare kind which, along with altering somewhat its look, enable it to appear and disappear suddenly and get into closed rooms. Paul unmistakably distinguishes in toto the body before death from the one after death. Although he postulates that "our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and this mortal nature must put on immortality" and thus believes Jesus' dead body itself to have been raised and converted - "as first-fruits" of our future fate - into an utterly different form, this utter difference which excludes all affinity with "flesh and blood" leaves us free to negate resuscitation and continuity. Taken by itself, the only eye-witness account we have of the post-burial Jesus fails to prove his Resurrection. On its own merit, it can justify us in regarding Paul's belief as unnecessary, an error of inference.
Here a warning must be sounded to save us from slipping into acquiescence in some suggestions of Brown's in The Jerome Biblical Commentary.,80 After mentioning that the NT authors thought of a transformed rather than a simply revivified body and after noting that Paul "stresses heavily the characteristics of the transformation that takes place in resurrection", Brown goes on to say: "Nevertheless, if the NT stressed that what was seen was a radically transformed Jesus, it was Jesus who was seen____As far as the biblical
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evidence is concerned, on the one hand, every single shred of evidence about this unique event would indicate that the disciples were claiming to have seen the body of Jesus that had been crucified and had lain in the tomb....On the other hand, there is reiteration in the NT that the Risen Jesus was different ('in another form' - Mark 16:12) and somewhat unrecognizable (Luke 24:16; John 20:14; 21:4). Any solution to the problem must take into account the element of continuity and the element of change and spiritualization, if that solution is to be guided by the biblical evidence."
There is a somewhat indiscriminate mix-up by Brown of Paul and the Evangelists. The references to the post-Resurrection Jesus came from Mark, Luke and John who, along with Matthew, combine the changed Jesus and "the body... that had been crucified and had lain in the tomb". The claim to have seen this very Jesus in spite of the spiritualisation can be connected only with them. For they alone point to his physical limbs and deal in some detail with his burial. "Flesh and bones" and bodily actions of the Jesus known in life are Luke's contribution to the Resurrection-picture, John's is the body bearing the wounds of the crucifixion as well as behaving in a physical manner. Paul's resurrected Jesus, for all the conviction which he, like the Evangelists, has of the continuity of this Jesus with the crucified and entombed body, falls wholly outside Brown's "every single shred of evidence" purported to be culled from "the disciples". In fact, from Paul who, as Brown observes in The Jerome Biblical Commentary81 "draws a close analogy between the resurrection of Jesus and the future resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12)", Jesus' disciples may validly conclude - contrary to what they did in Luke 24:36-43 - that "they were seeing a ghost".82
However, we have to attend to whatever reason Paul has implicitly or explicitly to offer for his conviction. All that we discover as dictating it are certain preconceptions.
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5
Paul's Preconceptions
The preconceptions are apparent from his statement: "I taught you what I had been taught myself, namely that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures;... and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures..." (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). What guides Paul's belief is highly respected hearsay carrying the assumption that the scriptures - that is, the Old Testament - infallibly foretold the world-work of Jesus and every event concerning him.
Let us first weigh the value of this assumption. The topic of Old-Testament prophecy and New-Testament fulfilment has been in the forefront ever since the NT was written. From even earlier, OT prophecy as such loomed large in the Jewish mind. Brown83 correctly sums up the situation and its assessment in our time:
"Before the advent of the modern critical method it was generally accepted by religious Jews and Christians that the Hebrew prophets foresaw the distant future. In particular, Christians thought that the prophets had foreseen the life and circumstances of Jesus the Messiah____However, this conception of prophecy as prediction of the distant future has disappeared from most serious scholarship today, and it is widely recognized that the NT 'fulfilment' of the OT involved much that the OT writers did not foresee at all. The OT prophets were primarily concerned with addressing God's challenge to their own time. If they spoke about the future, it was in broad terms of what would happen if the challenge was accepted or rejected. While they sometimes preached a 'messianic' deliverance (i.e. deliverance through one anointed as God's representative, thus a reigning king or even a priest), there is no evidence that they foresaw with precision even a single detail in the life of Jesus of Nazareth."
Elsewhere Brown84 has touched on the same theme and said: "... whether they know or not, when the NT authors see
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prophecy fulfilled in Jesus, they are going beyond the vision of the OT authors. Let us take, for instance, Isaiah 7:14: 'A young woman shall be [or is] with child and shall bear a son and shall call him Immanuel [=God with us].' The prophet was referring to the birth of a child taking place some seven hundred years before Jesus' time, a child whose coming into the world was a sign of the continuance of the royal Davidic line. Because Matthew regarded Jesus as the completion of the royal Davidic line, and because he read the passage in a Greek translation of Isaiah which spoke of a 'virgin' (as distinct from the Hebrew which has only 'young woman'), Matthew saw the applicability of this text to the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem. It was a proof for Matthew who had an insight as to how Jesus' birth fulfilled God's plan; so far as we can tell, Isaiah knew nothing or foresaw nothing about Jesus' birth. Similarly, Hosea 6:2, 'After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up,' in the prophet's mind had nothing to do with the resurrection of Jesus. The likeness to the NT theme of the resurrection of Jesus on the third day (1 Cor 15:4) may have arisen because the NT authors deliberately phrased.their remembrance of the resurrection in the language of Hosea."
How the Catholic Church, in its enlightened section, stands now on the prophecy-problem is briefly suggested by Brown:85 "The classic apologetic argument from prophecy has had to be reinterpreted in the light of modern biblical criticism. It is no longer primarily a question of the exact fulfilment of divinely guided foreknowledge; it is much more a question of the culmination of a divine plan that could only be detected through hindsight."
The significance of the whole issue in our context is that, if Paul who was a comparatively late-comer on the Jesus-scene felt sure of the Resurrection because of the Hosea prophecy or of any other OT passage, and affirmed to himself continuity between Jesus' appearance to him and the dead body of Jesus, he committed a mistake.
What about those who preceded him and were closer to
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Jesus' death? Their teaching constituted the hearsay Paul so highly respected. Could they have gone by OT prophecies in their belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead or did they have special reasons of their own to affirm continuity? Paul has listed not only himself but several others as possessing personal first-hand knowledge of the appearance. Their authority is on a par with his and we should attend to what they would have to say.
Here one fact stares us in the face. Anderson86 lets it emerge when he writes: "Paul attaches the greatest importance to the 'appearances' of the risen Christ to a number of individuals, beginning with Peter and ending with himself. At this point Paul's witness is somewhat astonishing. He maintains that his vision of the Risen Lord... was precisely the same type of experience, and therefore gave him the same apostolic authority, as that of the early apostles (1 Corinthians 9:1; Galatians l:llff.). Moreover, he goes on to argue in the remainder of the chapter that the resurrection body of the Christian is not a body of flesh... but a spiritual body, miraculously transformed into the likeness of Christ's 'glorious body' (see also Philippians 3:21)."
The words for us to focus on are: "precisely the same type of experience." There is involved in them the suggestion that another type has been indicated somewhere else. And this very theme no less than the identity stressed by Anderson comes out in Brown's observations:87 "It is worth noting that, in listing six persons or groups to whom the risen Jesus appeared, Paul makes no distinction about types of appearances. He regards the appearance to himself as on the same level as the appearance to the others, even if it is the last. This differs from Luke's evaluation of the experience granted to Paul; for in Acts Luke distinguishes sharply between Jesus' appearances 'to the apostles whom he had chosen' (1:2) during forty days before his ascension and the experience of Saul [=Paul by his Jewish name] on the road to Damascus which took place considerably later."
To resolve the issue we have brought up about Paul's pre-
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decessors, we should concentrate on the cue from Anderson and Brown and bring out its implication. Paul reports six contemporary occasions of Jesus' appearance and mentions in Galatians 1:18-19 that he himself "went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days" and also "saw James, the brother of the Lord".88 He thus had the opportunity to compare notes with them. He was in Jerusalem a second time too (Galatians 2:1). This visit even shows him adverting to the appearance he had known, for he tells "James, Cephas and John" (Galatians 2:9) of the revelation made to him: "...they recognised that I had been commissioned to preach the Good News to the uncircumcised just as Peter had been commissioned to preach it to the circumcised. The same Person whose action had made Peter the apostle of the circumcised had given me a similar mission to the pagans" (Galatians 2:7-8).89 In spite of his exchanges with the apostles he gives us to understand that the nature of Jesus' resurrected body, on which is patterned the future resurrected bodies of Christian believers, was of a single type. Cephas and James and all the rest of the people to whom appearances had been vouchsafed are undeniably implied to have thought like him that Jesus had risen bodily from the dead, but - as Brown90 remarks about Paul - "paradoxically" to have "rejected the idea that the risen body was natural or physical."
Therefore we have to conclude that all those who preceded Paul and were closer to Jesus and some of whom had even known Jesus in person fail, along with Paul, to supply us with any sign of continuity from Jesus' buried body to the body of the Resurrection. If they went by any OT prophecy they were as mistaken as he. Not only Paul but the entire company in which he puts himself as transmitting its teaching can be convicted of indulgence in an unacceptable paradox if they on any ground held Jesus' dead body to have resuscitated.
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6
The First Hurdle from Non-Pauline Scripture
Especially in connection with Cephas (Peter) this point is of extreme moment. For Peter figures under several aspects in a particular book of the NT which has a different status from the Gospels and to which an allusion by Brown has already been quoted above: Acts (more fully The Acts of the Apostles), usually ascribed to the Luke of the Gospel. All the Gospels, though treating of pre-Pauline days, the days of Jesus' life, come from a post-Pauline atmosphere of religious understanding of that life. We learn from Brown91 that in the pre-Gospel period as attested by Paul "the resurrection was the chief moment associated with the divine proclamation of the identity of Jesus". About Jesus, Brown translates from Paul's Epistle to the Romans the key-formula: "Born of the seed of David according to the flesh; designated Son of God in power according to the Holy Spirit [Spirit of Holiness] as of resurrection from the dead" (1:3-4). Brown quotes also from the Epistle to the Philippians: "[Jesus] became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name [i.e., 'Lord'] which is above every name" (2:8-9). As can be seen, with Brown, from such texts, "the resurrection was originally contrasted with a ministry of lowliness, so that through the resurrection Jesus became greater than he had been in the ministry". By the time the Gospels were written, "a more developed view was dominant whereby Jesus was seen already to have been the Messiah and Son of God during his ministry... Mark tells the reader that... at the baptism Jesus was the Son of God (1:11)". But "Mark partially preserved the older understanding. He insists that Jesus was already Son of God and Messiah during his lifetime, but this was not publicly known". "In the later Gospels... the mystery of Jesus' identity begins to become apparent to his disciples... during his lifetime. In Matthew there are confessions of Jesus as God's Son where Mark has
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none (cf. Matt 14:33 with Mark 6:51-52; and Matt 16:16 with Mark 8:29). In the Fourth Gospel Jesus speaks openly as a pre-existent divine figure (John 8:58; 10:30; 14:9; 17:5)." Moreover, "the question of Jesus' identity is pressed back beyond the baptism in different ways. The Johannine Prologue presses it back to pre-existence before creation, while Matthew and Luke press it back to Jesus' conception", which is said to be virginal by the overshadowing of Mary by God's Holy Spirit. (Paul too has his Christ pre-existent, especially in Philippians 2:6 -
His state was divine,
yet he did not cling
to his equality with God92 -
but the pre-existence does not lead to a proclamation, as it does in John's Gospel, of Christ's divine reality during his life since he lets go his privilege to be God's equal: only the after-death miracle wrought by God reveals that reality.)
Acts differs from the Gospels in two ways. First, it purports to picture the very age of Paul and Peter after Jesus' lifetime and to recount the state of the Christian Church before the Gospels were written. Secondly, it has reminiscences of the original "Christological moment" centred on the Resurrection. Brown cites three passages: "This Jesus God raised up... God made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified" (2:32, 36) - "God exalted him at His right hand as Leader and Saviour" (5:31) - "What God promised to the fathers, He has fulfilled for us their children by raising Jesus, as it is written in Psalm 2: 'You are my son; today I have begotten you'" (13:32-33). The first two of these passages are from speeches assigned to Peter, the third from a speech put into Paul's mouth. Claiming Acts to be a legitimate document for the days of Paul and his contemporary Peter, one may pick up a certain sermon of Peter's and present from it a grossly physical view of Jesus' appearance to this Apostle and to the other chosen witnesses. Peter is made to say: "...we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the
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dead" (10:41).93 Here is a contradiction of Paul's suggestion of Peter's outlook. Does it not make Paul's evidence dubious?
We must ascertain how far the saying in Acts is reliable in balance against Paul's implication that Peter's view, like his own, was of an altogether non-physical appearance.
Brown94 tells us about Acts: "The generally accepted thesis today is that the Book of Acts was composed in the 80s or 90s, and that its references to Christian origins sometimes reflect the Lucan theology of the later first century rather than a historical memory of the situation in the 30s and 40s. Nevertheless in the sermons that Luke attributes to Peter and Paul (scarcely verbatim reports but examples of an early style of kerygmatk proclamation), he preserves ancient expressions from the Church's beginnings." To focus precisely how much the sermons that Acts reports are truly Pauline or Petrine we may cite Brown95 again: "I am not suggesting that in Acts Luke gives us an exact record of early Christian sermons delivered by Peter and Paul. Yet the Christology of the sermons is more primitive than Luke's own Christology and may echo or imitate early Christian kerygma." Brown96 has also declared: "There is every reason to believe that Luke himself composed many or all of the speeches he has placed on the lips of Peter and Paul in Acts. To be sure he may be reusing older material in these speeches, but Luke weaves it together in a dramatic setting." Finally, referring to the three texts from Acts and the two from Paul culled to show the original centring of the Christological moment on the Resurrection and the contrasting of the Resurrection with a lowly ministry, Brown97 warns us: "I speak of the original import of the texts; I do not mean that they continue to have that connotation in Acts." Thus older and later layers of tradition are said to be found in Acts and, on the whole, Brown notes a varied flux in this book and evidently wants us to take Luke's representation of Peter as well as of Paul with a degree of reservation.
So, even if we ignore how Paul's Peter looked at the appearances of Jesus, we may validly doubt the way Acts makes Peter look at them in 10:41. And indeed when we glance at the
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entire sermon we cannot fail to agree with Dougherty who, after giving its outline, observes: "It is interesting to find the same plan in the Gospel of St. Mark." The Christological moment itself is Marcan and not Pauline. Mark's Gospel begins with John the Baptist preaching and baptising all and sundry in the river Jordan and it informs us: "It was at this time that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised in the Jordan by John. No sooner had he come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you'" (1:9-11)99 Now, Peter's sermon in Acts 10:36-41 which provides a grossly physical statement on Jesus' appearance reflects Mark and enforces its Christology with a citation from Isaiah 61:1, as The Jerusalem Bible100 notes in the margin when translating Acts: "You must have heard... about Jesus of Nazareth and how he began in Galilee, after John had been preaching baptism. God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power..." (10:37-38). Thus the very context under consideration betrays a post-Pauline atmosphere and cannot offer us the Peter of Paul's day. The-Pauline view of the appearances remains unchallenged as the sole earliest and authentic one with no hint of anything continuing of Jesus' dead body.
7
The Credibility of Paul as against Acts
To put Acts in its proper secondary place to the Pauline Epistles in spite of its claim to narrate the history of Paul's and Peter's apostleship, we may justifiably go into a number of minutiae and show this composition and the Epistles to be at loggerheads at numerous points. Brown brings a few to our sight.
He101 is aware that "the early Christians seemingly had a tradition concerning a certain period of time in which the risen Jesus appeared to men and after which the appearances
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ceased". Then Brown102 considers the data from Paul: "In Cor 15:8 Paul speaks of Jesus having appeared to him 'last of all' - a statement that implies that by A.D. 56 (when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians) he had not heard of any appearances having taken place since Jesus had appeared to him twenty years before (mid-30s). Since the conversion of Paul did not take place till three or six years after Easter, Paul's inclusion of himself in a list of witnesses implies a much longer period of post-resurrectional appearances than has normally been conceded. In Acts Luke marks off the period of appearances as forty days, seemingly with the purpose of drawing attention to the parallels between Christian origins and the origins of Israel with whom God made a covenant during their stay of forty years in the desert. This interpretation of Lucan thought is supported by the fact that motifs of the covenant, the exodus, and the desert life abound in Acts' description of the origins and life of the early Jerusalem community." What Brown has explicated shows that Luke's forty days are part of a deliberately constructed pattern to evoke in the Christian mind of the 80s or 90s a sense of divine continuity from the epoch of Moses. They have no historical value, whereas Paul is giving us concrete history.
Uneasiness over the forty days can be caused by a comparison of the very pair of books ascribed to the same author: Luke. Brown103 writes in relation to the closing scenes in Luke's Gospel: "Jesus appears to the Twelve on Easter Sunday night. At the end of the appearance (Luke 24:50) we are told that Jesus led them out of Jerusalem as far as Bethany and departed from them (vs 51), ascending into heaven..." Then, after a short interlude on the conflicting stories in different Gospels of appearances in Galilee and Jerusalem, Brown104 writes: "In fact, the information in Acts raises acutely questions about the historicity of the whole Lucan scheme. How are we to reconcile what is said at the end of the Gospel (departure/ ascension on Easter Sunday night) and what is said at the beginning of Acts (ascension forty days later)?"
Footnote 171 to this passage reads: "To solve the problem
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it has been suggested that Luke did not write Acts 1:1-5, but that it was the awkward composition of an unknown Christian scribe, necessitated when Luke-Acts, originally one book, was split into two. The scribe, supposedly, wrote an introduction for the second book by imitating the style of the introduction to the first (cf. Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1). Another suggestion is that Luke the theologian wrote one way when terminating the Gospel-story of Jesus, while Luke the would-be historian wrote another way when beginning the Acts-story of the Church. By associating exaltation or ascension more closely with resurrection, the Gospel was truer to the original theological understanding of the resurrection, while Acts divided resurrection from ascension in order to make both a part of a continuous story."
Neither suggestion is persuasive. It is a mistake to speak of an originally one book being split into two. Brown, in The Jerome Biblical Commentary,105 has noted: "Luke and Acts were not preserved as a unit. Marcion [c. 150 A.D.] accepted only Luke..." Brown further underlines the fact that only after Marcion's "error" - that is, his opposition to various orthodox doctrines - "Acts really came into frequent use" and "we are uncertain when Acts... was put on a plane with the Gospels..." "There is every evidence that Acts was accepted as canonical from 200 on..." Had Luke and Acts been a single book, there would have been no possibility of treating them as two separate compositions as late as the middle of the second century and the claim of Acts to the canon having been in doubt until still later.
As to Luke the theologian working at odds with Luke the would-be historian, it would vitiate his own credentials in either capacity. But in The Jerome Biblical Commentary106 Brown takes cognisance of this alternative in some detail with apparent appreciation. He says: "P.Benoit (Revue biblique 56 [1949] 161-203; also Theology Digest 8 [1960] 105-10) has made a very important distinction in the concept of ascension which helps to solve the problem. If one is speaking of the terminus of Jesus' frequent appearances among men, then this took place
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some time (40 days) after the resurrection, perhaps in the symbolic form of a levitation as Acts describes. If one is speaking of ascension theologically, i.e., as a return to the Father or as a glorification in heaven at God's right hand, this exaltation was an integral part of the resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead to glory, and he appeared to men after the resurrection as one already glorified with supreme power (Matthew 28:18; Luke 24:26). The intimate and immediate connection between the resurrection and the ascension so understood is spelled out in John 20:17ff, and is implicit in many other NT texts (Acts 5:30-31; Ephesians 4:10; 1 Peter 3:21-22; Hebrews 4:14; 1 Timothy 3:16)."
Benoit does not go to the heart of the problem. True, there can be two senses to ascension. Jesus, when he appears to a couple of disciples on the road to Emmaus, is already ascended because he says that it has been ordained for him to suffer and so enter into his glory (Luke 24:26). He is also glorified into supreme power when he appears to eleven disciples with a claim to have all authority in heaven and on earth given him and with a command to them to baptise and teach all nations (Matthew 28:18). This means that ascension in the sense of glorification and exaltation has occurred before the appearances. But how does such an ascension resolve the stark discrepancy between the two versions of the ascension after the appearances? That ascension takes place not only at the end of 40 days, as Brown appreciating Benoit tells us, but also at night on the very Sunday whose morning witnessed the Resurrection. What Benoit has done is to distinguish such an ascension from the theological one which has an intimate and immediate connection with Jesus having been raised. What he has failed to do is to justify the two versions of the event at the terminus of the appearances among men. As Brown107 himself says before championing Benoit, "several difficulties" arise from the 40 days of Acts 1:3, 9: "40 is a symbolic number in the Bible, and not always to be taken literally; other passages imply an ascension on Easter Sunday (Luke 24:51; John 20:17; Mark 16:19)..."
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Brown writes as if for Benoit "Easter Sunday" represented the "theological" sense of the Ascension. Actually, it can only signify, as an earlier quotation by us from Brown states, a comparatively closer association of Ascension with Resurrection and thus a greater nearness to the theological truth. But Easter Sunday night on which Jesus is carried up to heaven marks the terminus of the appearances as much as does the levitation after 40 days, whereas the theological sense is, according to Brown's report of Benoit, that Jesus ascended prior to the appearances. Benoit's "distinction" which Brown recommends is beside the point as far as the crux of the matter is concerned: the crux is the irreconcilableness of Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:3, 9 about the length of the period during which there were appearances.
Until a real reconciliation is offered or a satisfactory explanation for the discrepancy is found, the general impression we get from Luke and Acts on the Ascension-theme is of an imaginative element at work with extreme latitude for them to vary from each other. Moreover, Luke, when like Matthew he implies the appearing Jesus to be already glorified, is inconsistent with what he understands by Ascension. Jesus' Ascension does not just connote his withdrawing from his disciples. It is to be carried up to heaven and take a special position there. Peter's first sermon in Acts figures Jesus ascended to God's right hand (2:33-34),108 and Stephen before his martyrdom gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at God's right hand (7:55).109 Ascension after the appearances is not merely their termination: it means to be divinely glorified. But, if the glorification is present earlier as a result of the Resurrection, we have two glorifications. Only by moving away from Luke and Acts and their chronologies do we reach some coherence. Rather than the untrustworthy flux of post-Pauline traditions, the true chronology for the appearances must be Paul's: that is, appearances for three or six years as computed by Brown. And along with this chronology a firm outlook may be discerned as to the relation between Resurrection and Ascension.
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Holding that the appearances went on for several years, Paul could not have thought of the Ascension as delayed so long. The Ascension as accomplished is implied in the phrase: "The one who rose higher than all the heavens to fill all things"110 (Ephesians 4:10) - and it is made immediately consequent on the Resurrection in the sentences on God: "May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see... how infinitely great... is this power at work in Christ, when he used it to raise him from the dead and to make him sit at his right hand, in heaven, far above every Sovereignty, Authority, Power, or Domination..." (Ephesians 1:18-21).111 In reference to these verses The Jerome Biblical Commentary112 remarks: "Like many in the early Church, Paul saw the resurrection-ascension as a single phase of the glorious exaltation of the Kyrios [=Lord]." From the great poem in Philippians 2 we may see in a striking manner how the Resurrection and the Ascension are as though indistinguishable and make one act of glory; for straight after mentioning Jesus' "death on a cross" it says: "But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names" (2:9).113 The Jerusalem Bible comments: "Lit. 'super-raised him': by the resurrection and ascension."114 Actually, only one movement is stated: the word "raised" which is usually employed for the Resurrection is here coupled with "high" as if to fuse it into the Ascension and not imply merely a succession, however close, of two events. Nevertheless, we have to attend to a certain subtlety in the transitions of the poem as well as see this verse in the context of the habitual Pauline vision.
