SECTION II

intimation of Christ's resurrection brought to his enemies

(Mat 28:11-15)

As the friends of Jesus who designed to anoint Him in the tomb for the sleep of death were sent back to the comfortless community of His friends as messengers of His resurrection, the servants of His enemies who had kept watch over His sealed sepulchre were also sent to the representatives of His enemies. The risen Lord, with one forth-putting of the power of His victory, made an end of the mourning and dejection of His friends, and of the seal which His enemies had set, and their intoxication of victory. The two bands of messengers hurried away from the sepulchre, impelled and borne onward by the awe-inspiring display of His eternal power; but the one band was animated by the trembling joys of the new life, and the other by the paralyzing terrors of judgment.

The Evangelist found both facts very significantly connected in one circumstance. ‘Now when they (the women who had seen the Lord) were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and showed unto the chief priests all the things that were done.’ According to this account, some of the bewildered keepers must have been seen in the streets of Jerusalem by the women returning home. It was according to military regulations for