The Jerome Biblical Commentary115 remarks that this verse, "in its immediate passage from the cross to exaltation" is "un-Pauline in its passing over the resurrection". Yes, but only if we do not probe the poem's transitions we get something that contradicts Paul everywhere else. To get rid of the contradiction we must consider the phrase just preceding the verse. It is not merely the Resurrection that has been passed over. Where is the burial that should follow "death on a cross"? Surely to Paul the "super-raising" did not take place straight from the
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cross where the death had occurred. The burial is skipped as if "death on a cross" would automatically involve it. Similarly, the Resurrection is omitted as if it were automatically involved in the "super-raising". The spectacular infamy of the death by crucifixion is sought to be contrasted with the spectacular glorification of being raised high to be given the supreme name. The two intermediate steps of being buried and being resurrected are dropped for a special poetic-spiritual effect -without the implication that they were not there or that the crucifixion was meant to be fused with the interment and the Resurrection with the Ascension.
Still, unlike the case with Luke and Acts, there is nothing in Paul to plead for an Ascension noticeably later than the Resurrection. They are a swift sequence, the Resurrection shading off into the Ascension. This connotes that to Paul the six occasions he reports of the appearance of Jesus' resurrected body are from heaven where immediately after the Resurrection he has ascended or been exalted and where he returns after each occasion. A Pauline sense of the heavenly origin of the appearance seems to have lingered in the accounts in Acts of Paul's conversion by a vision of Jesus which for the author of Acts is no part of the pre-Ascension manifestation of Jesus to his disciples. Two of the accounts read: "Suddenly, while he was travelling to Damascus and just before he reached the city, there came a light from heaven all around him..." (9:3)116 - "I saw a light brighter than the sun come down from heaven..." (26:13).117
We may sum up. Even the brief distance of time from Easter morning to Easter night is foreign to Paul's outlook, much more the span of forty years. Perhaps the best mode of summing up is to draw attention to 1 Corinthians 15:43,51-52, where the metaphor of the seed that dies and the plant that grows in consequence is applied to the mortal state and the state of resurrection: "the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious... we shall all be changed. This will be instantaneous, in the twinkling of an eye."118 There is a conjoined Resurrection-Ascension, a two-phased single fact.
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And in the wake of it the half-dozen occasions which Paul lists of the encounters of the "raised" Jesus with selected humans are all heaven-projected and strung out over three or else six years.
To continue: Acts often exemplifies a mixture of history and imaginative reconstruction. The mixture vitiates to a considerable extent the very narrative of the most crucial incident in Paul's life, to which we have just adverted. Readers of the NT, in their picture of Paul the one-time persecutor of Christianity becoming suddenly its most energetic preacher, go almost invariably by Acts' sensational tale of Jesus' appearance to him on the road to Damascus. While we have no reason to doubt the substance of the initial questions and answers that Acts narrates between Paul and the widely shining presence of Jesus, what environs and follows them is at utter variance with Paul's own writing. In Acts 9:6 Jesus orders the dazzled Paul, who has fallen to the ground: "Get up now and go into the city, and you will be told what you have to do."119 And in Acts 9:15 the Christian Ananias of Damascus, who had a vision of Saul's arrival but who protests to the Lord that Saul has harmed Christians, is told by the Lord: "You must go all the same, because this man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and before the people of Israel."120 Next we learn from Acts 9:20-21 and 26-28 that Paul started to preach in the synagogues of Damascus and then "got to Jerusalem... to join the disciples" and "started to go round with them in Jerusalem, preaching fearlessly.. ."121 Finally, in all the three accounts that Acts gives of Paul's conversion he is accompanied by others. The first has "men" travelling with them, who heard a voice but did not see any light and who, because he had got blinded with the light, "led him into Damascus by the hand" (9:7-8).122 In the second the "people" with him saw the light but did not hear the voice (22:9).123 In the third the light shone round Paul and his "fellow-travellers" and all fell to the ground (26:13)124. All this is in absolute contradiction of Paul's personal report:
"The fact is, brothers, and I want you to realise this, the
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Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learnt only through a revelation of Jesus Christ. You must have heard of my career as a practising Jew, how merciless I was in persecuting the Church of God.... Then God... called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him to the pagans. I did not stop to discuss this with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were already apostles before me, but I went off to Arabia at once and later went straight back from there to Damascus. Even when after three years I went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days, I did not see any of the other apostles; I only saw James, the brother of the Lord, and I swear before God that what I have just written is the literal truth" (Galatians 1:11-13,15-20).125
Lastly, it is undeniable from Paul's list of appearances that, like the appearances to Cephas and to James, the one to him was to a single individual unlike those to groups: to the Twelve, to over five hundred of the brothers and to all the Apostles. There could have been no "men", "people" or "fellow-travellers" with him, either hearing the words or seeing the light: else they would have been deemed at least partially co-recipients of the appearance.
Acts has to be sifted with care for what is Pauline in it and what is not. It does bring up something of Paul's time on the whole, echoes a few incidents of Paul's life as known from his Epistles and fleshes out in several respects the skeleton the Epistles present of his journeys. Unfortunately, however, it imports a lot of shadows of non-Pauline times and repeatedly it proves inaccurate about Paul. In the matter of doctrine, its proclamation about Jesus has no trace of Paul's combination of the pre-existent Saviour with the self-emptying lowly ministry chosen by that "first-born of all creation in whom were created all things" (Colossians 1:15-16).126 This absence directs us to the period intermediate between Paul and John, while the presence of preachments about Jesus' divine doings renders Acts akin to the age of dramatisation covering John no less
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than Mark, Matthew and Luke.
As for the miracle-feature in general, we must not cut apart Acts from Paul. Although Paul, unlike Acts, does not relate any actual miracle, he refers to what Christ has done through him "by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:19)127 and he declares: "Though I am a nobody, there is not a thing those arch-apostles have that I do not have as well. You have seen done among you all the things that mark the true apostle, unfailingly produced: the signs, the marvels, the miracles" (2 Corinthians 12:12).128 But one particular type of marvel is never to be understood as meant by Paul: what is termed "speaking in tongues". Not that there is no such speaking mentioned in the Epistles. The thing to note is the total difference in the connotation of it in them. And this difference is enough to show the alienness of the age of Acts to that of Paul.
In 1 Corinthians 14:2, 4, 5, 9,18,19 we have Paul writing: "Anybody with the gift of tongues speaks to God, but not to other people; because nobody understands him when he talks in the spirit about mysterious things— The one with the gift of tongues talks for his own benefit... unless of course [he] offers an interpretation so that the church may get some benefit... if your tongue does not produce intelligible speech how can anyone know what you are saying?... I thank God that I have a greater gift of tongues than all of you, but when I am in the presence of the community I would rather say five words that mean something than ten thousand words in a tongue."129 In Acts Paul is linked with speaking in tongues: "the moment Paul laid hands on them the Holy Spirit came down on them, they began to speak in tongues....There were about twelve of these men."130 But the strange phenomenon of the Epistles has no relation to what goes by the same name in Acts.
The happening at Pentecost in Acts is famous. We are told about the group mentioned in 1:13-14: "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech. Now there were men
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living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and at this sound they all assembled, each one bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. 'Surely' they said 'all these men speaking are Galileans?... we hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.'" (2:4-7, ll).131 It is patent that the sense of the phenomenon has undergone a complete change in Acts. Paul means a kind of hyper-enthusiastic vocalisation quite unintelligible to the hearers. The author of Acts interprets the phenomenon as a sort of magical linguistic faculty in the speaker by which the hearers can understand him in their own native speech.*
When the shift in significance took place we do not know with accuracy. After Paul the next reference to "tongues" occurs in the "longer ending" of Mark. Among "the signs that will be associated with believers", Jesus includes "the gift of tongues" (16:17).132 "The date of the Marcan Appendix," says Brown,133 "is difficult to determine precisely, but it is later than that of the other Gospel accounts." This carries us past John, the latest Gospel, which is dated by Brown to the 90s, but the Appendix must be earlier than Tatian and Irenaeus in the second century, since it is known to them.134 So we would not be wrong to make it more or less contemporaneous with Acts, which Brown, with the rest of modern scholars, dates to the 80s or 90s. The contemporaneity becomes all the more probable when we realise that in listing "the gift of tongues" among the signs of the believers Jesus is made to give it importance just as Acts puts it in the forefront, quite unlike Paul who rates it as very secondary. Thus the mind of the 90s mixes glaringly with whatever is Pauline in Acts, along with -as we have already seen from Dougherty - something on the threshold of the Evangelist age as illustrated by the Gospel of Mark apart from its "longer ending".
* For an informative discussion of "tongues" see John Ruef, Paul's First Letter to Corinth (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, 1971), Introduction, pp. xxvi-xxviii.
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Acts is very composite - much of its substance post-Pauline even when dealing with Paul and truly Pauline only when it supports special points in Paul or the general drift of his discourse. No objection from it to anything in Paul can stand.
8
The Second and Last Hurdle:
(a) Was an Empty Tomb Discovered?
From the Gospels the one and only serious objection to a sweeping acceptance of the totally non-physical appearance of Jesus d la Paul would stem from the story of the women and the empty tomb common to all the four Evangelists. It would be legitimate if we could concede an argument such as Michael Ramsey's:135
"There is the evidence that the women found the tomb empty upon the third day after the crucifixion and reported the news to the Apostles. This evidence is set forth in the Gospels. Mark describes the visit of the women; John follows a separate tradition of a visit by Mary Magdelene alone. According to John - and some MSS. of Luke - the Apostles came to the tomb to verify the news for themselves.
"There is no reference to this evidence in documents earlier than the Gospels, and the question arises: Did the empty tomb have a place in the primitive tradition? It seems that although the primitive tradition as we know it does not mention the evidence about the empty tomb, it none the less implies the belief in it. The words of the tradition, as Paul reproduces it, seem incomprehensible unless they mean that the body of Jesus was raised up.
'how that Christ died... and that he was buried... and raised again on the third day.'
Died - buried - raised: the words are used very strangely unless they mean that what was buried was raised up. What
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otherwise is the point of the reference to the burial? In default of the very strongest evidence that Paul meant something different and was using words in a most unnatural way, the sentence must refer to a raising up of the body. The most radical of critics, Schniedel, and the most scientific of critics, Lake, agreed that the belief in the empty tomb is implied in these words."
Ramsey is right in asserting that Paul believed in the empty tomb, but the Evangelists speak of finding the tomb empty. Although Ramsey is aware of the distinction, he136 is satisfied with Kirsopp Lake's defence of Paul's silence about the findings: "Was there any reason why S. Paul should have supplied these details had he known them? Surely not. He was not trying to convince the Corinthians that the Lord was risen: he was reminding them that he has already convinced them" (The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, p. 194). Actually, Lake has missed the whole thrust of 1 Corinthians 15:12-17. True, Paul preached to the Corinthians in the past his Gospel of Christ risen, but at the time the Epistle is being penned there is a problem posed to him, which he seeks to answer because his past preaching has somehow not sufficed: "Now, if Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached, how can some of you be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is useless and your believing is useless; indeed, we are shown up as witnesses who have committed perjury before God, because we swore in evidence before God that he had raised Christ to life. For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people. But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruit of all who have fallen asleep" (15:12-20).137 Here a complex controversy is set forth. Where in Lake or Ramsey do we have an insight into the intricate and
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somewhat involved and repetitious argument?
By attending to a few comments by The Jerusalem Bible we may move towards disentangling what exactly Paul's problem was. The central line of the argument is caught by The Jerusalem Bible's general note138 on the whole Chapter 15: "Christ's resurrection of which the apostles are witnesses... is the decisive proof, vv. 12-28, of the future resurrection of all.... This is why the resurrection of Christ is the foundation of faith, vv. 12-19. The risen Christ can be called the first-fruit, v. 20, not only heralding but causing the resurrection of all Christians, vv. 20-28..." In reference to "what has been preached" there is the explanation:139 "Paul is preaching to those who believe Christ rose from the dead. To believe this and to lead a Christian life necessarily imply belief in the resurrection of the dead." The gloss140 on the last line of our passage is: " 'This life' has become for Christians a state from which life in Christ, through the resurrection, will deliver them. If there is no resurrection, they have lost their deliverance. Note that the possibility of the soul's immortality without the resurrection of the body is not considered." As a gloss on this gloss we may hark back to some words141 in the long note we have quoted on the spiritual resurrection-body: "Greek philosophers thought of the higher soul (the nous) escaping from 'the body', to survive immortally. Christians thought of immortality more in terms of the restoration of the whole person, involving a resurrection of the body effected by the Spirit or divine principle which God withdrew from human beings because of sins, Genesis 6:3, but restored to all who are united to the risen Christ, Romans 1:4+; 8:11, who is the 'heavenly man' and life-giving Spirit, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49."
The Jerusalem Bible on some other texts in the New Testament may be consulted to throw light on Paul's problem. Annotating Acts 17:32, it142 writes: "In the Greek world, even among Christians, the doctrine of the resurrection met stubborn resistance from preconceived ideas, cf. Corinthians 15:12f." Again, we are told:143 "The body, though tyrannised by the 'flesh',... by sin,... by death,... is not however doomed to
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perish, as Greek philosophy would have it, but, in accordance with the biblical tradition,... destined to live,... through resurrection. The principle of this renewal is the Spirit... which takes the place of the psyche, 1 Corinthians 15:44..." Finally, a remark on 2 Timothy 2:18 begins:144 "The Greek mind found the resurrection particularly hard to accept, Acts 17:32; 1 Corinthians 15:12."* It continues with reference to the text's mention of "Hymenaeus and Philetus, the men who have gone right away from the truth and claim that the resurrection has already taken place."145 The continuation runs: "Hymenaeus and Philetus may well have given [the resurrection] a purely spiritual interpretation by analogy with the mystical resurrection that occurs in baptism, Romans 6:14+; Ephesians 2:5+."
We can gather clearly enough that it is the Greek mind of the dissenting Corinthians which, interacting with the Judaeo-Christian outlook, has worked contra Paul by falling foul of the doctrine of being raised from the dead. But then The Jerusalem Bible's assertion that "Paul is talking to those who believe Christ rose from the dead" fails to meet the exact situation. Paul realises that to deny resurrection of the dead implies that if Jesus died, as Paul believes he did, the Corinthians cannot consider him to have been resurrected in the Pauline sense. Paul is puzzled as to how, knowing this inevitable corollary and having heard him in the past preach Jesus' Resurrection, they could question the rising of the dead at the world's termination. Since this rising follows from that of Jesus, the two
* 1 and 2 Timothy as well as Titus (all termed "Pastoral Letters") are under dispute for authorship. The Jerusalem Bible (p. 264), in spite of their lacking in Paul's distinctive style and vocabulary, inclines nonetheless for several reasons to attribute them to Paul, only insisting that as in the case of Ephesians but to a greater degree he must have given someone who was both disciple and secretary an unprecedented amount of freedom. Most New-Testament scholars exclude them from the genuine Pauline collection and make a disciple responsible for them, but grant that they "probably contain Pauline fragments" (Encyclopaedia Britannica [1977], Macropaedia, Vol. 13, p. 1090, col. 1).
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have to be accepted or rejected together. We must understand-the Corinthian dissent as applying both to Jesus and to Jesus' adherents, and so it must either set aside wholly the Pauline idea of Resurrection or interpret Resurrection in a manner that does away with reviving from death.
As the typical cultured Greek could never regard the body as anything save a soul's earthly house which must perish permanently when death overtakes it, we have in the claim by Hymenaeus and Philetus that "the resurrection has already taken place" a clue to part of what some Corinthians put before Paul. They must have conceived of Resurrection for ordinary human beings as a spiritual inner conversion on the lines of what Paul writes in the two Epistles noticed by The Jerusalem Bible: Romans and Ephesians.
Romans 6:4-6 tells us about baptism "in Christ Jesus": "You have been taught that... when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's.glory, we too might live a new life. If in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection."146 The Jerusalem Bible147 clarifies the suggestion here with a few words on the baptismal ceremonial: "The sinner is immersed in water (the etymological meaning of 'baptism' is 'dip') and thus 'burial' with Christ, Colossians 2:12, with whom also he emerges in resurrection, Romans 8:11+, as a 'new creature', Corinthians 5:17+, a 'new man', Ephesians 2:15+..." Of course, as the annotation adds, "This resurrection will not be complete or final until the end of time", but the Greek mind is liable to ignore the reservation and be satisfied with what, as The Jerusalem Bible goes on to say, "is already taking place in the form of a new life lived 'in the Spirit'..."
From Ephesians 2:5-6 we learn: "when we were dead through our sins, [God] brought us to life with Christ - it is through grace that we have been saved - and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus."148 Here too the baptismal ceremonial is a symbol as of a resurrection while one is alive, but the symbolised state
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is couched in a strange mode suggesting the world-end to be already realised. The Jerusalem Bible149 notes: "Here as in Colossians 2:12; 3:1-4, the use of the past tense shows that the resurrection and triumph of Christians in heaven is considered as actually existing, whereas the future tense in Romans 6:3-11; 8:11,17f treats it as something that has still to take place." No doubt, though Paul, for all the mysticism glimmering in these words, would never deny the additional physical beatitude at the end of the world complementing the present psychological one, the Greek habit of thought with its conviction of the body's irreparable destruction at the time of death would lean towards a spiritual death of the Old Adam into a new self-awareness during one's lifetime.
Of course Paul puts on a bold face and, referring to a strange practice of vicarious baptism which "people" followed, asks: "If the dead are not ever going to be raised, why be baptised on their behalf?" (1 Corinthians 15:29).150 But he was bound to be somewhat uneasy on the question of a world-end Resurrection. Rightly does Brown151 reflect: "we should remember that while 1 Corinthians 15 implies a general analogy between the resurrection of the Christian and the resurrection of Jesus, Paul must face problems about the earthly bodies of Christians, that did not arise about the earthly body of Jesus - their bodies will have decomposed or have been lost by the time of the general resurrection of the just, whereas Jesus was raised 'on the third day.'"
So much for the Corinthian non-conformism about the ordinary partisan of Christ. The second and, for our purpose, more important item of disagreement between it and Paul must be related to a non-Pauline sense in which Jesus, the extraordinary centre of Christianity's worship, could be envisaged after the crucifixion. Two points are involved here. First, as with its worshipper, so with Jesus himself, the upsurge of the Greek mind in the Corinthians would repudiate - as The Jerusalem Bible repeatedly says - the raising of the body from the dead: for if death came the body would be doomed forever. Resurrection, as Paul understood it, would be unacceptable. In
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a different way Jesus has to be looked up to as "raised". Next, Paul has averred: "If Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins." This statement harks back to an earlier verse in 1 Corinthians 15: "Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures" (3).152 Obviously, the questioners from Corinth have another view than Paul's of Jesus' victory both over death and over human sinfulness.
What could be the alternative view? As for "our sins", it must be that for a supernormal being like Jesus to have undergone the abysmal humiliation and terrible torment of the crucifixion, short of death, was enough to pay for them. In regard to being "raised", something merely on the analogy of "the mystical resurrection that occurs in baptism" will not do. A far more radical newness of existence is required for the supernormal being that Jesus was. One mode of it would be as follows. In his very body he must rise superior to death without having to die in order to be raised. From' the life that is inevitably death-governed and may be called certain death parading as precarious life, he must be taken into a life that will never terminate in death. Was it open to some of the Corinthians to envisage such a possibility of a post-crucifixion state?
Yes, and Brown provides a pointer. We may quote from him153 the observations "...scholars suggest that two ways of describing Jesus' victory, once quite different, have been harmonised by NT authors, and that originally exaltation into heaven did not imply resurrection from the dead. It is very difficult to be certain of this claim, for 'exaltation' need have done no more than capture the eschatological aspect of the resurrection." A footnote154 refers to X. Leon Dufour's Resurrection de Jesus et message pascal (Paris: Seuil, 1971), pp. 55-75, where it is argued that one cannot claim resurrection language to be "derivative from exaltation language" but also "that, although exaltation language appears in the Christian hymns of the NT, it is not necessarily later than resurrection language which appears in the primitive kerygma or proclamation". This implies that exaltation language too is not to be derived from
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the other and that both are equally old. Thus the suggestion which Brown does not deem compelling could still be entertained and the notion of an exaltation without resurrection yet synonymous with ascension and glorification might be present in a milieu which, for all its Greek character, was penetrated by Judaeo-Christian influences. Corinth was indeed such a milieu.
Lying on the great trade-route between Rome and the East, it had a very mixed commercial and cosmopolitan population and a variety of cults.155 There was also a powerful Jewish community settled there, which gave trouble to Paul during Gallio's proconsulship of Achaia (Acts 18:12), starting from 52 A.D. according to an inscription found at Delphi.156 At the time 1 Corinthians was written, a learned Jew from Alexandria (Acts 18:24), Apollos, who after Paul's departure from Corinth had become a leader there of the Christian community, was with Paul and was unwilling to return to Corinth just then (1 Corinthians 16:12) "in case his presence aggravated party feelings among his own supporters, 1:12; 3:4-6". Against all this background we have to assess the non-conformist Corinthians' version, as against Paul's, of Jesus' triumph over death.
John Ruef157 explains that, side by side with the idea of the dead rising at the world's end, the Jews harboured the idea of God placing his sign of approval upon a particular worthy individual by exalting him bodily to heaven: "Moses, Elijah, and Enoch are all thought in various strands of Jewish tradition to have been exalted to heaven." But exaltation really meant "translation": the person exalted was "assumed" into heaven without his dying. In Ruef's opinion, that is what the disagreeing Corinthians believed to have happened to Jesus after his crucifixion. "When, therefore, they said, 'Christ is risen', they understood this in the sense of an ascension or assumption to heaven whence Christ subsequently appeared or was revealed to those who were to be the nucleus of the infant church. It is only thus that the Corinthians could claim that, while Christ is risen, there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead. The key word... is 'dead'. In the thought
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of the Gentiles, the dead are beyond recall. In the mind of the Corinthians, resurrection meant that Jesus avoided death. In the thought of Paul, of course, resurrection meant that Jesus overcame death. Paul must, therefore, emphasize in his discussion of the resurrection... that Jesus really did die."
Here we may cite Brown158 who has tried to meet some scholars' criticism of Resurrection-language. These scholars suggest that "somehow a genuine faith in Jesus' victory over death emerged" and "was conceptualized as bodily resurrection ... simply because the Jewish mind had available no other concept for expressing a victory over death." Brown argues: "This contention is inaccurate, for we know of several other models of victory over death that were current in Judaism and might have been employed by Christians, models that did not involve the resurrection and/or appearances of the one raised from the dead. For instance, the Gospels draw parallels between Jesus and Elijah; and so it would not have been unusual for Christians to have preached that, like Elijah, Jesus was assumed into heaven and that he would return at the last judgment." We should add that "appearances" need not be confined to the Resurrection-concept and denied to the Elijah-model. The Gospels not only draw parallels between Jesus and Elijah: they also speak of Elijah "appearing" before the time of the last judgment. Mark, the Evangelist nearest the age of Paul, writes: "Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain where they could be alone by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured: his clothes became dazzlingly white, whiter than any earthly bleacher could make them. Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus" (9:2-4).159 Matthew 17:1-3 and Luke 9:28-31 tell the same story. Luke has even a phrase - "Moses and Elijah appearing in glory" (verses 30-31)160 - in accord with the general Pauline "what is raised is glorious" (1 Corinthians 15:43) and Paul's particular allusion to the resurrected Jesus' "glorious body" (Philippians 3:21).161 An alternative to the Elijah-model would be a pattern of thought which we may dub "proto-Gnosticism". An index to it
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is given by Ruef himself when he comments on 1 Corinthians 7, 8,10 and inclines us to hold that perhaps in these verses we have a suggestion of the outlook Paul is opposing in 15:12-20. The verses read in Ruef's rendering: "...who sees anything different in you? What have you that you did not receive? If then you have received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? Already you are filled! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And we would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!... We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ."162 Ruef163 marks here "a highly ironic description of the attitude of the Corinthian Christians" - and adds: "It must refer to their attitude rather than their style of life, already described in other terms [cf. l:26ff]... Some see this as evidence of the Gnostic character of Paul's opponents in Corinth. The terms filled, rich, kings and rule, can be paralleled in later writings by avowed Gnostics.....If this is not full-blown Gnosticism, it is certainly the intellectual climate within which Gnosticism could spring up.....In the 'gnostic' view of things, the terms would mean that those who had gnosis, i.e. knowledge or wisdom, were full (of the Spirit) and were therefore rich - treating the spirit as a possession. They reigned as kings because knowledge afforded them power to overcome the heavenly beings hostile to them and desirous to prevent their return to their heavenly abode in the primal man."
Giinther Bornkamm164 discerns even more distinctly the play of an attitude banking on a special secret knowledge such as originally a non-Christian sect extolled but is here adapted to Christian concerns: "The 'enthusiasts' at Corinth had succumbed to the attractions of a different theology of the resurrection and believed that, possessing Christ's spirit, they were even now living in a new aeon beyond time and death. This is the reference of the ironic, angry words of 1 Corinthians 4:8."
The Jerome Biblical Commentary,165 discussing the question of the Pauline authorship of Colossians and informing us that despite several objections "the majority of scholars still accept
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Paul as the author", has the following apropos of one of the objections: "The 'Gnostic' nature of the heresy [countered by Paul in Colossians], since Gnosticism is, in its development, a 2nd-century phenomenon." Then the Commentary adds apropos of it: "However, most scholars agree that Colossians is directed against an incipient form of Gnosticism, or Proto-Gnosticism, which is at home in a lst-century setting." Assuming with many scholars Colossians to have been written during Paul's imprisonment in Rome, Joseph A. Grassi,166 the writer on it in the Commentary, takes the years A.D. 61-63 as "the most likely period" of its composition - that is, about half a dozen years after 1 Corinthians. This is just the right chronological relationship, since, in Grassi's words,167 "the advanced Christology in the letter would point to a time after the composition of 1-2 Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians", while, as Dougherty168 reminds us, "the expansion of Paul's theology" here has still a "continuity... with his earlier thought": "The roots of this Christology already appear in 1 Corinthians 8:6; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Galatians 4:4f; Romans 8:38ff."
The presence of Proto-Gnosticism through the whole of Paul's preaching career may be affirmed also from the early existence of parts of the Gnostic document, The Gospel of Thomas. Elaine Pagels169 cites Professor Helmut Koester of Harvard University as suggesting in his Introduction to this collection of Jesus' sayings that, though compiled around 140 A.D., it may include some traditions even older than Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.
Brown, writing in The Jerome Biblical Commentary,170 is practically in accord with Koester. After describing The Gospel of Thomas as "one of the most important of the 44 works" dug up in 1945-46 "in upper Egypt near the village of Nag-Hammadi", he says: "The Gospel of Thomas is simply a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus (maxims, proverbs, parables); it has no narrative. (Scholars have long posited a pre-Gospel source named 'Q'... which consisted entirely of sayings; The Gospel of Thomas shows that such a literary form did exist in Christian antiquity.) Some sayings are identical with or
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parallel to canonical NT sayings; but the majority are different in whole or in part. As for the similar or parallel sayings, it is difficult to be certain whether The Gospel of Thomas has borrowed from the Synoptics or from a source similar to the sources behind those Gospels. As for the sayings that are different, some of them may be genuine, for several of them are cited elsewhere in early Christian literature____Yet there is a Gnostic or incipiently Gnostic flavor to many of them. Probably The Gospel of Thomas is a composite work, binding together genuine sayings of Jesus, canonical and non-canonical, with sayings invented in Gnostic circles."
Everything indicates a fore-gleam, in Paul's days, of later Gnostic ideas. There could very well have been an anticipation of those, for instance, in The Treatise on Resurrection171 by a follower of the Gnostic teacher and poet Valentinus (c. 140 A.D.) which defines Resurrection as the moment of enlightenment: "It is... the revealing of what truly exists... and a migration (metabole - change, transition) into newness." Whoever grasps this becomes spiritually alive. This means, the Valentinian author declares, that you can be "resurrected from the dead" right now: "Are you - the real you - mere corruption?... Why do you not examine your own self, and see that you have arisen?" Another text, The Gospel of Philip, Pagels172 tells us, "expresses the same view, ridiculing ignorant Christians who take the resurrection literally. 'Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error.' Instead they must 'receive the resurrection while they live.' The author says ironically that in one sense, then, of course 'it is necessary to rise "in this flesh" since everything exists in it!'" This recalls the claim of Hymenaeus and Philetus, which may be understood as Proto-Gnosticism in terms of the baptismal rite.
If an inner knowledge of the non-physical reality that is the Divine Jesus as well as one's own deepest self is the resurrection for the Proto-Gnostic Christian, what would be to him the Resurrection of the historic Jesus who had been nailed on the cross? As Pagels173 recounts, the writings of the later full-fledged Gnostics "tell countless stories about the risen
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Christ - the spiritual being whom Jesus represented - a figure who fascinated them far more than the merely human Jesus, the obscure rabbi from Nazareth". Pagels174 continues: "For this reason, gnostic writings often reverse the pattern of the New Testament gospels. Instead of telling the history of Jesus biographically, from birth to death, gnostic accounts begin where the others end - with stories of the spiritual Christ appearing to his disciples." Curiously enough, here is essentially Paul's outlook: "Even if we did once know Christ in flesh, that is not how we know him now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here" (2 Corinthians 5:16-17).175 As Romans 1:3-5 makes it explicit, "the Son of God who, according to the human nature he took, was a descendant of David" was, "in the order of the spirit, the spirit of holiness that was in him,... proclaimed Son of God in all his power through his resurrection from the dead".176 The Jerome Biblical Commentary says about Paul: "It is remarkable how little he knew of Jesus the Galilean rabbi or even of what is recorded in the Gospels about him... Paul is interested in the exalted Lord..." The difference, however, between the Valentinians and Paul is that the former took the historical Jesus to be just a vehicle for a Divine Being who entered him at his baptism by John and left him during the crucifixion, whereas to Paul Jesus was himself the pre-existent Son of God and Jesus himself was raised from the dead after the crucifixion and appeared to his disciples. Hence a Proto-Gnostic view of the after-death Jesus would not be acceptable to him.
The Valentinian notion was already present before the close of the first century. Thus verse 22 of 1 John, a letter attributed to the Evangelist John who wrote in the 90s, gets in The Jerusalem Bible177 the annotation: "Probably a reference to Cerinthus who taught that Jesus was an ordinary human being who was 'possessed' by the Messiah at his baptism in the Jordan; this Messiah ascended before the Passion of Jesus." So the possible Proto-Gnostic view hailing from Corinth may be stated along the following lines:
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"Something in every man survives the inevitable and irreversible dissolution of the body, as taught in Greek philosophy. But the surviving something within Jesus whom Paul designated Christ would be in correspondence to the status of the great truth-revealer who had come from the Highest to work through him. It would give all the signs of what Paul would term Ascension, Exaltation, Glorification carrying it to a heavenly seat at God's right hand. After the death of Jesus the real Christ in him would appear to a chosen number as a sheer divinity freed from the physical covering which, like any other, was bound to dissolve for good."
How would the real Christ appear after Jesus' death? It would seem that in the opinion of Christian Gnostics he would still identify himself by the name of the responsive vehicle he had adopted but he would shed all the physical traits of it. Pagels178 quotes from The Letter of Peter to Philip which relates that after Jesus' death the disciples were praying on the Mount of Olives when "a great light appeared, so that the mountain shone from the sight of him who had appeared. And a voice called out to them saying 'Listen... I am Jesus Christ, who is with you forever.'" The Wisdom of Jesus Christ tells a similar story: "then there appeared to them the Redeemer, not in his original form but in the invisible spirit. But his appearance was the appearance of a great angel of light."179 The Apocryphon of John speaks of John seeing "an image with multiple forms in the light".180
The Corinthians whom Paul argues with were evidently dissatisfied with a doctrine which took the human body not only to rise from death at the Parousia but also to continue with its physical characteristics unchanged. The Jerome Biblical Commentary181 introduces thus its treatment of Paul's dealing with the manner of the Resurrection: "The Jews engaged in much speculation about the resurrection of the dead. Some entertained hedonistic conceptions of the life of the resurrection similar to the Mohammedan teachings about Paradise (see J. Bonsirvan, Le Judaisme palestinien [Paris, 1934], I, 483-85). Such materialistic conceptions seem to have influenced some
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Corinthians to deny the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead." The Commentary182 touches on Paul's employment of "the Greek mode of argumentation called diatribe, imagining an objector whom he refutes with an epithet common to that literary form - 'foolish fellow!' [=The Jerusalem Bible's 'They are stupid questions']". The Commentary183 also sums up Paul's vision: "The resurrected body will be transformed into a perfect instrument for the new conditions of the life of glory..." All this, of course, pertains to the ordinary Christians' Parousiac future, his "spiritual body" to come. But, as the Commentary184 explicates Paul, "The model of this 'spiritual body' is the risen body of Christ, 'the heavenly man'." So, if some Corinthians have presented a Proto-Gnostic version of Jesus' Resurrection, what Paul says here would be meant to help them clarify their minds and assure them that he never conceived of Jesus' dead body resurrected in a materialistic condition, retaining the characteristics of its old mortal form.
However, Paul's Epistle betrays a lacuna in combating the Corinthians' Proto-Gnostic model of the risen Jesus no less than their Elijah-model. Unlike the latter, this alternative would involve the death of Jesus' body yet deny its resuscitation a la Paul. But in either case Paul would face the challenge of showing that there was not only death but also resuscitation. Both the models would be counteracted if he could supply details such as the women going to Jesus' tomb and finding it empty. Contrary to Kirsopp Lake's submission, Paul answering the unorthodox Corinthians had every reason to bring forth evidence that Jesus' body did not escape death like Elijah's as well as that the dead body of Jesus, instead of lying in its grave forever as Proto-Gnosticism contended, had left it to live again.
The required evidence would have been most appropriately in place after the sentence: "But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruit of all who have fallen asleep." Had such details as the visit of the women to Jesus' tomb and the discovery of its emptiness been to Paul's hand, he could easily have refuted the suggestion either that the
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crucified Jesus did not die but was directly exalted or that he died irrecoverably and what survived to make after-death appearances was a divine being who had emerged from the casing of the mortal body it had put on for a time. Paul's lack of knowledge of the incidents the four Gospels narrate stands out. All he had to his hand was the teaching inherited by him and the authority of the prophecies. It is as if there were no tomb of Jesus to contradict the Elijah-model or allow the issue whether it was filled or empty to occur. The very fact that some Corinthians could argue against his position signifies the absence of concrete proof at Paul's disposal that in a localisable way Jesus was buried as a preliminary to his possible rising and leaving the grave void.
In addition to the reference in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 to Jesus' burial in the phrase about the teaching "that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures",185 there are two allusions to the same subject. One is Romans 6:3, which we have already quoted and in which the teaching is said to connote that the dip into the water of the baptismal ceremonial symbolises our going into "the tomb" with Jesus and joining him "in death" and that the emergence from the water as a believer in Jesus reflects with the living of a new life the raising of him from the dead by God's glory. The second text is: "You must be... held firm by the faith you have been taught____You have been buried with him, when you were baptised and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead" (Colossians 2:12).186 But it should be evident that terms like "tomb" and "buried" are everywhere merely part of a teaching and, though Paul fully credits the teaching, he cannot have had enough evidence to enable him to direct the Corinthian non-conformism to a known grave, an identifiable tomb. The reason for his inability should be easy to understand if we divest our minds of fixed ideas.
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(b) Was Joseph of Arimathaea Real?
In all the four (Gospels we have read of Joseph of Arimathaea who took charge of Jesus' body and removed it to an unused tomb which Mark (15:46), Matthew (27:60) and Luke (23:53) describe as one hewn in rock and John (19:41) simply as one near-by in a garden:187 in short, in a special separate identifiable location. Brown188 says about Joseph: "It is virtually certain that he was not a figment of Christian imagination, that he was remembered precisely because he had a prominent place in the burial of Jesus, and thus that there was someone who knew exactly where Jesus had been buried." But Brown189 himself tells us in a footnote to Mark's figuring of Joseph as "a respected member of the council who also looked for the kingdom of God": "If one compares the four Gospels, the character of Joseph grows with the telling. Not only has he become a disciple of Jesus in Matthew, but the tomb in which he buried Jesus was his own tomb (Matt 27:57, 60). Luke (23:50-51) stresses that he was a good and righteous man who had not consented to the action of the other members of the Sanhedrin in condemning Jesus (a contradiction of the 'all' in Mark 14:64). John (19:39-40) has Joseph join Nicodemus in preparing Jesus' body for a solemn burial." The element of "imagination" and "dramatisation" is clearly at work. Brown notes190 too, as we have seen him doing when we considered the limited extent to which the Gospels are credible, how Matthew who generally bases himself on Mark changes the story of the empty tomb according to his own "apologetic" ends without any concern for better history. There is, again, a note by Brown191 on the different reports in Mark and Luke about the spices prepared by the women to anoint Jesus' corpse: "This disconcerting lack of agreement already raises a question about historicity." Finally, looking back at the contradiction between Mark and Matthew, Brown192 observes: "A greater contradiction stands between Mark/Luke and John. Not only does John not mention the women's purpose in coming to the tomb; but logically he excludes the possibility
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that the purpose was to anoint Jesus' body, for immediately after the crucifixion John has Joseph and Nicodemus join in preparing Jesus' body for burial, using an enormous amount of myrrh and aloes (one hundred pounds! - John 19:39-40). Once again there is doubt about John's historical exactitude because the main purpose of his burial narrative is symbolic."
A footnote193 to the burial narrative playing a symbolic role says: "It illustrates the theme of John 12:32 that, once Jesus has been lifted up from the earth (in crucifixion), he begins to draw all men to himself. In John 19:38-39 two hitherto fearful men begin to confess publicly their adherence by preparing Jesus for burial. Moreover, the implausibly large outlay of spices may be meant to suggest that Jesus received a royal burial, thus continuing the theme of Jesus' kingship that is very strong in the Johannine Passion Narrative..."
Nor does Brown stop here. He194 continues: "However, if there is hesitation about the reliability of the two accounts that exclude anointing as the purpose of the women's visit to the tomb, there is no certitude that Mark and Luke are historical in advocating this purpose. Several illogicisms have been detected in the Marcan/Lucan story, e.g., the oddity of seeking to anoint a body that had already corrupted for two days. I doubt the validity of such an objection since the evangelists knew the customs of the time and would scarcely have passed on what was manifestly unlikely. Perhaps the safe conclusion is to say that we cannot be sure whether Jesus' body was anointed before burial or not. (If it was anointed, then the women were probably going to the tomb to mourn.) In any case, the reference to anointing with spices in Mark 16:1 and Luke 24:1 represents an editorial attempt to sew together more closely the story of the empty tomb and the main Passion Narrative." A footnote195 to the bracketed sentence informs us that a custom of mourning for several days is implied by John 11:31 and that the Jewish Midrash Rabba 100:7 on Genesis 50:10 reports mourning at its height on the third day.
The excuse offered for Luke is rather lame. It stands to reason that anointing a corpse two-day old would never be
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practised and John 19:40 makes the accepted ritual specifically clear: "They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, following the Jewish burial custom."196 Neither is it a fact that Luke was incapable of passing on what went against the customs of the time. Not only is he shown by Brown197 himself as indulging in "details... of dubious historicity" such as "a census of the Roman world that affected Galilee and occurred before the death of Herod the Great": he is also exposed as a misinterpreter of customs by none else than Brown198 when discussing 2:22-24 which gives us Luke's scene in the temple with the child Jesus and his parents: "Luke seems to think that both parents needed to be purified, since in 22... he modifies Lev[iticus] 12:6 to read 'when the time came for their purification.' He seems to think that the reason for going to the Temple was the consecration or presentation of Jesus (vs.27), when only the law concerning the purification of the mother mentions the custom of going to the sanctuary. (And it is dubious that a journey to the Temple was still practised to any great extent in the Judaism of NT times.) He mentions nothing of the price (five shekels) required for redeeming the first-born child from the service of the Lord; rather he connects with the event the sacrifice of the two doves or pigeons which was really related to the purification of the mother." Brown's explanation199 is: "... the confusion results from a combination of inaccurate knowledge of the exact customs and of the conflict between two motifs" - the two motifs being drawn respectively from Leviticus and from the story of Samuel. But to explain the cause of Luke's inaccuracy is not to deny that he was capable of transmitting "what was manifestly unlikely" in "the customs of the time".
So must have been Mark, on whom he drew appreciably though a little less than Matthew, and whose story about the women at the tomb he repeated here. D. E. Nineham200 discusses Mark 7:2-4 which says of the Pharisees and the scribes watching Jesus' followers: "... they saw that some of the disciples ate with hands defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their
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hands, observing the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they purify themselves)..." Nineham's commentary begins: "According to the Jewish experts in such matters, the evidence of the Talmud is that in the time of Jesus ritual washing of hands before meals was obligatory only on the priests. An occasional 'pietist' might try to live, so far as outward purity was concerned, as if he were a priest, but the ordinary layman -including the Pharisee and the scribe - was not concerned with such questions of religious defilement unless he was about to enter the temple and make a sacrifice. Accordingly, the story as it stands can hardly be historical." Then Nineham quotes the reply of Christian scholars. They point out the lateness of the Talmud (dating from c. A.D. 450), question the value of its evidence for the time of Jesus and argue: "It is agreed by everyone that about A.D. 100, or a little later, ritual washing did begin to become obligatory on all; such a change will not have been completely sudden, so may it not be that there was already a strong move in this direction in the time of Jesus? If so, it would certainly have found its chief supporters among scribes and Pharisees, and they might well have expected a religious leader such as Jesus to exact the highest standards from his followers." Nineham's verdict is: "If that suggestion can be accepted, it may preserve the historicity of the story itself, though it cannot save St. Mark's generalizing that the Pharisees, and all the Jews practised such ritual washing, for the Talmudic evidence makes clear that, as a group, they did not."
Nineham is certain that Mark could not be altogether right about the customs of Jesus' day and his "If" proves him unsure that the Christian reply on the strength of a move in a particular direction more than 70 years after the period concerned can decide against the Talmud.
All in all, every item of Mark/Luke is open to grave misgiving and Joseph of Arimathaea is set in the midst of them. What shall we say about his historicity? Brown makes the point that Joseph "appears in all four Gospels". But, honest and scrupulous scholar that he is, he201 appends a footnote:
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"This may be less impressive than it seems; for in the main narrative of the empty tomb, Matthew and Luke appear to be dependent on Mark, and only John (with whose tradition Luke agrees in part) seems to have an independent tradition. Thus we are dealing basically with only two traditions." Still, Joseph retains some impressiveness and Nineham202 even argues about him: "Apart from this incident, an entirely unknown figure; if he subsequently became Christian, he does not appear to have been a particularly well-known one, so there would have been no obvious reason for attributing the burial of Jesus to him unless he had in fact been responsible for it." But there are two details in Nineham203 later that give us pause.
First, the Greek adjective euschemon, "when used in such a context, would have meant properly 'of good social position' ... but it was popularly used to mean 'rich'. So St. Matthew (27:17) understood it here, probably rightly, and we should surely see some influence of Isaiah 53:9 on our passage". The Jerusalem Bible translates Isaiah: "They gave him a grave with the wicked, a tomb with the rich..." - and comments: "Early Christian preaching seems to have had this text in mind when recording the burial of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea, 'a rich man', Mt. 27:57-60. It is possible to correct it to 'in his death he is with the evil-doers'..." As prophecy-fulfilment was a common motif among early Christians, a rich man may have been conjured up by oral tradition and accorded "a local habitation and a name" which passed into the written records of Mark and John with a further embellishment in the latter in the form of Nicodemus. We do not need to be compelled to grant historicity to just a name and its connection with a place, especially when both of them are accompanied by a number of features whose historicity can validly be called in question.
We have already noted from Brown how much misguidance could come from faith in prophecy-fulfilment. A few words from Nineham204 would be very appropriate here. He refers to the fact that early Christians "regarded Christ's activ-
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ity as the final saving act of God to which the Old Testament had pointed forward. Since the Old Testament was regarded as completely accurate down to the last detail, it followed that everything it predicted concerning this final event must have found fulfilment at some point in Christ's ministry. Hence the Old Testament could become a source of information about the events of Christ's earthly life; and to the early Christians, with their deep conviction of its inerrancy, it may well have seemed a safer guide than the fallible memories of human witnesses, however well informed. There are, as we shall see, passages in Mark where it is impossible to be certain whether a particular story rests on a tradition derived from witnesses or whether it represents a deduction from Old Testament prophecy about what 'must have' happened when the Messiah came. (For example, see the commentary on 15:24.)"
The germ of the Joseph-tale was pre-Marcan but Mark's mentality face-to-face with Jesus' earthly life was pre-Marcan as well as in the matter of prophecy-fulfilment. So the claim to historicity weakens still more.
The second detail from Nineham himself to counteract his feeling of the factuality of Joseph of Arimathaea peeps out from his comment apropos of the favour Joseph obtained from the Roman authorities: the possession of Jesus' body. Nineham205 informs us: "The normal Roman custom was to leave the bodies of the crucified on the cross until they decayed, but there is some evidence that from the time of Augustus they sometimes granted them to the relatives and friends, if they chose to apply for them." Mark, as rendered by Nineham, unequivocally shows that Joseph was neither a relative nor a friend of Jesus but simply a pious Jew: "a respected member of the council, who was himself looking for the kingdom of God..." (15:43).206 Joseph's intervention is quite out of the blue and wanting in plausible historical roots.
The absence of historical roots becomes even more conspicuous when we consider the period in which Jesus died and the circumstances of his trial with its tragic result. The Chronological Table in The Jerusalem Bible207 notes that Jesus
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was "condemned to death by Pontius Pilate under the Emperor Tiberius (Tacitus, Annals)". C. Northcote Parkinson208 brings out a very significant aspect of this event in Jesus' life: "In A.D. 30 or thereabouts the High Priest and Council tried him for blasphemy, condemned him to death, and asked the procurator to confirm the sentence. This he was reluctant to do, but the High Priest next informed him that Jesus claimed the kingship of the Jews. Mindful of Tiberius's severity in matters of treason, and realising that the Council could complain to Ceasar about his lenience, the procurator confirmed the sentence. Jesus was then executed." Evidently the situation in regard to Pilate was such that it was impossible for him to act afterwards with the lenience attributed to him by all the four Gospels when Joseph of Arimathaea approached him. We may representatively cite the earliest Gospel: "Joseph of Arimathaea... boldly went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate, astonished that he should have died so soon, summoned the centurion and enquired if he was already dead. Having been assured of this by the centurion, he granted the corpse to Joseph..." (15:43-45).209 Fearing a complaint to Tiberius by the Jews who were intent upon punishing Jesus to the extreme, Pilate could never have entertained a request to hand over Jesus' corpse to anyone not in sympathy with the accusers.
Even without bringing in Parkinson's insight we should be able to realise Pilate's psychology vis-a-vis the anger of the Jews. When they were so infuriated with Jesus that they would rather free a man like Barabbas who was then in prison on a charge of rioting and murder, and when Pilate was so "anxious to placate the crowd" (Mark 15:15)210 as to waive his own conviction of the offender's innocence, it was most unlikely for him to add fuel to the fire by letting after-death ministrations be given to a fanatically hated culprit.
A step further in rendering Joseph apocryphal, leading to a decisive coup de grace to the claim of his existence, would lie in piercing to the real meaning of a scholarly consideration by Brown211 of a relevant scriptural verse from outside the
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Gospels. While building up a brief for Joseph he has also written: "Acts 13:29 informs us that the Jerusalem rulers took Jesus down from 'the tree' and laid him in a tomb. Some scholars maintain that this is a more authentic tradition than the Joseph of Arimathaea story." Acts evidently can serve to break the connection which the two traditions behind the four Gospels make between Joseph and the burial following the removal of Jesus from the cross. It is not as if scripturally Joseph alone held the centre of the scene: it is as though in the period before the Gospels another tradition were in vogue, a tradition implying the complete non-existence of any Joseph and contradicting the inevitability of him which one may plead from the Gospels. But Brown attempts some sort of getting round the implication and contradiction. Immediately after citing Acts, he says: "However, the Joseph story does make it clear that he was one of the Jews (a member of the Sanhedrin). Thus the information could be reconciled if the Gospel accounts did not also present Joseph as a disciple of Jesus. We may speculate that he became a disciple later, and the introduction of his discipleship into the burial story was anachronistic retrojection. At the time of Jesus's death Joseph was probably no more than what Mark 15:43 makes him: 'a respected member of the council who also looked for the kingdom of God,' in short, a God-fearing man who extended to Jesus the burial that the Law commanded." We may appreciate Brown's honesty here, for he balances pros and cons and the conclusion has a tone of tentativeness. But it is easy to indicate the essential fallacy of the argument.
The full text within which 13:29 occurs reads in The Jerusalem Bible:212 "What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every sabbath. Though they found nothing to justify his death, they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out everything that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb" (13:27-29). The crucial words are: "the people of Jerusalem and their rulers" - in
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verse 27. All the "they"s in the subsequent verses stand for this double group. Brown errs by speaking of "the Jerusalem rulers" in verse 29 and then seeking to include Joseph among them. The Authorised Version also leaves us in no doubt that Acts mentions the common people over and above those in power. Its phrase is: "... they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers." The taking down of Jesus from "the tree" and burying him in a tomb represented a collective will. Joseph has no prominence here and the collective will is the opposite of friendly to Jesus: not the slightest shade of Joseph's pro-Jesus feeling is felt in it. We must fade him out totally from the statement in Acts. The picture is of Jesus' enemies treating him after his death as the criminal they had branded him to be before it. So his burial in a tomb must signify the fate of the crucified malefactor: the accursed corpse was dumped into a common burial place in which it could not be marked apart by an identifiable sepulchre.
We have precisely the situation evoked by Galatians 3:13 echoing Deuteronomy 21:23. And most curiously, Acts 13:29 is within an oration put into Paul's mouth at the city of Antioch in the province of Pisidia. The scholars who prefer the tradition of this verse of Acts to that of the Joseph of Arimathaea story are on the right tack.
From their coign of vantage every item in the situation should acquire clarity. It is the lack of knowledge as to where Jesus' body could have been buried that would give a hold to some Corinthians' belief either in his having been exalted physically from the cross into heaven like Moses, Elijah and Enoch under other circumstances or else in the heavenly Christ who made Jesus his medium, ascending to his home after the latter's death. The same lack would incapacitate Paul from opposing definitely these Corinthians with his own creed that Jesus had undergone a real death from which he rose and that the Resurrection must not be understood in a sense inapplicable to the ordinary Christian at the end of time. Naturally he was handicapped; for, while the appearances proved Jesus still existing and having been in communication
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with some persons, his rising from the dead - as if there were continuity between his corpse and the witnessed living form - could be just an inference, unless the site of burial, the specific tomb, was not only identifiable but also discovered to be empty, as said in the Gospel account.
Before we move on, we may close the subject in hand by putting the names "Joseph" and "Arimathaea" against a background of their past history and realising how utterly symbolic they are. Information gleaned from J. Duncan and M. Derrett,213 whose general thesis has no affinity with ours, can show them to be deliberate inventions by a subtle mind popularising them in the immediate pre-Gospel period. "Joseph" appropriately recalls the Patriarch Joseph who "was extremely interested in burials (Genesis 50:14)" and whose "own burial was a known item on the agenda at the First Redemption, viz. from Egypt (Genesis 50:25-26), Exodus 13:19; Joshua 24:32; Sirach 49:15; Hebrews 11:22; Acts 7:15-16". "Arimathaea... a known village in Judaea, otherwise called Armatha, Ramatha" brings up "a point visible to Eusebius but forgotten since. The place which is repeatedly spelled Armathaim in the LXX (1 Samuel 1:1 etc.) is the home of Elkanah ('God has possessed'), father of the divinely-promised (and the pious populace would believe, divinely-begotten) prophet of the Kingdom, Samuel. Armathaim/Ramathaim was the birth-place, residence, and burial-place of Samuel, therefore the place of pilgrimage to Samuel's tomb. Eusebius says (Onom. 225, llff.), 'thence came Joseph said in the gospels to be from Aramath-aea'. It was highly proper that a man from thence should play kinsman to the prophet of the New Kingdom, the New Covenant, who also was born, as Luke made clear, by the promise of God (the Magnificat, Luke l:46ff., should be compared with 1 Samuel 1-2)." Of course, it is possible to hold God to have so arranged affairs that a personal name packed with burial-associations in the tale of the Old Covenant should come again at the right time and a place-name should recur aptly, evocative of a locality where was buried a God-promised prophet whose mother Hannah sang in connection
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with his birth a canticle strikingly comparable - as all Biblical scholars know - with the one sung by Mary before Jesus the giver of the New Covenant was born.214 But it is far more credible as well as natural to see in "Joseph of Arimathaea" an ingenious play of religious symbolism, a fitting fabrication in a garb of f actuality.
Indeed, the illusoriness of this figure and of all his actions is suggested most forcibly by what Paul has to say on the burial or the tomb of Jesus. To receive best the impact of his testimony we must clear our minds of the single rock-hewn tomb associated with Joseph's activity. The word "tomb" is not necessarily linked with rock. It primarily means: "Hole (made in earth or rock to receive dead (esp. human) body, grave."215 Only secondarily its meaning is: "subterranean or other vault for the dead; sepulchral monument."216 And we cannot help attending to the simple sense of "grave" or "hole (made) in earth" when we hear Paul: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake, since scripture says: Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree" (Galatians 3:11).217 Every exegete knows that the allusion is to Deuteronomy 21:23. The Jerusalem Bible too knows this but it tries to minimise the relevance by its annotation:218 "To free the human race from the curse of God laid on it for defying the law, Christ made himself answerable for the curse, cf. Rm 8:3+; 2 Co 5:21+; Col 2:14. The somewhat remote analogy between the crucified Christ and the criminal of Dt 21:23 is used merely to illustrate this doctrine." The Deuteronomy verses read: "If a man guilty of a capital offence is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body must not remain on the tree overnight; you must bury him the same day, for one who has been hanged is accursed of God, and you must not defile the land that Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance."219 The full significance of Paul's "analogy" emerges from two statements by Catholic exegetes.
Before mentioning that "all four evangelists relate that Pilate delivered the body [of Jesus] at the petition of Joseph of Arimathaea", J. L. McKenzie220 gives the information: "Jewish
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law and custom prescribed that the bodies of criminals should be thrown into a common pit." Brown,221 prior to his championship of the notion that Joseph of Arimathaea was a real person in the post-crucifixion annals of the Gospels, states: "Was Jesus buried in a recognizable tomb that could be visited by the women two days later? Many have pointed out that the normal procedure following the execution of an accursed criminal (Deut 21:23; Ga 3:13) would have been to dump the corpse into a common burial place reserved for malefactors. A few adventurous scholars have suggested that the very idea that the body of Jesus could not be found sprang from the impossibility of correctly identifying his body in such a common burial ground."
We have, in what Brown's highly unorthodox scholars think, the clue (1) to the limited extent to which Paul knows about Jesus' burial or entombment and (2) to his inability to drive home to the non-conformist Corinthians his own conviction about the rising of the buried Jesus and (3) to the growth of the whole later myth of the non-discovery of Jesus' body in the imagined single rock-hewn tomb used by the apocryphal Joseph of Arimathaea.
It is in the fitness of things that one who dies like "an accursed criminal" on taking up the responsibility for human sin and paying in full the price demanded by divine justice should undergo for that sin the full infamy consequent on its condemnation: an unrecognisable grave in which his body is lost among his dishonoured likes. Would it not be an anticlimax to the horror if he who acts the part of an accursed criminal gets a fine sepulchre and is anointed with spices which in one Gospel, as Brown222 notes, involve myrrh and aloes to the "enormous amount" of "one hundred pounds" (John 19:39-40)?
Paul's other allusions to Jesus' vicarious sacrifice than in Galatians 3:13 are also best understood in the light of the idea of an utter dishonour. There is 2 Corinthians 5:21: "For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God."223 The Jerusalem Bible224
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comments: "By a kind of legal fiction God identified Jesus with sin so that he might bear the curse incurred by sin, Ga 3:13; Rm 8:3." Surely a curse on whoever is hanged on a tree cannot spare its victim, sinless though he be in nature, any part of the disgrace due as penalty. Romans 8:13 says: "God dealt with sin by sending his own Son in a body as physical as any sinful body, and in that body God condemned sin."225 Will the condemnation be genuine if it comes short of its last infamous phase as with all other malefactors? The sacrifice attributed to Jesus would be mocked by our conjuring up an Arimathaean Joseph and making him give Jesus a most decent burial quite out of accord with the adopted role of a crucified villain.
This role in its entire implication of disrepute is driven home to us by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:22-23: "And so, while the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness.. ."226 The reference is specifically to what both the Jews and the pagans (the non-Jews as a group, the Gentiles, the Graeco-Roman world in which Paul preached) would think of a proclaimed Saviour nailed to the cross. William Barclay227 reminds us of the Graeco-Roman world's view of crucifixion: "The most cruel and the vilest punishment, Cicero called it (Verrines 5.66); the ultimate penalty, Apullius called it (The Golden Ass 10); the penalty of slaves it was commonly called (Tacitus, Histories 4.11; Juvenal 6.218; Horace, Satires, 1.3.8). It was a punishment which could only be inflicted on slaves and non-citizens." The pagans would see nothing save "madness" in Paul's preaching about a God-man hung on a cross, knowing as they did the full gamut of disgrace which such a supposed being would go through, up to the end when he would be thrown into a nameless general grave for felons. To them Paul's message would want wholly in wisdom, in the philosophical sense, because crucifixion was an unmitigated horror visited on the lowest of the low. To the Jews, with their expectation of God's anointed one coming in power to save his compatriots, a Gospel about a liberating messenger
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from the Most High who would hang "on a tree" instead of performing miracles of conquest would never be acceptable: a Messiah of this kind would be an insuperable obstacle to their faith, a stumbling-block (skandalon in Paul's Greek original) that would be absolute. As Ruef228 points out, "the inability of the Jews to accept a crucified Messiah found substantiation in their scriptures" - namely, in "Deuteronomy 21:22f", as Ruef's footnote to "scriptures" indicates. Paul's statement on the Jewish reaction would miss its precise mark if there was any relieving of the accursedness, if the denouement of the punitive drama was robbed of its identity-effacing starkness by the gift of an honourable burial from a suddenly intervening Jew of some status in Jerusalem.
How impossible such a burial and how apocryphal such a Jew would be in Paul's thought is proved also by the phraseology of the opening half of the famous hymn in Philippians 2:6-11 whose first lines as well as the tenth-to-thirteenth we have already quoted:
"His state was divine,
to his equality with God
but emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave,
and became as men are;
and being as all men are,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross."229
Keeping before us the word "slave" and the phrase "death on a cross" we cannot help remembering that crucifixion was commonly called by Tacitus, Juvenal and Horace "the penalty of slaves". How could one who would assume the condition of a slave as the utter opposite of his equality with God be conceived by Paul as escaping a slave's fate after being crucified? All the less, when Jesus was described as not only becoming
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mere man but being more humble than any other human creature, would Paul intend to suggest any diminution of the sheer acme of a shameful end. The idea of so low a station voluntarily adopted in self-sacrifice would be contradicted and nullified by making room for any saving feature as the finale to the extreme humiliation, the unrelieved servile destiny affirmed.
A saving feature would fly in the face also of Paul's pointers to an imitatio Christi in his semi-mystical references to the Christian experience of baptism. In the two quotations we have made (Romans 6:3 and Colossians 2:12) Paul's disciples are said to symbolically share Jesus' self-sacrifice, his sounding of the depths of humiliation and of accursed punishment before participating in his victory of Resurrection. When they are submerged in water they inwardly enter into his death and burial and when they rise out of it they in the same psychological manner enter his new bodily life. Would it not be a jolt to the salvific vision of the ceremonial concerned if the inner resurrection ensued on a symbolic fall into a death ignominious to the limit with yet an honourable burial imaged, an entombment like any other as though the extinction of life were in the normal course of things? Surely the sense of an entombment tarred with the same brush of disgrace is urged upon the disciples in the ritual of baptism? The setting of the psychological exaltation would be vitiated by the suggestion of a peaceful or, as in John, a solemn burial out of keeping with the horrific self-abnegation of a crucified life. The entombment imitated is meant to be as much of a trauma as the representative dying. Every man dies and gets buried: that is not what Paul wants the Christian to undergo imaginatively in the baptismal act. The mental dying and the mental getting buried have both to be of the same abnormal kind. To make the one a terrible experience to be matched in a symbolic way and want the other to be inwardly recreated as what would happen to any reputable citizen: this is indeed far from Paul's intention when he inspires his followers to realise the semi-mystical character of baptism.
On every front Paul renders incongruous and superfluous
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the four Gospels' Joseph of Arimathaea as well as the tomb they associate with him.
(c) Was Jesus' Tomb Known?
Perhaps some defender of Brown will say: "When the four Evangelists told us of an individual and distinct tomb they must have had their readers in mind and would not have referred to something the readers would be unable to verify. There must have been such a tomb in their own times or else they would at once be proved liars." To answer this challenge let us revert to what the Evangelists actually have to tell us. Mark, the earliest who wrote in the late 60s, speaks only of Joseph laying Jesus' body "in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock" (15:46).230 Matthew, writing in the 80s, makes Joseph put the body "in his own new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock" (27-.60).231 In Luke, again in the 80s, we have the dead Jesus put by Joseph "in a tomb which was hewn in stone in which no one had yet been laid" (23:53).232 It should be clear from these accounts that, though the tomb shows out as individual and distinct, nothing is said about its location. .There is no hint that, as we might suppose, it was anywhere close to the place of the crucifixion. Indeed, if Matthew is to be believed and if it was a rock-tomb originally meant by a respectable citizen like Joseph of Arimathaea for himself, it could never have been in the proximity of a place where, as Barclay notes, "slaves and non-citizens" suffered the vilest kind of punishment. None of the three Evangelists affords his readers the slightest handle to help them verify his information - and the information itself in its Matthean most elaborate form is the most distracting of all.
Only when we come to John, a writer in the 90s, over 60 years after the crucifixion which The Jerusalem Bible233 dates to A.D. 30, do we get a bit of would-be precise indication of Jesus' last resting-ground: "At the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in this garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been buried. Since it was the Jewish
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Day of Preparation and the tomb was near at hand, they laid Jesus there" (19:41-42).234 But the questions immediately arise: "How did a ready-made fresh tomb happen to be so close, and by what right could Joseph utilise it for one who had been condemned as a criminal, and if the garden is not said to belong to him how could he enter it for his own purposes?" There seems to be some arbitrary yarn-spinning here, a convenient imaginative looseness.
Moreover, we must not forget Brown's warning235 to us to be wary about "John's historical exactitude" here "because the main purpose of his burial narrative is symbolic". Apropos of the hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes (John 19:39-40) brought by Joseph and Nicodemus to prepare Jesus' body for burial, Brown236 points out: "the implausibly large outlay of spices may be meant to suggest that Jesus received a royal burial, thus continuing the theme of Jesus' kingship that is very strong in the Johannine Passion Narrative..." This theme which leads to extreme exaggeration in regard to the matter of anointing which is common to all the Gospels is likely to add the garden to the common matter of the new unused tomb. Indeed an exaggerative touch is this, for the word "garden" links up with two suggestions. First, there is the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise. John Marsh237 has caught the connection: "Where the Lord dies, is buried and is to rise is the new Paradise, the true 'garden of Eden' [i.e. delight]." The sense of Paradise is implicit in the very word "garden": "Paradise," says G. B. Caird,238 "is a Persian word meaning park or garden, which was taken over, first into Greek, then into Hebrew." The second suggestion comes out with A. E. Harvey's remark:239 "Paradise was originally the sumptuous garden of a Persian monarch." Derrett,240 therefore, is right in observing: "Burial in a garden suggests the burial of a King..." John's garden situating a tomb seems a purely symbolic invention matching the gratuitous symbolism of the massive amount to which the myrrh and aloes are expanded. Historicity has little room in John's burial narrative.
Even apart from this consideration, a major bar to verifying
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the account of any of the four Evangelists and not only John's exists in archaeology and history. We may press into service the archaeologist-historian W.F.Albright:241
"After years of increasing restiveness [under Roman rule] on the part of the Jewish population of Palestine, marked by frequent riots and harsh repression, the First Revolt broke out in A.D. 66, and lasted for four years. During this time the Jews of Galilee and Jerusalem suffered most, since the two chief centres of rebellion were located there. Most of the Jewish population which escaped death was sold into slavery. The completeness of this catastrophe is illustrated by the fact that not a single synagogue of the early Roman period has yet been discovered in any part of Palestine— It has sometimes been supposed that the Jews returned to Jerusalem and continued to maintain some sort of communal life there. Archaeological evidence is wholly against this view....
"The Christians suffered even more than the rest of the Jewish population, since they were treated as Jews by their pagan neighbours and were hated as pacifists and defeatists, as well as heretics, by their own people. In one of the bitter outbreaks of anti-Christian feeling which flared up during the years immediately preceding the First Revolt, James, brother of Jesus and head of the Christian community in Jerusalem, was killed. It is highly probable that most of the Christians in Jerusalem and the larger towns of Galilee, where nationalist feeling ran highest, escaped from their homes before the beginning of the First Revolt. Later Christian tradition recalled that the Christian remnant had fled from Jerusalem to Pella before the last Roman invasion of Judaea."
Albright's picture signifies that even before Mark's time -the late 60s - there were hardly any Christians left in Jerusalem to test any account of Jesus' burial. It is most unlikely too that the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke penetrated a Jerusalem in ruins and practically desolate of Christianity after the First Revolt. The case for John's Gospel of the 90s falling into Christian hands in Jerusalem for verification is still more forlorn.
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As time went on, the Roman grip squeezing out both Judaism and Christianity grew ever tighter. Albright242 refers to excavations "at Bittir, the site of the last stand of Bar Kokhba, leader of the Second Jewish Revolt about A.D. 135". In the wake of this Revolt Emperor Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) took drastic steps. Albright continues: "The Roman emperor Hadrian determined to do away with political Judaism completely; one of his first steps was to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman colony, under the name Aelia Capitolina. No Jews were allowed to settle in Aelia...." Albright adds: "On the site of the [long-destroyed Jewish] Temple was a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, patron of the city; north-west of it was a temple of Venus, later replaced by the Basilica of the Anastasis (Holy Sepulchre). No trace of these two temples have been discovered; they must have been thoroughly destroyed by the Christians."
Mention of the Basilica of the Anastasis brings us to certain significant facts noted by the Encyclopaedia Britannica.243 It is the Church built by the first Christian Roman emperor, Con-stantine, in the northwest quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem in about A.D. 336. "The site has been continuously recognized since the 4th century as the place where Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the dead." As John 19:41-42 puts the tomb "close to the place of Crucifixion... the church was planned to enclose the site of both cross and tomb". "Whether it is the actual place has been hotly debated. It cannot be determined that Christians during the first three centuries could or did preserve an authentic tradition as to where these events occurred." The Encyclopaedia recalls the flight of Christians to Pella from Roman Jerusalem and, dating it before the First Revolt (A.D. 66-70), observes: "wars, destruction, and confusion during the following centuries possibly prevented preservation of exact information." This means that from the time of the First Revolt right up to the first quarter of the fourth century there was no claim to knowledge of the place where Jesus had been buried. Even those who fled to Pella transmitted nothing. Suddenly, when Constantine became Christian
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as well as emperor, Christians came to believe that the "Holy Sepulchre" lay beneath Hadrian's temple of Venus. They razed the temple and with Constantine's patronage erected a church. Before this church was conceived nobody knew how to substantiate the burial-story in the four Gospels.
No doubt, the Encyclopaedia,244 while reporting the hot debate over the traditional site, ends on a somewhat constructive note on its behalf: "Another question involves the course of the second north wall of ancient Jerusalem. Some archaeological remains on the east and south sides of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are widely interpreted to mark the course of the second wall. If so, the site of the church lay just outside the city wall in the time of Jesus, and this could be the actual place of his Crucifixion and burial. No rival site is supported by any real evidence." True, there is no rivalry worth attention and the sole dispute over the plausibility of the present site is due, as Albright245 records, to "the problem of the Second Wall of Herod, which protected the exposed northern side of the city", a problem "still unsettled". Although Albright246 acknowledges that the majority of scholars trace this line of wall in a way which leaves the Holy Sepulchre outside it, he considers it yet possible "that Herodian stones built into the Hadrian line of wall, now represented by the northern wall of Turkish Jerusalem, belong to a system of fortifications which ran along the latter line and thus represents the Second Wall, leaving the Holy Sepulchre inside the wall".
If the traditional site was inside the wall, its authenticity would be ruled out on scriptural grounds themselves, leave aside general considerations of civic arrangement in antiquity for a place of execution. John 19:20 relates that "the place where Jesus was crucified was not far from the city walls".247 Mark 15:21 says that the soldiers "led him out to crucify him"248 and Matthew 27:32 has: "On their way out.. ."249 Most Roman Catholic scholars seem to be convinced that the site of the Holy Sepulchre answers to this desideratum, but they do not pronounce finally on the significance of the fact. In The Jerome Biblical Commentary Edmund J. Mally250 asserts: "...it
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is now definitely known to have been outside the so-called N[orth] wall of Jerusalem and the gate of Ephraim in the 1st century." His colleague John L. McKenzie251 is only a little less confident: "It is sufficiently well established that the site... lay outside the 1st-century wall of Jerusalem..." However, Brown,252 writing in the same volume, is non-committal: "The dispute about the site of the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus (who died and was buried outside the city... ) depends on the location of the [N] wall in Jesus' time." This appears to imply simply that the very question of the site's claim to be authentic would arise if archaeology decided against its being inside the wall concerned: there is no suggestion of favouring the claim as such. Mally makes a comparative estimate by saying that the outside location of which he is certain gives the traditional site "the best claim" - that is, as against whatever competitors it may have. McKenzie strikes the most judicious note when he submits that such a location "of itself does not authenticate the site". Only the statement of Robert North253 in The Jerome Biblical Commentary is somewhat unclear: "The very ancient tradition of localizing Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has shown itself strong enough to rise above its own legendary accretions and a concerted attack in the last century in favor of a less congested spot." One should perhaps understand here the Tightness of locating the place of crucifixion close to the grave and the greater chance of the Holy Sepulchre being where it is traditionally situated than any other site proposed.
But some drawbacks may be pointed out even in "the best claim". As the Encyclopaedia tells us, Constantine's Church was built on the basis of John 19:41-42 to cover both the site of the crucifixion and that of the burial, places which that text had declared to have been close to each other. But we learn from an earlier edition (1929) of this Encyclopaedia254 that what was found by Constantine's men beneath Hadrian's temple of Aphrodite was a rock-hewn Jewish tomb, for we are told: "The rock around was cut away the tomb chamber was isolated and a circular building - the Anastasius - was erected around
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it." Where in John is there any pointer to a rock-hewn tomb? His "tomb" for Jesus is said to stand in a garden. We have no suggestion of a hillside in whose rock-face a tomb could be excavated. An entirely different environment is presented. After John's narrative of how Mary of Magdala discovered the empty tomb and then saw the resurrected Jesus standing near her though she did not recognise him, we read: "Jesus said, 'Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?' Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, 'Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him'" (20:15).255 The implication of a gardener in John proves that he intended a private place with no connection with any rock-face to be hewn.
A clear sidelight on this point is cast when Brown256 mentions the "earliest Jewish apologetics against the resurrection": "they explain that the body was taken by the disciples or someone else. For instance, Tertullian, De Spectaculis xxx (PI 1:662A) gives us the Jewish legend of the role of the gardener (see John 20:15): Jesus was buried in a vegetable garden, and the gardener removed the body because he did not want crowds coming to visit the tomb and trampling his cabbages."
Thus the Johannine foundation sought for the traditional site is not really available. And if this site is to be preferred to any other the search for Jesus' sepulchre appears to be futile.
Nor is the futility all we can underline. We must emphasise that the very idea of Jesus' sepulchre can be mooted on the assumption that Jesus did not go to the whole shameful length of an accursed malefactor's death, ternunating, as required by a genuine divine sacrifice, in being flung into an anonymous hole in a common burial ground. Such an assumption, which runs counter to all that Paul has to proclaim, can be supported solely if the readers of the four Evangelists could be in a position to test the accounts offered them. Under the historical as well as the literary circumstances we have found it impossible for them to carry out any test. Archaeologically too the test is. not feasible. So nothing renders likely in the least the alleged service of Joseph of Arimathaea.
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To impute to Paul any inkling of a discovered empty tomb is illogical on yet another ground than the ones we have already elucidated. For, the Gospel-story is connected inseparably not simply with a single or plural feminine presence but as well with the appearance of the dead Jesus to this presence. Matthew writes that after the Sabbath, and towards dawn on the first day of the week, "Mary of Magdala and the other Mary" went to visit the sepulchre and, in the wake of some sensational phenomena including the descent of "the angel of the Lord" from heaven, were told by the angel that Jesus had risen: then, as the women ran quickly away from the tomb to tell the news to the disciples, "there, coming to meet them was Jesus..." (28:1-9).0257 John recounts that Mary Magdalene came upon the empty tomb, ran back to announce the emptiness to two disciples, returned with them and, while remaining there after they had gone, met the resurrected Jesus (20:1-3,11-16).258 Thus Matthew and John, sharing with Mark and Luke the empty-tomb report, make either a pair of women or just one woman the first to witness the appearance. Paul not only has no hint of the finding of the empty tomb: he also grants us no glimpse of a feminine witness, leave aside giving it primacy instead of to Cephas (Peter).
Anderson259 notes: "The apostolic sermons preserved in Acts do not mention the testimony of the women at the sepulchre, and in this respect accord with Paul's summary of the 'received' tradition." He adds that though mention is made of Jesus' burial, there is no reference to any failure to find his corpse in the tomb. To Anderson the situation is thus because the Apostles in Acts placed their main stress upon having "seen" the risen Jesus and not upon any detailed circumstances before their seeing. Still, it looks significant that Acts, which aims at conjuring up the time of Paul and Peter, should omit just what Paul omits, and in one verse make a specific reference which, juxtaposed with a Gospel-item, would seem pointedly to contradict the latter. Acts 13:31 says: "... for many days he appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem; and it is these same companions
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of his who are now his witnesses before our people." 260 The witnesses are the Apostles, but in the Gospels of Mark (15:40-41; 16:1), Matthew (27:55-56; 28:1) and Luke (23:55; 24:1) the women who find the tomb empty are said to have come with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, and Matthew (28:9) depicts two of them as the first witnesses of his appearance. Acts, equating with the Apostolic witnesses those who came with Jesus to Jerusalem from Galilee, explicitly excludes the possibility of these two women having been Jesus' "companions" and of subsequently testifying to his appearance. Acts seems to be on Paul's side with both particularity and emphasis. And again it is interesting to realise that the verse we have quoted is ascribed by Acts to the speech of Paul himself at Antioch in Pisidia.
Brown261 regards Paul's omission of Mary Magdalene and other women in his Corinthian list as not necessarily implying that the tradition of the first appearance to them "was not historical or was a late development, as some scholars would argue. The claim that the risen Jesus appeared first to Cephas means that among those who would testify publicly Peter was the first to see Jesus. It would not exclude an earlier appearance to Magdalene". This is an odd argument coming from Brown. Let us see why.
As we have stated, the appearance to Magdalene and other women is inseverably linked with the theme of the empty tomb. Paul could be said not necessarily to exclude this appearance provided we could trace in him that theme at least by implication. Ramsey, as we saw, reads this theme as implied. Brown is more cautious. At one place he262 notices that "since the empty tomb story became the setting and vehicle of the kerygmatic formula 'Jesus was raised' it is not unlikely that the Pauline dating 'on the third day' reflects the events surrounding the empty tomb". But Brown263 is not backward in informing us of "the standard objection to this proposal" - namely, that in the NT "the empty tomb story itself does not speak of the third day but of the first day of the week [Mark 16:2; Matthew 28:1; Luke 24:1; John 20:1]". Elsewhere
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he264 considers whether the early four-clause formula - dealing with Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, appearance - in Paul's writing may be taken as "the first recorded reference to the empty tomb in Jerusalem". His judgment is: "to read a hint of the empty tomb in the reference to Jesus' burial goes beyond the evidence, for the formula's sequence... is meant primarily to bring out an element of continuity. The Jesus who died and was buried is the same Jesus who was raised and appeared. This continuity... is an important element in the idea of bodily resurrection, but it tells us nothing about an empty tomb." Brown's footnote 142 on the same theme carefully poses various possibilities. All he can say on his own is: "I find ample evidence for Paul's believing that Jesus' body had been raised from the tomb so that he has become the firstborn of the dead (Romans 8:29; Corinthians 15:23)... but I think the evidence for an implicit Pauline reference to the finding of an empty tomb in Jerusalem is more speculative."
All this renders also highly speculative Brown's own disposition towards conceiving an appearance to Magdalene and other women before the one to Peter. The weight of the evidence from Paul goes against such an appearance. The plea that Peter is ranked first because he was one of those who would testify publicly, whereas Magdalene and other women had no public status in ancient Jewry or in the Christian congregation, is quite unconvincing. Paul was speaking historically and without special stress on apostolic position: surely the "more than five hundred brothers" could claim no apostleship: they were ordinary Christians and are listed simply in the interests of history, interests which could definitely make room for Magdalene and her like.
Although in general Paul put woman below man's level and imposed some socio-religious constraints on her, his attitude to her in detail is fairly balanced: "[Man] is the image of God and reflects God's glory; but woman is the reflection of man's glory. For man did not come from woman; no, woman came from man [Genesis 2:21-23]; and man was not created for the sake of woman, but woman was created for the sake
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of man.... However, though woman cannot do without man, neither can man do without woman, in the Lord; woman may come from man, but man is born of woman - both come from God" (1 Corinthians 11:7-9, 11-12).265 Such an attitude cannot render Paul anti-feminist in regard to bearing witness to Jesus' appearances.
What is more meaningful, Paul's personal relationships never showed any invidious distinctions. Three times he mentions Prisca, the wife of Aquila. In 1 Corinthians 16:19 he says: "Aquila and Prisca, with the church that meets at their house, send you their warmest wishes, in the Lord."266 Towards the end of Romans he writes: "My greetings to Prisca and Aquila, my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, who risked death to save my life: I am not the only one to owe them a debt of gratitude, all the churches among the pagans do as well" (16:3-4).267 Once more, in 2 Timothy 4:19 we find: "Greetings to Prisca and Aquila.. ."268 It may be significant that in two out of the three references to husband and wife, the wife is twice put first as though she were receiving more respect as a Church-member than her husband. Romans, before the passage on the couple, brings in a high tribute to another woman: "\ commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae. Give her, in union with the Lord, a welcome worthy of saints, and help her with anything she needs: she has looked after a great many people, myself included" (16-.1-2).269 The pair Evodia and Syntyche figure in Philippians (4:1) and about them Paul goes on to say: "These women were a help to me when I was fighting to defend the Good News - and so at the same time were Clement and the others who worked with me. Their names were written in the book of life" (4:3).270 For perhaps the most impressive mention of a woman we have to hark back to Romans. On the surface no woman seems involved. The Jerusalem Bible reads: "...those outstanding apostles Andronicus and Junias..."271 A note272 ascribing a "wide sense (Romans 1:1+2)" to the word "apostles" cites "Julias" as a variant of "Junias". However, The Jerome Biblical Commentary273 remarks: "Junias is a man's name, which
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makes the latter part of the verse easily understandable. But [the Greek] Iounion could also be translated Junia, a woman's name, which some ancient commentators took as the name of Andronicus's wife." Although we are told further that most modern commentators understand it as a man's name, the recent research of B. Brooten274 tends to confirm the opinion of Chrysostom and other "ancient commentators" that Paul is referring to the wife of Andronicus and a woman apostle.
Paul's appreciation of individual women is clear. In some verses of 1 Corinthians, while pointing out his own renunciation of common rights and practices in spite of his being as much an apostle as any other, he indicates a state of affairs recognised by him, which associates women with the very core, the apostolic missionary nucleus, of Christian activity. He adverts to "the right to take a Christian woman round with us, like all the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas (9:5)".275 Surely, Paul could never have hesitated to associate with witnesses of Jesus' appearances Magdalene and others of her sex who were close to Jesus and devoted to him. Finally, we may attend to some observations of John Marsh. Appreciating that in the Gospel of John a woman -Mary Magdalene - is made by Jesus the first to discover the empty tomb and be the recipient of an appearance, Marsh276 says that this was "entirely consistent with the lowliness and humility of the [Church's] Lord, and with the profound insight e.g. of Paul who observed that 'not many wise, not many powerful, not many of noble birth' were among those called by God into the Church". As actually Paul's writings have no trace of the two achievements granted to Magdalene, the quotation from him shows that he would have been the last ever to exclude them if they had been known to him as facts. Besides, the quotation is verses 1:27-28 of 1 Corinthians, the very Epistle in which he lists the witnesses. His omission of women from his list proves the story about them in the Gospels a foundationless legend.
Even on purely technical grounds it is doubtful whether Brown's plea - that Mary Magdalene and other women are
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passed over by Paul because they could not testify publicly -can hold. John Wenham277 has some information worth pondering: "I am indebted to the Rev. R. T. Beckwith for the following note: 'Siphre Deuteronomy 190 is the oldest work which disqualifies women from acting as witnesses, and it does so on the rather curious grounds that witnesses are referred to in the Old Testament in the masculine. However, the rabbinical lists of persons disqualified to give testimony do not ' normally include women, and it is clear from three passages in the Mishnah (Yebamoth 16:7; Ketuboth 2:5; Eduyoth 3:6) that women were allowed to give evidence on matters within their knowledge if there was no male witness available. Applying this to the resurrection appearances, it would mean that Mary Magdalene was on rabbinical principles entitled to give witness to an appearance of Christ which was made only to her or to her and other women, but it is also intelligible that in listing numbers of resurrection appearances Paul should have concentrated on those made to men. This does not, of course, mean that he was himself unwilling to accept the witness of women in such cases, but that some of his readers might have been.' " The last part of the statement is quite fanciful -Beckwith's convenient supposition under the conviction that Mary and other women did find an empty tomb and that Paul was aware of their evidence as well as of Mary's experience. In the purely legal context invoked by Brown, Beckwith's well-supported judgment stands - that Magdalene and her companions, under the circumstances in which they figured, were not debarred from testifying publicly. All excuses for Paul's omission as if he knowingly made it are invalid and the story about the women remains a legend without a foundation.
When the legend took shape and got publicised, the Jews retorted that the alleged empty tomb was to be explained by supposing the disciples to have stolen the body. In order to counteract such an explanation, Matthew adopts rather devious tactics. Brown278 points them out: "It is noteworthy that Matthew who seemingly is dependent on Mark as regards
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the account of the empty tomb, changes drastically the stated purpose for the women's visit: they were going 'to see the sepulchre,' not to anoint the body [as in Mark]. However, it is dubious that Matthew has corrected Mark on the basis of historical information. Matthew was trying to make the story of the visit to the tomb fit plausibly with the information that he (and he alone) recounted at the end of the burial scene, namely, that Pilate permitted the Jewish authorities to seal the tomb and to mount a guard over it. Obviously it would have been inconsistent for Matthew to report that the women had set out with the hope of entering the tomb and having access to Jesus' corpse." Footnoting the mention of the "guard", Brown279 says: "Most scholars regard the story of the guard as a Christian apologetic response to the contention that the body had been stolen. Benoit [a Roman Catholic exegete], p. 226 [of The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969)], lists three serious objections against its historicity."
In fact, not only Matthew but all the Evangelists are found exposed to the charge of being non-historical in their empty-tomb stories, beginning with Mark. Brown280 looks upon the "angel" in Mark, directing through the women a message to the disciples, as a "manufactured" article from a pre-Mark time in consonance with "the ancient Semitic mind", and adds:281 "If we pay attention to the freedom with which the evangelists handled the details of the angelic appearance at the empty tomb (especially as to the number and position of the angels) we recognize their awareness that here they were not dealing with controllable historical facts but with imaginative descriptions." In note 208, p. 123, to this observation, Brown quotes from Benoit's book: "[Mark] introduces an angel - a classical technique in the Bible - and puts the Easter Kerygma into his mouth" (p. 260) - "When an author wanted to express a message from God,... it was an accepted custom to put it in the mouth of an angel" (p. 261).
Brown's and Benoit's open-mindedness, in spite of their belonging to a Church which has had a reputation for narrow
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orthodoxy, is indicative of the wind of liberalism that has blown through the Vatican from the period of Pope Pius XII.
Before we close the empty-tomb topic we may dwell a little on the strange shifts connected with the story. Drawing upon Brown282 we begin with the fact: "the verses that conclude the Gospel of Mark in most bibles (Mark 16:9-20, called the Marcan Appendix or the Longer Ending of Mark) were not the original ending of the Gospel but were added because of the abrupt termination in 16:8. (Scholars are divided on whether Mark originally terminated with 16:8 or whether there was a further narrative that was lost -I favour the former opinion.)" However, about the text up to 16:8 Brown283 tells us: "Mark mentions no appearance of Jesus, although 16:7 indicates that Peter and his disciples will see him in Galilee." Later he284 reflects on how "the empty tomb story would ultimately become a bridge between the Passion Narrative and the narratives of the appearance of the risen Jesus" - and continues: "To facilitate the relationship with the appended appearance narratives, the words of the interpreting angel(s) were expanded to include predictions or directives about future appearances. Mark's Gospel (if, as I suspect, there was no 'lost ending') represents a stage in the development of the empty tomb story where, as yet, no appearance narratives have been appended, even though the reader is presumed to know of the appearances." Here Brown subscribes to what would have been a heresy to the Old-time Catholic exegetes. His note 209 to the above passage runs: "There is a growing consensus among scholars that Mark 16:7 (see also 14:28) was a redactional addition to the story of the empty tomb, intended to leave open the possibility of combining the tradition of the empty tomb with the tradition of appearances." Mark 16:7 says: "But you must go and tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going before you to Galilee; it is there you will see him just as he told you.' "285 Mark 14:28 is the text of the telling by Jesus: "... after my resurrection I shall go before you to Galilee."286 Brown's explicit drift, along with the growing scholarly consensus, is that Mark originally had no reference to resurrectional appear-
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ances but acquired it through editorial interference.
Apropos of the Gospels, Brown287 assures us: "There is nothing in the Roman Catholic notion of biblical inspiration that would forbid the suggestion that those responsible for the resurrection narratives employed the technique of dramatization." Earlier, Brown,288 touching on the subject of the different reports given by the Gospels "of what happened at the empty tomb of Jesus, especially in the details of the angelic appearances", remarks: "In the past Catholic scholars have spent much energy trying to harmonize these diverse accounts, often with the supposition that they must preserve the historical accuracy of each. Today, we would be free to say that one or all the accounts have been influenced and shaped by popular imagination during the stage of oral transmission and also by the editorial goals of the sacred writer who used earlier traditions." As for the old notion of the Bible's inerrancy, the Second Vatican Council has laid down that even if the Gospel stories, whether of the empty tomb or of Jesus' infancy or of any other theme, "prove to be imaginative in whole or in part", we must work with one criterion, as Brown289 puts it: "from the overall import of these narratives what did God want taught through them for the sake of our salvation? That would be inerrant."
To those who do not belong to the Catholic Church, even this comparatively broad line of interpretation may look over-restrictive. In our present context such a line would rule that Jesus' body did disappear from his tomb and rise from the dead in a transfigured yet still physical form. Brown's quotation290 from Pope Paul VI has this very drift, for it says: "Jesus rose again in the same body he had taken from the Blessed Virgin, but in new conditions, vivified by a new and immortal animation, which imposes on Christ's flesh the laws and energies of the Spirit...."
Brown's own position is more or less akin to that of Pope Paul VI. While stating it, he291 distinguishes it from those in general vogue in the Christian world: "Many Christians today see only two possibilities: either one affirms a corporeal
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resurrection so physical that the risen Jesus was just as tangible as he was during his lifetime; or one denies the corporeal resurrection and reduces the appearances to an internal awareness of Jesus' spiritual victory. However, there is a middle ground, namely, a corporeal resurrection in which the risen body is transformed to the eschatological sphere no longer bound by space and time - a body that no longer has all the natural or physical characteristics that marked its temporal existence." Brown's middle ground stresses the Pope's "new conditions" rather than his "same body" which allows many if not all of the old "natural or physical characteristics". In fact, Brown's version reflects Paul's vision along with Paul's own presupposition of the continuity of the new with the old. We are Pauline too, yet with a difference.
9
Our Pauline Conclusions
Our investigation has demonstrated:
(1) Paul's account of the appearance of Jesus' "raised" body is both the earliest and the sole first-hand testimony, and therefore one that is eminently to be credited.
(2) According to Paul this body is wholly non-physical, totally free of "flesh and blood" and, if we are to be logical, it can have no physical continuity with Jesus' body during his life-time.
(3) Evidence for its marked semi-physicality from the Gospels and even from Acts cannot avail against Paul's contrary attestation.
(4) Paul's own belief that the very body Jesus had during his life-time was risen or was raised is founded on the teaching passed on to him by his apostolic colleagues, the main support of which is a trust in Old-Testament statements which were taken as genuine predictions of Jesus' life but which modern scholarship, as Brown shows, takes as historically inapplicable to that life.
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(5) It is clear that in Paul's period no evidence at all existed for Jesus' special burial or identifiable entombment, as his body had been disposed of in the general ground of interment of crucified criminals and so the Gospel stories about a Joseph of Arimathaea's work and about the empty tomb discovered by one woman or several and about Jesus' appearing to any of them at the site are imaginative dramatisations, as indeed in the critical eyes of modern Biblical scholarship, both Protestant and Catholic, they could very well be.
(6) There could have been no Resurrection in the true sense involving resuscitation but only a series of appearances after Jesus' death to certain people, including Paul, of an entirely spiritual form, a form whose nature, together with the nature of the experience by those people, has to be explicated.
1. Bernhard W. Anderson, Rediscovering the Bible (New York: A Haddon House Book, Association Press, 1951), p. 219.
2. Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973), p. 81.
3. Ibid., pp. 92-93.
4. The Jerusalem Bible (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), The New Testament: Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels, pp. 6-8.
5. The Virginal Conception..., p. 16.
6. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 27, fn. 5.
7. The Virginal Conception..., p. 16.
8. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 45.
9. Ibid., pp. 45-46, fn. 2.
10. J. Dougherty, Searching the Scriptures: A Popular Introduction to the Bible (New York: Image Books, 1963), p. 118.
11. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 46.
12. Ibid., p. 46, fn. 2 continued from p. 45.
13. Edited by Raymond E. Brown, S. S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S. J., Roland E. Murphy, O.Carm. (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India, St. Peter's Seminary, 1962, after the Original American Edition
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published by Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968), The New Testament, p. 65, col. 1.
14. Ibid., p. 64, col. 1.
15. 77k Virginal Conception..., pp. 97,99.
16. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 89.
17. Ibid., p. 63.
18. Ibid., p. 135.
19. Ibid.,p.90.
20. Ibid., pp. 189-90.
21. Ibid., p. 139.
22. Ibid., p. 134.
23. The Virginal Conception..., p. 89.
24. Ibid., p. 17, fn. 14.
25. Ibid., pp. 17-18.
26. Ibid., fn. 15.
27. Ibid., p. 19.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
30. Ibid., pp. 53-54.
31. Ibid., pp. 54-55.
32. 77k Birth of the Messiah, pp. 413,515.
33. 77k Virginal Conception..., p. 132.
34. Ibid., p. 66.
35. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 526.
36. Ibid., p. 340.
37. Ibid., p. 519.
38. Ibid., in. 5a.
39. Ibid., p. 519.
40. Ibid., p. 520.
41. Ibid.,p.340.
42. Ibid., p. 526.
43. Ibid., fn. 25.
44. Ibid., p. 526.
45. Michael Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ: A Study of the Event and Its Meaning for the Christian Faith (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1961), pp. 60-61.
46. "Aspects of New Testament Thought", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 794, col. 2.
47. "Wisdom", ibid., p. 563, col. 2.
48. The Virginal Conception..., p. 76, fn. 129.
49. Ibid., p. 80, fn. 135.
50. Ibid., p. 106, fn. 176.
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51. Ibid., pp. 99,101.
52. Ibid., pp. 92-93.
53. Raymond E. Brown, Jesus God and Man (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.; London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1978), p. 48.
54. The Virginal Conception..., p. 19.
55. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 307.
56. Ibid., p. 308.
57. Ibid., p. 342.
58. Ibid., p. 308.
59. Ibid., p. 309, cols. 1 & 2, note 1.
60. Ibid., p. 339.
61. Ibid., p. 309.
62. Ibid., col. 2, note o.
63. David Edwards, Jesus for Modern Man: An Introduction to the Gospels in Today's English Version (Glasgow: Collins, Fontana Books, 1975), p. 139.
64. 77k Virginal Conception..., p. 86, fn. 147.
65. Ibid., pp. 87-88.
66. Ibid., pp. 88-89.
67. "The Letter to the Galatians", 77k Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 239, col. 1.
68. Ibid., p. 349, col. 2.
69. Ibid., p. 374, col. 1.
70. Ibid., p. 423, col. 1.
71. Ibid.
72. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 150.
73. Ibid., p. 151, col. 1, note c.
74. Ibid., p. 309, col. 1, note 1.
75. "Sirach", 77k Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 546, col. 1.
76. Ibid., p. 547, col. 1.
77. The Jerusalem Bible, The Old Testament, p. 1058.
78. Ibid., The New Testament, p. 41, col. 2, note e.
79. Ibid., p. 374.
80. "Aspects of New Testament Thought", 77k Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 792, cols. 1 & 2.
81. Ibid., col. 1.
82. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 135.
83. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 146.
84. The Virginal Conception..., pp. 15-16.
85. Ibid., fn. 12.
86. Rediscovering the Bible, p. 220.
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87. The Virginal Conception..., p. 90, fn. 153.
88. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 322.
89. Ibid., p. 323.
90. The Virginal Conception..., p. 85.
91. The Birth of the Messiah, pp. 29-31.
92. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 339.
93. Ibid., p. 218.
94. The Virginal Conception..., p. 77, fn. 131.
95. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 136, fn. 12.
96. Ibid., p. 239.
97. Ibid., p. 30, fn. 15.
98. Searching the Scriptures..., p. 116.
99. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 65.
100. Ibid., p. 218.
101. The Virginal Conception..., p. 103.
102. Ibid., pp. 103-04.
103. Ibid., p. 102.
104. Ibid., pp. 102-103.
105. "Canonicity", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 528, col. 2.
106. "Aspects of New Testament Thought", Ibid., p. 795, col. 2.
107. Ibid., cols. 1 & 2.
108. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 203.
109. Ibid., p. 212.
110. Ibid., p. 334.
111. Ibid., p. 331.
112. "Pauline Theology", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 813, col. 2.
113. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 340.
114. Ibid., p. 341, col. 1, note k.
115. "The Letter to the Philippians", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 251, col. 2.
116. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 214.
117. Ibid, p. 244.
118. Ibid., p. 308.
119. Ibid., p. 214.
120. Ibid., p. 215.
121. Ibid., pp. 215-216.
122. Ibid., pp. 214-215.
123. Ibid., p. 239.
124. Ibid., p. 244.
125. Ibid., pp. 322-23.
126. Ibid., p. 344.
127. Ibid., p. 289.
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128. Ibid., p. 320.
129. Ibid., pp. 305-06.
130. Ibid., p. 233.
131. Ibid., p. 202.
132. Ibid., p. 89.
133. The Virginal Conception..., p. 98.
134. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 89, note c, col. 2.
135. The Resurrection of Christ..., p. 44.
136. Ibid., pp. 44-45.
137. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 307.
138. Ibid., col. 1, note a.
139. Ibid., col. 2, note c.
140. Ibid., col. 2, note e.
141. Ibid., p. 309, cols. 1 & 2, note 1.
142. Ibid., p. 231, col. 2, note z.
143. Ibid., p. 279, col. 2, note m.
144. Ibid., p. 365, col. 2, note d.
145. Ibid., p. 365.
146. Ibid., p. 276.
147. Ibid., p. 277, col. 1, note b.
148. Ibid., p. 332.
149. Ibid., p. 333, col. 1, note e.
150. Ibid., p. 308.
151. The Virginal Conception..., p. 87, fn. 147 continued from p. 86.
152. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 307.
153. The Virginal Conception..., p. 74.
154. Ibid., fn. 127.
155. Ronald Brownrigg, Who's Who in the New Testament (Nashville: Pillar Books, Abingden Press, 1977), p. 101.
156. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 233, col. 1, note j.
157. Paul's First Letter to Corinth, pp. xxi-xxiv.
158. The Virginal Conception..., pp. 75-76.
159. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 76.
160. Ibid., p. 108.
161. Ibid., p. 342.
162. Paul's First Letter to Corinth, p. 31.
163. Ibid., pp. 32,33.
164. Gunther Bornkamm, Paul, translated by D. M. G. Stalker from the German (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), p. 160.
165. The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 335, col. 2.
166. Ibid.
167. Ibid.
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168. Ibid.
169. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (London: Weidenfeld and Nicol-son, 1979), p. xvii.
170. "Apochrypha", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 545, cols. 1 & 2.
171. The Gnostic Gospels, p. 12.
172. Ibid.
173. Ibid., p. 15.
174. Ibid.
175. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 314.
176. Ibid., p. 267.
177. Ibid., p. 804, col. 2.
178. The Gnostic Gospels, p. 16.
179. Ibid.
180. Ibid., pp. 15-16.
181. "The First Letter to the Corinthians", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 274, col. 1.
182. Ibid.
183. Ibid., p. 273, col. 1.
184. Ibid., p. 274, col. 1.
185. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 307.
186. Ibid., p. 346.
187. Ibid., pp. 102,88,134,188.
188. The Virginal Conception..., p. 113.
189. Ibid., p. 115, fn. 190.
190. Ibid., p. 115.
191. Ibid., fn. 191.
192. Ibid., p. 116.
193. Ibid., p. 116, fn. 193.
194. Ibid., pp. 116-117.
195. Ibid., p. 116, fn. 194.
196. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 188.
197. 77k Virginal Conception..., p. 54.
198. 77k Birth of the Messiah, p. 448.
199. Ibid., p. 450.
200. The Gospel of St. Mark (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1972), p. 187 for the text and p. 193 for the commentary.
201. 77k Virginal Conception..., p. 113,fn. 188.
202. The Gospel of St. Mark, p. 434.
203. Ibid.
204. Ibid., p. 21.
205. Ibid., p. 435.
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206. Ibid., p. 432.
207. The Jerusalem Bible, Chronological Table, p. 467, col. 1.
208. C. Northcote Parkinson, East and West (London: John Murray, 1963), p. 119.
209. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 88.
210. Ibid., p. 87.
211. The Virginal Conception..., p. 114.
212. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 222.
213. J. Duncan M. Derrett, 77k Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event (Warwickshire: P. Drinkwater, 1982), pp. 53-54.
214. J. L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (Bangalore: The Asian Trading Corporation, 1984, with permission of Geoffrey Chapman, London), pp. 337, col. 2 and 536, col. 1.
215. 77k? Concise Oxford Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 1364, col. 2.
216. Ibid.
217. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 88.
218. Ibid., p. 325, col. 2, note e.
219. Ibid., The Old Testament, p. 244.
220. Dictionary of the Bible, p. 678, col. 1.
221. The Virginal Conception..., p. 113.
222. Ibid., p. 116.
223. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 314.
224. Ibid., p. 315, col. 2, note h.
225. Ibid., p. 278.
226. Ibid., p. 293.
227. William Barclay, The Plain Man looks at the Apostles' Creed (Glasgow: Collins,Fount Paperbacks, 1979), p. 96.
228. Paul's First Letter to Corinth, p. 13 and fn. 105.
229. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, pp. 339-40.
230. Ibid., p. 102.
231. Ibid., p. 88.
232. Ibid., p. 134.
233. Ibid., Chronological Table, p. 467, col. 2.
234. Ibid., The New Testament, p. 188.
235. The Virginal Conception..., p. 116.
236. Ibid., fn. 193.
237. The Gospel of St. John (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1971), p. 623.
238. The Gospel of St. Luke (Harmondsworth: The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, Penguin Books, 1975), p. 252.
239. The New English Bible Companion to the Gospels (Oxford-Cambridge: 1972), p. 295.
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240. The Anastasis..., p. 55.
241. The Archaeology of Palestine (Harmondsworth: A Pelican Book, 1961), pp. 240-41.
242. Ibid., p. 166.
243. Enc. Brit., Macropaedia, Vol. V, p. 110, cols. 1 & 2 (1977 Ed.).
244. Ibid., col. 2.
245. The Archaeology of Palestine, p. 154.
246. Ibid., pp. 154-55.
247. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 187.
248. Ibid., p. 87.
249. Ibid., p. 62.
250. "The Gospel according to Mark", 77k? Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 58, col. 1.
251. "The Gospel according to Matthew", Ibid., p. 112, cols. 1 & 2.
252. "Biblical Geography", Ibid., p. 648, col. 1.
253. "Biblical Archaeology", Ibid., p. 669, col. 2.
254. Enc. Brit, Macropaedia, Vol. 20, p. 337, col. 1.
255. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 189.
256. The Virginal Conception..., p. 122, fn. 204.
257. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 63.
258. Ibid., pp. 188,189.
259. Rediscovering the Bible, p. 221.
260. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, pp. 222-23.
261. The Virginal Conception..., p. 101, fn. 170.
262. Ibid., p. 124.
263. Ibid.
264. Ibid., pp. 83-84.
265. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 302.
266. Ibid., p. 310.
267. Ibid., p. 290.
268. Ibid., p. 367.
269. Ibid., p. 290.
270. Ibid., p. 342.
271. Ibid., p. 290.
272. Ibid., p. 291, col. 1, e.
273. "The Letter to the Romans", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 330, col. 2.
274. "Junia... Outstanding Among the Apostles", in Women Priests, ed. L. and A. Swidler (New York: 1977), pp. 141-44.
275. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 300.
276. The Gospel of St. John, p. 632.
277. John Wenham, Easter Enigma: Do the Resurrection Stories contra-
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dict one another? (Exeter: The Paternoster Press, 1984), pp. 150-51, Note 26.
278. The Virginal Conception..., pp. 115-16.
279. Ibid., p. 115.
280. Ibid., p. 122.
281. Ibid., pp. 122-23.
282. Ibid., pp. 97-98.
283. Ibid., p. 99.
284. Ibid., p. 123.
285. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, pp. 88-89.
286. Ibid., p. 85.
287. The Virginal Conception..., p. 89, fn. 151.
288. Ibid., p. 19.
289. Ibid., p. 20.
290. Ibid., p. 125, fn. 213.
291. Ibid., p. 85, fn. 145.
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The Nature of the Appearances and Some Clues
from Sri Aurobindo
At the very outset we must say that, judged from Paul's list of appearances, the so-called Resurrection was not a universal historical fact: the "risen" Jesus did not go about, open to the sight of all men. Although to have appeared to "over five hundred brothers" renders him fairly public, we cannot conclude that people outside this group could have seen him just as well. Some psychological "mirroring" condition was a prerequisite. Yet to posit a believer's frame of mind at a certain pitch is not sufficient to account for the limited number or rather occasions of appearances. There must have been many converts with the same intensity of believing mind to whom Jesus did not appear. Besides, Paul himself was not a believer, he was taken by surprise in the midst of his intense hostility.
The clue seems to lie in the turn of speech in the teaching that Paul declares himself to be handing down to the Corinthians when he recounts the appearances. He tells them that "Christ... was raised to life" (1 Corinthians 15:4): he does not say that Christ rose. The latter formula is not always avoided (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:14; Romans 14:9), but the standard version is the former: e.g., 1 Thessalonians 1:20; 1 Corinthians 6:14; Galatians 1:1; Romans 4:24; 8:11; 10:9; Colossians 2:12; Eph-esians 1:20 as well as our own text (1 Corinthians 15:4). God's power did the miracle or, when the other formula is used, God empowered Jesus to bring it about. So the occasions of the appearances would depend on God's will. In the Corinthian record the appearances to Cephas and to the Twelve come straight on the heels of Christ being declared "raised to life". The identical agency that did the raising may be understood to have led to the appearing.
In Galatians the appearing is couched in terms that leave
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no doubt of God's will. We may remember the words: "Then God... called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me—" (L15-16).1 On this work of God we get a most striking gloss from Acts. A part of Peter's sermon, upon which we have drawn, says: "God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the whole people but only certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand. Now we are those witnesses.. ."(10:40-41).2 It is God who allows the appearances and God who selects the recipients of them.
A word in Peter's sermon leads us on to a point we gather from Paul too. Peter uses the term "seen". And in 1 Corinthians 9:1 Paul has said: "I am an apostle and I have seen Jesus our Lord."3 As should be explicit from the very vocable "appearances" the basic characteristic of the "resurrected" Jesus is his visibility. And this vocable is also useful in driving home the idea of a force from outside the viewer acting upon him. It translates the Greek ophthe, a passive form of the verb "to see". C. F. Evans4 has emphasised that the dative construction employed with the verb suggests "appeared to" rather than "was seen by" as a translation. The initiative is vested in the one who is seen and not in the one who sees. As between these two parties, the former was the active agent, the latter the passive - even if in the ultimate reckoning the former was himself made to be an active agent by another: namely, God. Seeing, therefore, has to be understood in a special sense. In the same way the next characteristic indicated by Paul is to be understood: Communication, which implies hearing. We have already quoted his words to the Galatians: "... the Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by man, it is something I learnt through a revelation of Jesus Christ" (1:11-12).5
Brown,6 after noting Evans's gloss, ponders how precisely "appeared to" should be interpreted in the visibility it involves. He reflects on the Greek ophthe: "A study of this verb in the Greek Bible shows that it covers a wide range of visual experience including contacts with supernatural beings such as God and angels, so that it does not have to imply
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physical sight. Therefore we cannot simply assume that when Paul speaks of Jesus' 'appearing' to him or when he says he 'saw' Jesus (1 Cor 9:1), he means physical sight of a corporeal being." In favour of a possible purely internal experience Brown7 observes: "It is noteworthy that elsewhere he refers to his experience in terms of God's having revealed His Son to him - 'revelation' is a less physical term, although it would not exclude external sight."
Actually the text Brown brings before us has more suggestion of internality than he makes out. For the Greek original of Galatians 1:16 has en moi and the literal rendering would be The Jerusalem Bible's, which we have already cited: "in me" - and not "to me", as we would understand from Brown. The Jerusalem Bible's note8 to defend its "in me" runs: "Others translate 'reveal his Son to me'. Paul is not denying that his vision was real,... he is stressing the inwardness of this real vision and relating this inwardness to his call as apostle of the Gentiles." The defence is correct but needs more elucidation.
The impression we get from Paul's full statement here about his experience is that, although he was himself unaware, God had secretly implanted in him the Christian mission to the Gentiles and the sense of this mission came alive within him at the moment which he pinpoints when in 1 Corinthians 9:1 he says: "I have seen Jesus our Lord" and in 1 Corinthians 15:8 he tells us: "... he appeared to me..." The full statement in Galatians covers the words which incorporate some phrases from Isaiah 49:1 and Jeremiah 1:5: "Then God, who had specially chosen me while I was still in my mother's womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him to the Pagans" (1:15-16).9
The fact of the hidden Christ in Paul is suggested also by the third of the three accounts in Acts of Paul's conversion. In the course of his speech to King Agrippa, Paul is made to recount: "...I heard a voice saying to me in Hebrew, 'Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you, kicking like this against the goad' "(26:14).10 The Jerusalem Bible11 clarifies
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the last phrase: "Greek proverb for useless resistance: the ox kicking against the goad succeeds only in wounding itself." Paul, in persecuting Christ through the Christians, was really wounding himself inwardly by going against his conscience which said that he was wrong. His activity served no purpose, for behind this conscience was the concealed feeling that he was really for Christ and was misguidedly his persecutor. Like an ox he was bound to the yoke and the plough of Christ's work: he had been destined to belong to Christ, prepared in his mother's womb to serve Christ and born to be at his service in the as yet unworked field of the pagan world.
To continue with Brown. While conceding that "revelation" tends to direct us to internality, he12 confesses: "Nevertheless, the overall evidence does not favor the thesis that Paul was describing a purely internal experience, for he speaks of Jesus' having appeared to more than 500 at once (1 Cor 15:6); and we can scarcely think of synchronized ecstasy. (This observation holds true no matter where Paul got the information about this experience; for Paul, who himself saw the risen Jesus, found no contradiction in positing that what happened to him could have happened to 500 people at the same time.) How are we to reconcile a 'sight' that is not necessarily physical and to be seen by all with an appearance that is not purely internal?"
A general answer to this question may be found from some words of Sri Aurobindo, master of the inner discipline of Yoga on its most integral level. Modern psychology has brought into use the term "subliminal" to indicate phenomena of experience beyond the knowledge of the outer consciousness. Sri Aurobindo13 writes: "...the subliminal being has... a larger direct contact with the world; it is not confined like the surface Mind to the interpretation of sense-images and sense-vibrations supplemented by the mental and vital intuition and reason. There is indeed an inner sense in the subliminal nature, a subtle sense of vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste; but these are not confined to the creation of images of things belonging to the physical environment, - they can present to the consciousness visual, auditory, tactual and
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other images and vibrations of things beyond the restricted range of the physical senses or belonging to other planes or spheres of existence...It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernatural faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being." Elsewhere a letter of Sri Aurobindo's14 informs us: "There is... a whole range or many inexhaustible ranges of sensory phenomena other than the outward physical which one can become conscious of, see, hear, feel, smell, touch, mentally contact - to use the new established Americanism - either in trance or sleep or an inward state miscalled sleep or simply and easily in the waking state. This faculty of sensing supraphysical things internally or externalising them, so to speak, so that they become visible, audible, sensible to the outward eye, ear, even touch, just as are gross physical objects, this power or gift is not a freak or an abnormality; it is a universal faculty present in all human beings, but latent in most, in some rarely or intermittently active, occurring as if by accident in others, frequent or normally active in a few....It comes more easily with the eyes shut than with the eyes open, but it does come in both ways."
Of course, when the eyes are open, it is still not the physical sight that is operative: an inner vision acts simultaneously with the outer and imposes its own discoveries on what the latter discloses. In the situation pictured by Brown, the reality of a supraphysical body of Jesus makes itself manifest to one or many in whom the inner faculty of sight has been suddenly opened. A deeper being in them becomes receptive to a greater unearthly range of existence.
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The Nature of the New Body in the Light of
Sri Aurobindo's Yogic Knowledge
The problem, however, remains: "What kind of supraphysical body does Paul ascribe to the 'resurrected' Jesus?" There is only one direct hint: it comes in connection with the Second Coming of Jesus, the Parousia, when there will be a general resurrection of the dead. Paul writes: "For us, our homeland is in heaven, and from heaven comes the saviour we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body" (Philippians 3:20-21).15 An impression of great luminosity is created by the closing expressions: that is all. But fortunately Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, has gone into some detail about the transfiguration of "these wretched bodies of ours" at the Parousia and from that we can infer the state of Jesus' own transfigured body whose "copies" ours will be. We have already quoted the whole passage, along with The Jerusalem Bible's annotation on the difference between what Paul dubs soma psychikon and what he calls soma pneumatikon. The former, the physical body, is one whose psyche or "soul" is not to be understood as in the Greek or the later Christian philosophy but simply as that body's life, the principle of animation common to animals and men, so that the soma psychikon is the living natural or physical body, the sensing, feeling, thinking "flesh and blood" which can never "inherit the kingdom of God", never be regarded as "the heavenly man" who possesses the soma pneumatikon, the superhuman, supernatural, Spirit-expressive body that will be our future ethereal state. This latter body is said to be not only "glorious" (15:43) but also "imperishable" and "powerful" (ibid.) as well as "immortal" (15:53).
Although the two bodies are utterly antithetical to Paul, he still affirms a continuity from the one to the other - misguided by Old-Testament prophecy and also most probably because the supraphysical body appeared with a certain clarity and
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definiteness which made it comparable to the physical. To understand the import of this very likely impression as well as to ascertain whether it was all that Paul could have received from the "appearance" he had witnessed, we must turn again to Sri Aurobindo's Yogic knowledge and cast a glance too at other texts of Paul on the after-death existence of Jesus.
Sri Aurobindo16 writes: "The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical and ideal personalities which is the cause of those 'psychic' and 'occult' phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined,even while they are far too much exploited."
Again, we read in Sri Aurobindo:17 "Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting-point. As there are behind our waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and superconscient to it of which we become sometimes abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and greater power which support the denser body and which can by our entering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death,
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of difficult alimentation and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and philosophic truth which is in accordance with all the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think out about the overt and secret truth of our existence."
A few more excerpts from Sri Aurobindo18 will be in order. After mentioning communication with supraphysical planes through "symbolic, transcriptive or representative images presented to the different psychical senses", he19 says: "But also there is the possibility of a more direct, concretely sensible, almost material, sometimes actively material communication -a complete though temporary physical materialisation seems to be possible..." Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo20 tells us: "... in the theory of the occultists and in the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening between life [i.e., the vital plane] and gross Matter and to create in this subtle physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser materiality is feasible."
Sri Aurobindo's Yogic insights and realisations bring into focus the truth behind Paul's list of Jesus' appearances as well as behind the resurrection which he erroneously attributed to him and anticipated for all who - to adopt a recurrent Pauline phrase - "live in Christ", that is, rise inwardly and outwardly above sin, above the alienation from God in one's heart and the performance of acts displeasing to him.
The "appearances" were not of a resuscitated gross-physical body, however changed, but of a subtle or else causal one. As Jesus recovered his own original divinity we should understand the manifesting body to be that which Paul describes as exalted in almost the very act of being resurrected: in other words, the causal body in some sense pertinent to the mystical knowledge of the time and not necessarily in the literal Vedantic or Aurobindonian sense. In 2 Corinthians 12:2,
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a context whose psychological and metaphysical implication we shall discuss later, Paul speaks of "the third heaven".21 In terms of the five sheaths mentioned by Sri Aurobindo, the three heavens would be the vital, the mental and the ideal planes above or beyond the gross-physical, and the third heaven would be the ideal plane. As this heaven is evidently the highest in Paul's visionary hierarchy, we may think of it as holding in its uttermost depths some reflex also of the plane Sri Aurobindo names "spiritual or beatific". Jesus' God-status would manifest - to Paul and to the numbered fortunate others - in the body which would be his on the supraphysical level towards which Paul directs the minds of his flock at Colossae: "Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is, sitting at God's right hand" (Colossians 3:1).22 There is even a direct reference to Jesus' heavenly body in another phrase already cited by us:"... from heaven comes the saviour we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body" (Philippians 3:20-21).23 In 1 Corinthians itself we have talk of the first Adam and the last Adam (Jesus) "who is from heaven" (15:47): "And we, who have been modelled on the earthly man, will be modelled on the heavenly man" (15;49).24 Two of the earliest heaven-Jesus associations in Paul run: "...the Lord himself will come down from heaven" (1 Thessalonians 4:16)25 - "God will very rightly... reward you, who are suffering now, with the same peace as he will give us, when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven with the angels of his power" (2 Thessalonians 1:6-7).26 The word "appears", chiming with the four-time repeated "appeared" in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8, seems most appropriate in the heaven-Jesus association, but the chiming is only in the English translation: the original Greek is apokalupthei, not ophthe, and corresponds literally to: "will be revealed."
Yes, out of the highest heaven the Resurrection-exalted Jesus of Paul appeared - to single individuals on the one hand and to a plurality of them on the other. As we have argued
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at the very start, the experience of the plurality must mean an objective appearance projected into our space-time framework from the supra-physical level. Since Paul equates all the appearances to one type alone, the experience of single individuals was brought about by the same kind of manifestation as to the many. But when we term the manifestation "objective" in the framework of our space-time and when we regard it as visible to a group looking at it with open eyes though by means of an inner faculty and when we further understand that it would yet be not a public self-revelation as by a concrete material body whose presence anyone might verify, we have to conceive Jesus' appearances in a special manner. Using Sri Aurobindo's terminology, we may suppose that God's will made Jesus create a replica of his third-heaven body in the substance which Sri Aurobindo puts between the vital plane and the gross-physical: that is, in the subtle-physical matter. A precipitation of Jesus' divine form into this substance could be thought of as producing just the right degree of materialisation for God's chosen and specially attuned beings to witness and for the rest of their fellows to miss.
The Pauline Resurrection Seen through
Sri Aurobindo's Eyes
The general truth of Paul's idea of Resurrection emerges on being put in Sri Aurobindo's light not as it applies to Jesus or to the dead at Parousia-time but as it applies to men whom "the last day, the day of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:8)27 will surprise in their living bodies: "I will tell you something that has been secret: that we are not all going to die, but we shall all be changed. This will be instantaneous, in the twinkling of an eye, when the last trumpet sounds. It will sound, and the dead will be raised, imperishable, and we shall be changed as well, because our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and this mortal nature
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must put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:51-53). An earlier declaration figures the same situation on "the Day of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 5:2):29 "those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).30 As The Jerusalem Bible explains, "Paul includes himself among those who will be present at the parousia.. .31 At first Paul expected he would live to see the Last Day...; he later realised he might die before it.. ,"32 In any case, the Last Day was not to be far. He and his contemporaries were living in the radiant shadow thrown before by it. In an Epistle written eight years after those to the Thessalonians,33 Paul warns his people: "... you know 'the time' has come: you must wake up now: our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted. The night is almost over, it will be daylight soon..." (Romans 13:11-12).34 In regard to whoever happened to be living on the Lord's Day, there would be in the Pauline vision of the near future no Resurrection in the strict sense which refers to the dead: there would be only a rising or being raised into a new life from the old. The absence of death as a stage between the two would answer to Sri Aurobindo's insight about entering by his integral Yoga what he has called the "ideal" state higher than the vital and mental, part of which is all we know at present in our embodied condition - the state also characterised by him as Supermind, Gnosis, Truth-Consciousness or, in Upanishadic language, vijnana.
Sri Aurobindo thinks at the same time of our being's ascent into that plane and of the descent of that plane into our being. By the confluence, as it were, of our being and the "ideality" which is Supermind, there would be a recovery here and now of what we really are in our ultimate selfhood, a divine perfection. But the recovery is made through a long process of Yoga, through a protracted practice of concentration on the Divine Reality and of self-consecration to it in all our movements inner and outer. It is not an "instantaneous" achievement, a change accomplished "in the twinkling of an eye". Also, the
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consummation for Paul is not a new earth-life: it is a departure from it into an other-world of glory and blessedness. Yet, in the concept of the transfiguration of the living into spiritual bodies at a future time there is a genuine prefiguration, faint and off-centre though it be, of the Aurobindonian vision. Rendered in an inadequate revelation, set in a world-transcending rather than a world-perfecting context, offered without a specific call for mystical self-development which would make the result organic and intrinsic, it is still an astonishing fore-glimmer of the fulfilment which would be in the spiritual logic of things as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo.
Here a point stressed by Willi Marxsen in connection with 1 Thessalonians is very significant. This epistle is Paul's earliest, written in about 50 A.D. from Corinth where he was on his second missionary journey, soon after founding the church in Thessalonica. Marxsen35 writes:
"We learn first what the Christian message was which Paul brought to the Thessalonians: the time is at hand: every man must be prepared and make ready for the coming of the Son of God. All who cleave to him he will save from the coming wrath of the Day of Judgment (cf. 1 Thess. 1.9b-10, where Paul repeats his missionary proclamation).
"After the apostle's visit to Thessalonica he had sent Timothy to the church there. Timothy has meanwhile returned, bringing good news, generally speaking. In spite of persecution, the church has kept its faith. At the same time, however, Paul now learns of deaths that have taken place, deaths with which the Thessalonians cannot come to terms: Christians are mourning their dead.
"This shows clearly that in his missionary preaching during his stay in Thessalonica Paul had not spoken of the resurrection hope. Why should he? It was unnecessary in view of the imminent expectation of the second coming of Christ.
"But now the time appointed for this second coming begins to present a problem, for the Thessalonians are of the opinion that those who have died in the meantime will have no share in the parousia and its accompanying salvation. They believe
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the dead to be lost. Consequently they themselves are also bound to be afraid of dying before the parousia, since they too would then be excluded from the coming salvation."
Paul assures them that there is no need for grief or fear. "We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus" (4:14).36 The point for us to mark is not this assurance from a later period, but that in the opening mission of his career Paul had not preached the resurrection of the dead at all: he had preached the exaltation of the living into heaven. On the very first occasion when he must have implied the utterly transformed condition of which we read in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul applied this condition solely to the living human body. Initially, the Resurrection signified to Paul the transformation of that body by Christ's return within a generation or so of his death. The basic idea to him was not dying and being raised from the dead but getting lifted up into a state of perfection while still alive - an idea along Aurobindonian lines although in terms of life's bodily ascent into perfection rather than in those of perfection's descent into bodily existence on earth as the crown of a mystical self-development.
The lack of this self-development, no less than that of perfection's descent, brings a false note into Paulinism. The change in the twinkling of an eye and the sudden uplifting into heaven introduce a sheer cleavage between the flesh-and-blood body, however alive it may be, and the entirely dissimilar new body which alone can inherit the kingdom of God. A hiatus is created such as to render the idea of transformation illogical, whether we speak of those alive being exalted or of those dead being resurrected.
Pauline Mysticism and the Lead from It
Perhaps we would do an injustice to Paul if we said that the element of a mystical self-development, though not really
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active for the Last Day, was quite absent from Paulinism. Even though the call for it was neither constant nor intense as by Sri Aurobindo, Paul, when he kept asking his flock to be true Christians, did not always harp merely on individual and social morality. Doubtless, morality is part of even the via mystica and Paul was right in telling the Corinthians: "people of immoral lives, idolaters, adulterers, catamites, sodomites, thieves, usurers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers will never inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:10).37 But to put oneself genuinely in accord with God's kingdom and feel as though a native of it, a deeper stress upon a new creation of the Old Adam in one is required. A trend in the direction of a dedicated religiousness is perceived when Paul writes in the same Epistle: "Whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do at all, do it for the glory of God. Never do anything offensive to anyone - to Jews or Greeks or to the Church of God; just as I try to be helpful to everyone at all times, not anxious for my own advantage, but for the advantage of everybody else, so that they may be saved. Take me for your model, as I take Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:33; 11:1).38 Exemplifying Christ to them, Paul's greatest teaching in this Epistle comes after his exhortation to the Corinthians to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit working through "a variety of gifts" and "all sorts of service". He says: "Be ambitious for the higher gifts. And I am going to show you a way that is better than any of them", and then he launches on one of the most inspired passages in the New Testament, starting: "If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing..." (13:1).39 A directly personal note is struck and sustained through the whole opening portion and, after a many-sided description of non-sensual love [agape in Greek), it returns at the close where love discloses its power of understanding and the agency of the Holy Spirit in it and guides us towards an intimacy with and knowledge of God just as God's intimacy with and knowledge of man is through his love. Paul recounts how he matured and is getting ready
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for a plenary love-knowledge at the world's end: "When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me. Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect but then I shall know as fully as I am known" (13:11-12).40 The Jerusalem Bible gives a footnote to the last word: "I.e. by God."41 A relationship in particular between Paul and his Maker and in general the same Man-God relationship for every Christian who is commanded to experience agape is the undertone to the whole rhapsody of the awakened human heart going out in religious warmth to its fellows.
In 2 Corinthians the secret pervasive mysticism of Paul comes in several shades of explicitness. The mirror-simile is taken up again but here more positively. Turning to Christ is compared to the removal of a veil from the mind: "And we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit" (3:18).42 The identical theme is touched upon a little later: "It is the same God that said, 'Let there be light shining out of darkness', who has shone in our minds to radiate the light of the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ" (4:6).43 Towards the end of the Epistle, Paul pitting himself against rival preachers whom he considers misleaders allows his usual modesty to be set aside a little and recounts the numerous terrible hardships he has gone through and then reminisces in a style at once direct and indirect about his inner life: "... I will move on to the visions and revelations I have had from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who, fourteen years ago, was caught up - whether still in the body or out of the body, I do not know; God knows - right into the third heaven. I do know, however, that this same person - whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows -was caught up into paradise and heard things which must not and cannot be put into human language" (12:l-4).44 If Paul has
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set himself before the Corinthians to be imitated, even as he attempts the imitation of Christ, there is in such a passage a tacit pull on the Corinthians to strain towards a living sense of the spiritual reality. A hint of it comes when the Epistle is about to finish: "Examine yourselves to make sure you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you?" (13:5)45
Paul's being a true mystic is undeniable. Sri Aurobindo46 has written in a letter: "... St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)..." He47 has also commented on a passage in the Epistles - not exactly identifiable by us - which refers "Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body in its own space and substance, which he found sometimes as if enveloping him and abolishing this body of death which he felt the material envelope to be." Paul's mysticism should be evident even from the variations he plays time and again on the theme of his being "in Christ". Quite apt is the remark of Ernest F. Scott48 on Paul: "He was assured that in some manner he had become one with Christ, and that this was the secret of the new life into which he had entered." The Pauline key-formula Scott49 cites runs in The Jerusalem Bible's translation:50 "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). However, what we have quoted from 2 Corinthians about "the third heaven" is a most relevant lead to a final assessment of the momentous issue whether in 1 Corinthians 15:18-19 Paul wrote, as The Jerusalem Bible seems at first glance to imply, without considering the possibility of the "soul" being immortal irrespective of the resurrection of the body.
The Question of Immortality before the Resurrection
What 2 Corinthians 12:1-5 superficially shows us is an unresolved wonderment twice-repeated, but the whole drift
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is actually one way. To be "caught up" into a plane of being which is far beyond the earth, to feel lifted into the highest "paradise" is to be temporarily disembodied even during one's life. If Paul was undeniably out of his body for a while, he must grant a conscious entity's existence separable from the physical form despite its alliance with it until death. In accordance with the common usage followed by The Jerusalem Bible's note,51 we shall speak of "soul" here although later we shall stick to Paul's special sense of what corresponds to it and look for his equivalent of the term we are employing now.
The soul, then, in order to be an active agent, is not dependent on the body's resurrection at the world's end. Its independence is also suggested in a personal vein by Paul's Epistle to the Philippians: "Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then death would bring me something more; but then again, if living in this body means doing work which is having good results - I do not know what I should choose. I am caught in this dilemma; I want to be gone and be with Christ, which would be very much the better, but for me to stay alive in this body is a more urgent need for your sake" (1:21-24).52 The Jerusalem Bible53 observes: "...this supposes that the (good) Christian who dies is with Christ at once without any temporal gap between death and 'last judgment'."
Ahead of this observation The Jerusalem Bible refers us to "2 Corinthians 5:8+". The reference is of the utmost interest because within the same section of the Epistle we have a clear mention of the resurrectional transfiguration of the Christians still alive when the world reaches its termination, as well as a clear indication of a separate soul finding itself immortally joined to its Lord in the moment of the body's death. First we read: "For we know that when the tent that we live in on earth is folded up, there is a house built by God for us, an everlasting home not made by human hands, in the heavens. In this present state, it is true, we groan as we wait with longing to put on our heavenly home over the other; we should like to be found wearing clothes and not without them. Yes, we groan and find it a burden being still in this tent, not that we want to
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strip it off, but to put the second garment over it and to have what must die taken up into life. This is the purpose for which God made us, and he has given us the pledge of the Spirit" (5:1-5)54 Immediately after these words we are told: "We are always full of confidence, then, when we remember that to live in the body means to be exiled from the Lord, going as we do by faith and not by sight - we are full of confidence, I say, and actually want to be exiled from the body and make our home with the Lord. Whether we are living in the body or exiled from it, we are intent on pleasing him" (5:6-9).55
Brown56* seems to think that the first passage "may have moved on" from the topic of resurrection, which is prominent in 1 Corinthians 15, "to a new problem, namely, how the faithful dead live with Christ in the interim between death and resurrection..." But the phrase - "to put the second garment over it and to have what must die taken up into life" - must allude to the physical body itself getting changed into the spiritual. The Jerusalem Bible rightly interprets Paul here as having in mind those who would happen to be living on the day of the general resurrection of the dead. It has two notes.57 The one on the expression "our heavenly home" says: "That is, to be given our 'spiritual body', 1 Corinthians 15:44, without having to suffer death and corruption, v. 4." The other note, applying to the sentence ending with the words - "and not without them" - reads: "That is to say, on the supposition that we are still alive when Christ returns in glory. Paul wants to be of the number of those who will live to see the coming of the Lord and whose bodies will be transformed without having to die. Over the 'natural body' they will, as it were, 'put on'
* Ramsey, op. cit. p. 110, fn. 1, after drawing attention to the opinion of "many scholars" that in the text concerned Paul favours the doctrine of the soul's immortality, writes: "F. W. L. Knox in St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles, pp. 135-145, argues that 2 Cor. v. 1-10 marks a change in Paul's belief under the influence of Hellenistic thought. But the similarity of belief in 1 Cor. xv and 2 Cor. v. 1-10 is convincingly shown by L. S. Thornton in The Common Life in the Body of Christ, pp. 284-286."
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the 'spiritual body', 1 Corinthians 15:44, 53, 54, which will be 'absorbed' by the former."
The Jerusalem Bible is right in not pursuing Brown's line, but it does not seem to pay heed to the beginning of Paul's passage. Would not the folding up of a tent that we live in on earth mean the dying of the earthly body? The King James Bible says: "...if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved..." Then surely "a house built by God for us, an everlasting home... in the heavens" could suggest an after-death existence either in a new immortal body which God has always kept for us or else simply in a divine habitation which is eternal. Brown inclines to understand that existence in the second sense, but the first sense which considers Paul to be thinking of an exchange of bodies, "a spiritual body replacing the earthly body", and which Brown58 wants to fault, is equally legitimate on the actual wording. If we go no further than Paul's initial statement, scholars like T. E. Pollard59 who favour the replacement-idea are not less justified than Brown. And for The Jerusalem Bible to take the passage as concerned only with those who happen to be still in their bodies at the Parousia is to fly in the face of a very definite indication to the contrary at the start. However, the rest of the passage is indeed a single-track thought as The Jerusalem Bible makes out except for two points where the commentary falls short. The divine "tent" into which we should like to change our embodied state is as if something ready for us and not brought into being: it seems to be there like a vesture to be worn by us rather than a new developing garment. Paul is lacking in precision at this point and we should be aware of it. Again, the text has no shade of the physical body absorbing the other: Paul speaks of the opposite - of having the mortal taken up into the immortal. The metaphor of putting on, which is carried over from 1 Corinthians 15:53, cannot involve absorption of the ever-living by "what must die". But this is a secondary matter. The primary question is how to get round Paul's ambiguous sequence and link the opening assertion with the rest. We may propose the following: "Although death is not an end,
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although by being dead before the world's termination we will have a heavenly transfiguration, we would much prefer to keep alive in the final act of world-history."
On the next passage The Jerusalem Bible60 comments: "Here and in Philippians 1:23 Paul has in mind a union of Christians with Christ on the death of each individual. This does not contradict the biblical doctrine of the final universal resurrection, Romans 2:6+; 1 Corinthians 15:44+, but this expectation of happiness for the soul that has left the body after death betrays the influence of Greek thought, an influence already making itself felt in the Judaism of the period, cf. Luke 16:22; 23:43; 1 Peter 3:19+. Cf. also the texts referring to ecstatic states when the soul is 'out of the body', 2 Corinthians 12:2f; cf. Revelation 1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10."
Evidently, Paul's metaphysical vision of the individual's destiny is not so single-strained as 1 Corinthians 15 might incline us to think. What adds to the complexity are statements in Colossians and Ephesians which appear to modify in a mysterious way the sheer futurity of the general resurrection. The Colossians-passages, already quoted in another context, are about the spiritual power of baptism: "You have been buried with him, when you were baptised; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead" (2:12)61 -"Since you have been brought back to true life with Christ, you must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is, sitting at God's right hand. Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth, because you have died, and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God. But when Christ is revealed - and he is your life -you too will be revealed in all your glory with him" (3:1-5).62 The Jerusalem Bible annotates the second passage: "Through union with Christ in baptism, 2:12, his followers already live the identical life he lives in heaven, cf. Ephesians 2:6+, but this spiritual life is not manifest and glorious as it will be at the
parousia.''63
The relevant passage in Ephesians goes in full: "But God
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loved us with so much love that he was generous with his mercy: when we were dead through our sins, he brought us to life with Christ - it is through grace that you have been saved - and raised us up with him and gave us a place with him in heaven, in Christ Jesus" (2:4-5).64 The Jerusalem Bible's gloss65 is very significant: "Here as in Colossians 2:12; 3:1-4 the use of the past tense shows that the resurrection and triumph of Christians in heaven is considered as actually existing, whereas the future tense in Romans 6:3-11; 8:11,17f treats it as something that has still to take place. Treating the eschatological reality as already existing is a characteristic of Paul's letters written from prison."
Paul's telescoping of the future into a spiritual fait accompli must imply in him and in his Christian contemporaries a consciousness which can participate in the heavenly state without having to wait for the Lord's Day - a consciousness which would not be lost in sleep with the body's perishing but remain in Christ's presence. Although the presence would be to it more intense when the flesh fell away and most intense when the flesh was believed to lose its weakness and obscurity and mortality in the creation of a spiritual body on the Day of the Lord, it would be a living reality - the very core of one's self - even while the flesh had its lease of earthly years. This consciousness is what Paul intends in his prayer to God in Ephesians 3:16-19: "Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through the Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God."66
"Hidden self" - there we have the Hellenistic thought of Paul's time in a Paulinised form: the resurrection is seen as perfecting this secret mode of spiritual existence in one by giving it a body fit for it of power and glory and imperishability in place of its ordinary embodiment. A supernatural body
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of Spirit (pneuma) substitutes at the resurrection the animal body of Soul (psyche); but there is a human spirit no less than a human soul already present in the Christian. To grasp the complexity of Paul's vision of the total human entity, we must explore his notion of pneuma.
This term, like others in Paul relating to man's being, has several nuances. Our task is to fix its central significance. But before we do so, we may clear what we have called the "momentous issue" connected with the general resurrection: "Do the passages about that event in 1 Corinthians 15 rule out the possibility of an immortal entity surviving the body's death?"
The True Sense of Resurrection in Paul
Paul is always taken as subscribing to a supposed early Christian view derived from Judaism, which Brown67 briefly puts before us when he writes: "Of course, 'body' did not mean for Paul what it means for most Christians today, since his basic anthropology did not involve a body-soul composite." To get the proper perspective of the alleged Pauline position we may quote Anderson:68
"In Hebraic thought, man is body (dust) animated by the Spirit or breath of God (see Genesis 2:7). Contrary to the Greek way of thinking, there is no eternal element (or 'soul') imprisoned in the physical body. Man's life is a unity, the unified existence of a creature responsible to his Creator. When he dies, his personal existence ceases. His body returns to the dust and his 'shade' - a vague double of his former self - goes to Sheol, the land of darkness and death. Consistent with this view of human nature, if man is to have a future life there must be a new miracle, a re-creation. God must raise up the body from death, reanimate it with his life-giving Spirit, and restore man to the God-relationship which is the source of his life."
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We are expected to understand that because early Christianity, like the Judaic tradition, had no concept of a genuine supraphysical entity automatically surviving physical dissolution, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 insists on Jesus having corporeally risen and on his congregation having the certainty of a similar rising in the future with the help of Jesus. No doubt, there is a lamenting note in: "...if the dead are not raised,... and if Christ has not been raised,... all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people" (15:17-19). But it would be an exaggeration to interpret quite negatively The Jerusalem Bible's annotation69 of the last sentence: " 'This life' has become for Christians a state from which life in Christ, through the resurrection, will deliver them. If there is no resurrection, they have lost their deliverance. Note that the possibility of the soul's immortality without the resurrection of the body is not considered."
Simply because the soul's immortality in its own right is not under consideration here, are we justified in holding that the passage in Paul excludes it? For the right answer we have only to grasp the creedal implication of Paul's having belonged to the Jewish party-group named Pharisees (Philippians 3:5). The Pharisees, unlike the party-group of the Sad-ducees, believed in the doctrine of bodily resurrection.70 To Paul, the Pharisee, the raising of the body from the dead was of paramount importance: without its resuscitation the ultimate being of man would be seriously truncated. An extreme emphasis falls on physical immortality in 1 Corinthians: that is the utmost we can read and that is the answer to our question. Paul can be taken as intending nothing more than what The Jerusalem Bible71 conveys elsewhere: "Greek philosophers thought of the higher soul (the nous) escaping from 'the body', to survive immortally. Christians thought of immortality more in terms of the whole person, involving a resurrection of the body effected by the Spirit or divine principle which God withdrew from human beings because of sins, Genesis 6:3, but restored to all who are united to the
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risen Christ, Romans 1:4+; 8:11, who is the 'heavenly' man and life-giving Spirit, 1 Corinthians 15:45-49." We may understand these words to mean that, though the body's resurrection in the far future was most vital to Paul's idea of immortality, we need not take him to rule out the escape of whatever he may have regarded as the Christian's higher soul from the body at the time of death in the immediate present.
If we do not read such a "slant" we shall not make sense of several of Paul's own declarations. We have seen how in 2 Corinthians 5:6-9 he says that for him and his fellows "to live in the body is to be exiled from the Lord" and that they "actually want to be exiled from the body and make our home with the Lord". As The Jerusalem Bible has pointed out, here "Paul has in mind a union of Christians with Christ on the death of each individual". Would it not be irrational on our part to overlook the fact that 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians were letters written to the same church and' that they were sent even in the same year - 57 A.D.?72 How could Paul preach in such circumstances two diametrically opposed doctrines? The doctrines just have to be reconcilable and the sole reconciliation possible is to see the one relating to the general resurrection as we have done. The Jerusalem Bible too must be seeing this doctrine thus if it comments, as it does, that here is no contradiction of "the biblical doctrine of the final universal resurrection". What would be still more irrational is to pit against 2 Corinthians 5:6-9 the immediately preceding passage (5:1-5) which speaks of our putting "the second garment" over "the tent that we live in on earth" and of our having "what must die taken up into life". If this passage, which The Jerusalem Bible elucidates as a reference to the change of the physical body into the spiritual by those who happen to be alive at the time of the Parousia, implies anything more than that ultimately the body will share in immortality and if it tacitly denies a supraphysical element in man capable of enjoying immortality before the resurrection, then we shall have a statement running quite counter to the one that comes on its very heels. It will never do to envisage
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Paul conununicating in almost the same breath a couple of absolutely antithetical theses. Neither will it do to appreciate the out-of-the-body experience narrated towards the close of 2 Corinthians and yet understand verses 5:1-5 as bearing an implicit Hebraic sense which accepts "no eternal element... imprisoned in the physical body".
Paul's stand in Philippians calls for the same internal consistency of exegesis. We have marked how in 1:21-24 Paul, although choosing to live longer for the sake of his flock at Philippi, says that death would bring him something more even than a life lived in Christ here and that he is tempted to "want to be gone and be with Christ". Here union with Christ at once after death is looked forward to. But Philippians, as Gunther Bornkamm73 observes, not only speaks of "a consummation directly following upon the individual's death, effected by final union with Christ": it also speaks of "the 'day' of Christ (1:6, 10; 2:16)", the announcement of which, along with the announcement of the world-judgment, forms part of "the apostle's cosmic expectations of the end" as in 1 Corinthians 4:5; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 14:12, etc. Bornkamm remarks that Paul "shows no interest in offsetting the one against the other to form a coherent world picture and conceptual system". According to Bornkamm, Paul for some reason which was connected with "what the apostle was trying to effect" made use of "diverse" statements about "the Christian hope" and mostly they are "too dispersed" to warrant our wanting to systematise them. But surely statements cannot be considered "too dispersed" if they are diverse within the same letter or addressed to the same readership at periods not at all far apart. Then they need explanation and the only one conceivable is what we have given about the sense in which the general resurrection does not contradict the immortality of a supraphysical element in man.
The admission of such an element sets Paul in tune with the Greek notion of "a body-soul composite". We should not be surprised at this attunement; for, as The Jerusalem Bible informs us, the Hellenistic influence was already making itself
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felt in the Judaism of the period. How easy it would be for Paul to come under that influence may be guessed from a piece of information we can cull from Brown74 himself who repudiates for Paul the Greek notion: "In the Book of Wisdom [about 50 B.C.75] the survival after death of the just who had been persecuted is described in terms of an immortality [of a soullike principle] granted by God: "The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed in the view of the foolish to be dead, and their passing away was thought to be an affliction... but they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of Himself. As sacrificial offerings, he took them to himself... they shall judge nations and rule over peoples' (Wisdom 3:1-8)." Brown's comment,76 though intended to show that "the choice of resurrection language [in the traditional Hebraic mode which does not separate 'soul' from 'body'] was not an mevitability for the early Jews who believed in Jesus", can serve very well our standpoint: "Since this concept of immortality was scarcely confined to the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria who composed the Book of Wisdom, Jesus' fate could have been described in a similar manner without any more resort to resurrection than is found in Wisdom."
Brown's opinion that Paul employed orthodox "resurrection language" assorts ill with his already noticed interpretation77 - though wrong-headed according to The Jerusalem Bible as well as in our eyes - of 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 as not only alien to the topic of Jesus' Resurrection but as also probably moving on to the different problem of how the faithful dead Christians live with their Saviour in the period before the Resurrection. Face to face with Paul's background it should be natural to regard his vision of Resurrection in an unorthodox light. Even apart from the internal evidence of his Epistles, to flout which would force us to accuse Paul of flagrant self-contradiction which would result in his losing all credit with the churches founded by him, there are the facts of his milieu and of his education to favour our exegesis. The Jerusalem Bible78 ably features these facts:
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"Paul was a Jew with a Greek cultural background which he had possibly begun to acquire when a boy in Tarsus and which was certainly reinforced by repeated contact with the Graeco-Roman world; this influence is obvious not only in his logical method but also in his language and style. He sometimes quotes Greek writers, 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 1:12; Acts 17:28, and was familiar with popular Stoic-based philosophy from which he borrows concepts (e.g. of the soul separated from the body and bound for another world, 2 Corinthians 5:6-8; the cosmic pleroma in Colossians and Ephesians) and cliches (1 Corinthians 8:6; Romans 11:36; Ephesians 4:6). From the Cynics and Stoics he borrowed the rapid question and answer method (the diatribe), Romans 3:1-9, 27-31, and the rhetorical device of heaping word on word, 2 Corinthians 6:4-10. Even his use of long, packed phrases in wave after wave, Ephesians 1:3-14; Colossians 1:9-12, has a precedent in hellenistic religious literature. The Greek that was a second mother tongue to Paul (cf. Acts 21:40), that he was able to use so familiarly with only occasional semitisms, was a cultured form of the koine, i.e. the Greek of his own day..."
Paul's Graeco-Roman culture fused with his Pharisee-faith and his borrowing from "popular Stoic-based philosophy" the concept of an immortal supraphysical entity in man must be remembered in relation to that other longest treatment of the Resurrection-theme -1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 - no less than to the discourse in 1 Corinthians 15. Here, however, a new truth emerges which is worthy of attention. The whole passage79 runs:
"We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him. We can tell you this from the Lord's own teaching, that any of us who are left alive until the Lord's coming will not have any advantage over those who have died. At the trumpet of God, the voice of the archangel will call out the command and the
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Lord himself will come down from heaven; those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. So we shall stay with the Lord for ever. With such thoughts as these you should comfort one another."
The new truth emerging from the passage is in the words: "We can tell you this from the Lord's own teaching." They connote that what Paul taught is the very message of his divine Master Jesus. Directly they refer to the statement "that any of us who are left alive until the Lord's coming will not have any advantage over those who have died". But this statement is integral part of all else: everything hangs together with it serving as the central assurance bearing straight upon the worry expressed by the converts in Thessalonia. The assurance only brings to a specific focus the fundamental doctrine of the Resurrection: that doctrine as taught by Paul may rightly be attributed to Jesus himself.
Obviously, the doctrine revolves around the theme of bodies in relation to the Resurrection. How will the Resurrection affect people in connection with their bodies? The apparent advantage of the living over the dead at the time of Jesus' return is that they will have intact bodies whereas the others' bodies will have corrupted and disappeared. Paul assures the mourners of Thessalonia that their deceased relatives and friends, unlike those who have not died in the religion of faith in Jesus, will have their bodies again just as Jesus himself had his. The stress is on having or not having "hope" of recovering the bodily existence which mattered so much to Judaeo-Christianity as distinguished from Graeco-Roman belief. Whether or not a supraphysical entity present in man survives in its own right is an irrelevant issue here. Still we should note that elsewhere 1 Thessalonians itself testifies in a most explicit manner to man's being something other and more than the reality which is implied by psyche and soma and which 1 Corinthians 15 presents in a form merging them as soma psychikon, the natural living physical body. For, in 1
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Thessalonians 5:23 Paul prays for his flock: "... may you all be kept safe and blameless, spirit, soul and body, for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."80 The original Greek for "spirit" is pneuma, the term whose central meaning we have to explore. What is of great import is that 1 Thessalonians is the earliest document of Paul's, dating to c. 50-51 A.D.81 So from the very start of his preaching career we may assume that the true sense of Resurrection in Paul was concentrated on the revival of bodily existence, soma psychikon, in however transfigured a shape, and left untouched the fate of the third component of man affirmed by Paul: pneuma.
The Pauline Pneuma - Signpost to the
Solution of Our Problem
The Jerusalem Bible82 comments on 1 Thessalonians 5:23: "Paul seems to have developed no coherent system of anthropology: this is the only place he mentions a tripartite division of body (cf. Romans 7:24+), soul (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:44+) and Spirit (which can be taken in two ways: as the divine presence in a human being, giving him new life in union with Christ, Romans 5:5+, or more probably as the innermost depths of the human being, open to the Spirit, cf. Romans 1:9+)."
The second definition keeps the term in line with the other two terms as what belongs by nature to man's being, though in that mode it does not exclude the action of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God and Christ, in this nature. The reference to Romans 1:9+ begins: "The God I worship spiritually.. ."83 The Jerusalem Bible84 appends the note: "Lit. 'Offer worship in my spirit'..." Another note85 tells us: "By spirit (pneuma) Paul sometimes means the highest element in a human being— This he distinguishes from the flesh, the lower element..., from the body..., and from the psyche also...; it bears some relationship to nous____By choosing this traditional term...instead of the nous of the Greek philosophers, the NT. can
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suggest a deep affinity between the human spirit and the Spirit of God that stimulates and guides it....There are many texts where it is hard to tell whether it is the natural or the supernatural spirit that is referred to, the personal or the indwelling spirit...."
Keeping all this information as our background, we may take up 1 Thessalonians 5:23 as the starting-point for our study. The words - "for the coming of our Lord" - show Paul, as often elsewhere, haunted by the idea of the Parousia which would transfigure the Christian, inducting him into a divine existence. But, as 1 Corinthians 15:44, 50 makes it explicit, what exists before the transfiguration is the soul-body, the animated physicality: the transfiguration brings about a spirit-body and this spirit-body is the powerful, glorious, immortal opposite of the soul-body. The latter's "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God". Obviously, the soul-body, soma psychikon, ceases and the spirit-body, soma pneumatikon, stands in its stead. Yet Paul wants us to believe that the dead who are soma psychikon become soma pneumatikon: otherwise there would be no meaning in speaking of the resurrection of the dead. In spite of the acknowledged total disparity an essential continuity is sought to be understood. So a vital logical link is missing, a link which, while the soma psychikon cannot be said to enjoy resurrection, is capable of entering the new state of soma pneumatikon.
We must be wary of the temptation to find an easy way out by saying that the missing link is actually in front of our noses when Paul writes in the vein: "I will tell you something that has been secret: that we are not all going to die... the dead will be raised, imperishable, and we shall be changed as well, because our present perishable nature must put on imperishability and this mortal nature must put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:51-53). The easy way out is to aver that what enters the new state is that which Paul indicates by "I" and afterwards by "we" and lastly puts in the possessive case with "our". But in the end-part does not "our" become synonymous with "this"? "Mortal nature" is the thing meant:
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no one is intended to be a separate possessor of it. All the pronouns are just linguistic modes: they point simply to the living as contrasted to the "dead" who will be raised. Is there an "I" or "we" existing in the dead apart from their perished soul-bodies and waiting to be brought up from the grave? Will we imply it if we speak of the dead getting their soul-bodies back? Unquestionably, with the soma psychikon differing toto coelo from the soma pneumatikon, there has to be a common factor to ensure continuity by passing into the new state. But linguistic modes by themselves cannot be said to provide the answer.
We approach the answer through a hint thrown out by The Jerusalem Bible86 when in the course of its long gloss on soul-embodiment and spirit-embodiment it speaks of the psyche in fundamental usage thus: "As it only gives natural life, 1 Corinthians 2:14..., it is less important than pneuma by which a human life is divinised by a process that begins through the gift of the Spirit, Romans 5:5+..., and is completed after death____" The reference to 1 Corinthians 2:14 - that is, to a verse in the very Epistle where the paradox of total disparity and essential continuity at the Resurrection is set forth - puts us on the track of the missing link. This verse and its immediate sequel run: "An unspiritual person is one who does not accept anything of the Spirit of God: he sees it all as nonsense; it is beyond his understanding because it can only be understood by means of the Spirit. A spiritual man, on the other hand, is able to judge the value of everything, and his own value is not to be judged by other men" (2:14-15).87 The Jerusalem Bible88 annotates "An unspiritual person": "Psychikos: man left to his own natural resources. Cf. the note on soma psychikon of 15:44." The Greek original, as is to be expected, for "A spiritual man" is pneumatikos. And, going a few verses earlier, we find Paul's declaration: "...we teach what scripture calls: the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. These are the very things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit reaches the
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depths of everything, even the depths of God. After all, the depths of a man can only be known by his own spirit, not by any other man, and in the same way the depths of God can only be known by the Spirit of God" (2:9-11).89 So there is an explicit positing of a spirit in man balanced by the Spirit of God.
To this spirit 1 Corinthians has a reference not only general but also in persona propria: Paul refers to it in his own self. The Jerusalem Bible90 interprets the mention of the "spiritual man" who is in opposition to the "unspiritual person" as an allusion to Paul himself: "A defensive remark: Paul, a 'spiritual' man, is not to be judged by the Corinthians who are 'sensual', 3:1-3." Paul's spirit finds open expression when he says: "Though I am far away in body, I am with you in spirit..." (5:3).91 Here is no mere synonym for "thought" or "mind": the word pneumati is used and pneumatos follows soon after when the theme of condemning an extraordinarily immoral Corinthian is pursued further, with a final pointer to that Corinthian's pneuma in a very meaningful way for our purpose: "When you are assembled together in the name of the Lord Jesus, and I am spiritually present with you, then with the power of our Lord Jesus he is to be handed over to Satan so that his sensual body may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord" (5:4-5).92 Whatever the handing over to Satan may precisely connote, the punishment, as The Jerusalem Bible93 rightly notes, "is intended to convert the man" in the interests of his spirit's salvation. This salvation bears illuminatingly on our argument because of the phrase: "the day of the Lord." The final universal Resurrection is in view in connection with the condemned man: hence the saving of his spirit on that occasion should imply the passage of this spirit from the soul-body, which the kingdom of God excludes, to the spirit-body which is the ultimate and supreme gift to the devoted Christian by the "life-giving spirit" (15:45)94 that Jesus risen from the dead has become.
The human pneuma seems to be the missing link between soma psychikon and soma pneumatikon. Paul does not overtly
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name it as such anywhere in 1 Corinthians 15, but we may intuit it from expressions like the one we have just cited and like that other about the succession of the two Adams, he who was earthly and he (Christ) who is from heaven: "... first the one with the soul, not the spirit, and after that, the one with the spirit" (15:46).95 By the grace of the second and last Adam the embodied soul that we are comes to an end and there takes place an embodied spirit: the spirit-embodiment is in response to Jesus who already has that embodiment. This appears to imply that we the soul have an embodiment but we the spirit lack it - at least in full identity - until the former vanishes with death and the latter which has grown during life gains a complete body in which it comes into its own. What happens during life is well touched off in 2 'Corinthians 4:11,16, where Paul speaks of the Apostles having "the spirit [pneuma] of faith that is mentioned in scripture", and affirms the result: "though this outer man of ours may be falling into decay, the inner man is renewed day by day."96
We may sum up how the ordinary death and the Resur-rectional situation stand for Paul. When the Christian's soul-body dies, his pneuma which has been building up within him goes to Christ. At the general Resurrection, this pneuma gets a plenary body for itself by the resuscitation of the dead soul-body in a transfigured shape. Those whose soul-body has not died before the Day of the Lord have no need of a resuscitation and they get a transfiguration of it straight away. Paul affords no rationale of the transfiguration. The two forms are poles apart, absolute opposites, as though the later one was a replacement of the earlier instead of a development of it. Even the alleged change is said to be instantaneous, like a sudden substitution rather than a process.
One further quotation from Paul may be made to serve more or less as a clincher of our pneuma-vision and at the same time to lead from the concept of the Christian's spirit-state to that of Christ's: "The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children we are heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, sharing
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his sufferings so as to share his glory" (Romans 8:16-17). Here not only is it Christ's Holy Spirit that is set together with the inmost spiritual depths of us like the major and minor chords of the same divine harmony, but what will happen to us in our fulfilment as sons of God is suggested to be a small future reflex of what happened to God's Son par excellence in the past. This means that it was by Jesus' spirit which was secretly the supreme Holy Spirit itself that the event mis-termed by Paul his Resurrection came to pass. We get the exact statement of the fact when Paul as an apostle summarises to his followers the "Good News" he was mystically chosen to preach, telling how the man Jesus was revealed to be the Divine incarnate: "This news is about the Son of God who, according to the human nature he took, was a descendant of David: it is about Jesus Christ our Lord who, in the order of the spirit, the spirit of holiness that was in him, was proclaimed Son of God in all his power through his resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:3-4)98
The Upshot of Our Inquiry
Now we may claim to understand how the complete discontinuity between Jesus' human form, which was a crucified soma psychikon, and the divine form, the glorious soma pneumatikon, in which he appeared after his death to Paul as well as to some fortunate others, was overcome. By his God-filled spirit the identical Jesus, losing his sacrificial soul-body, crossed over to a supernal spirit-body. Paul, positing a Resurrection, went against his own testimony that the heavenly body of Jesus which had appeared to him had no slightest feature of earth, no trait of physicality in the least. He was misguided, like all his Christian contemporaries, by Old-Testament prophecies whose long-believed validity about the life of Jesus as well as about other future events has no place, according to Brown,99 in "most serious scholarship today". In
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the teeth of his witness to the contrary Paul asserted God's raising of Jesus from the dead. And he went on doing so although he knew that Jesus' body had been thrown as that of a felon into a common burial-ground where his grave would be undiscoverable and could never provide any evidence of being left empty by a resuscitated corpse, a cadaver resurrected and transfigured.
A Jesus who paid the full penalty for man's "sin" but who, although he had assumed a perishable soul-body like sinning man's, was not for that reason doomed to die for ever unless God intervened to resurrect him - a Jesus who had as his deepest identity in the assumed death-fated human form a spirit inherently immortal agrees best with Paul's declaration to the Corinthians in which he ascribes to him a divine pre-existence voluntarily put behind: "Remember how generous the Lord Jesus was: he was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty" (2 Cormthians 8:9).100 In Philippians 2:6-9 we have the locus classicus of Jesus' pre-existence as God's equal, his chosen act of extreme self-emptying (kenosis) for the sake of man's redemption, and God's upliftment of him after death to the topmost height as a reward.101 If his original "state was divine" (Philippians 2:6), then during his life he must have been always aware of the Incarnation that he was, for else he could not know the sacrificial role he was working out. In our citation of Romans 1:3-4, although he "was proclaimed Son of God" through his Resurrection, he was still God's Son, however secretly, when he took "human nature" and "was a descendant of David". As such, for all the impoverishment, kenosis and most humble condition accepted by him, even to the extent of "death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8), he could not be in Paul's eyes nothing more than the arch-exemplar of the human state figured in traditional Hebraic thought, wherein there would be no inner immortal entity, and death would mean by the perishing of the body the cessation of one's personal existence. Paul, in being misguided by the current obsession with Old-Testament prophecies, believed in the bodily Resurrection of the dead
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Jesus, but his announcement of Jesus' pre-existence in heaven as "the first-born of all creation", through whom and for whom "all things were created" (Colossians 115-16),102 would be inconsistent with any suggestion that Jesus had nothing in him which would by innate nature survive the end of his willingly assumed soul-body. Even the ordinary human being who was a creation of Jesus had, in Paul's view, a surviving spirit. All the more would the Pauline Jesus have a spirit masterfully triumphant - by the full presence of God's Holy Spirit within him - over the fall of the physical form into the grave.
That form itself, differing in toto by Paul's own unmistakable account from the after-death pneuma-embodiment, cannot be assigned continuity with the latter. We may recollect Brown's observation:103 "It seems he thought Jesus had risen bodily from the dead but paradoxically he rejected the idea that the risen body was natural or physical." On the strength of Paul's stark internal rift plus the blank we draw from him about any discoverable grave of one who suffered a criminal's crucifixion, the alleged miracle of a corpse-transfiguring Resurrection has definitely to be given up. In The Jerome Biblical Commentary104 Brown has focussed the hub of the controversy: "The NT does not claim that anyone saw the resurrection and makes no attempt to describe it....Therefore, the reality of the bodily resurrection hinges on the missing body or empty tomb and, above all, on the validity of the experiences of those who claimed they saw Jesus risen." The very material submitted by the first and most enthusiastic proponent of these experiences prompts us to dissociate them from the dead body of Jesus as well as to deny that the body was missing and that the tomb was empty. But, while we have to renounce a miraculous corpse-transfiguring Resurrection, the miracle of the supposedly God-commanded appearances of Jesus' spirit-body to some selected disciples in the wake of his soul-body's demise remains - on the attestation of its greatest eye-witness - a mighty truth in the world's religious annals.
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1. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 322.
2. Ibid., p. 218.
3. Ibid., p. 299.
4. C. F. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Theology II, London: SCM, 1970), p. 64.
5. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 322.
6. The Virginal Conception..., pp. 90-91.
7. Ibid., p. 91.
8. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 323, col.l, note i.
9. Ibid., p. 322.
10. Ibid., p. 244.
11. Ibid., p. 246, col. 1, note e.
12. The Virginal Conception..., pp. 91-92.
13. The Life Divine (New York: The Sri Aurobindo Library, The Greystone Press, 1949), p. 479.
14. On Yoga, II, Tome One (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International University Centre Collection, Vol. VII, 1958), p. 55.
15. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 342.
16. The Life Divine, p. 238.
18. On Yoga, I: The Synthesis of Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International University Centre Collection, Vol. IV, 1955), p. 1003.
19. Ibid.
20. The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1952), p. 59.
21. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 320.
22. Ibid., p. 347.
23. Ibid., p. 342.
24. Ibid., p. 308.
25. Ibid.,p. 352.
26. Ibid., p. 355.
27. Ibid., p. 293.
28. Ibid., p. 308.
29. Ibid., p. 352.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 353, col. 2, note i.
32. Ibid., note a.
33. Ibid., pp. 255, 257.
34. Ibid., p. 287.
35. Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, translated by Margaret
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Kohl from the German (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), p. 177.
36. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 352.
37. Ibid., p. 296.
38. Ibid., p. 302.
39. Ibid., p. 304.
40. Ibid., pp. 304-05.
41. Ibid., p. 305, col. 2, note d.
42. Ibid., p. 313.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., p. 320.
45. Ibid., p. 321.
46. Letters on Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, 1970), Vol. 24, p. 1237.
47. Ibid.
48. Ernest F. Scott, The First Age of Christianity (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926), p. 201.
49. Ibid.
50. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 324.
51. Ibid., p. 302, col. 2, note e.
52. Ibid., pp. 338-39.
53. Ibid., p. 339, col. 1, note j.
54. Ibid., p. 314.
55. Ibid.
56. The Virginal Conception..., pp. 86-87, part of fn. 147.
57. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 315, col. 1, notes a & b.
58. The Virginal Conception..., loc. cit.
59. T. E. Pollard, "The Body of the Resurrection", Colloquium 2,1967, pp. 105-15, especially p. 109.
60. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 315, col. 1, note c.
61. Ibid., p. 346.
62. Ibid., p. 347.
63. Ibid., col. 2, note b.
64. Ibid., p. 332.
65. Ibid., p. 333, col. 1, note e.
66. Ibid., p. 333.
67. The Virginal Conception..., p. 87.
68. Bernhard W. Anderson, Rediscovering the Bible, pp. 212-13.
69. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 307, col. 2, note e.
70. Rediscovering the Bible, p. 212 & fn. 1.
71. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 309, col. 1, note 1.
72. Ibid., p. 255.
73. Giinther Bornkamm, Paul, translated from the German by D. M. G.
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Stalker (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), pp. 234-35.
74. The Virginal Conception..., p. 76.
75. The Jerusalem Bible, Chronological Table, p. 465, col. 2.
76. The Virginal Conception..., loc. cit.
77. Ibid., pp. 86-87, fn. 149.
78. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, pp. 253-54.
79. Ibid., p. 352.
80. Ibid., p. 354.
81. Ibid., p. 255.
82. Ibid., p. 354, cols. 1 & 2, note e.
83. Ibid., p. 267.
84. Ibid., col. 2, note f.
85. Ibid., noteg.
86. Ibid., p. 309, col. 1, note 1.
87. Ibid., p. 294.
88. Ibid., p. 295.
89. Ibid., p. 294.
90. Ibid., p. 295, col. 1, note i.
91. Ibid., p. 296.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid., p. 297, col. 1, note c.
94. Ibid., p. 308.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid., p. 314.
97. Ibid., p. 280.
98. Ibid., p. 267.
99. The Birth of the Messiah, p. 146.
100. The Jerusalem Bible, The New Testament, p. 299.
101. Ibid., pp. 239-40.
102. Ibid., p. 344.
103. The Virginal Conception..., p. 85.
104. "The Resurrection of Jesus", The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 791, col. 2.
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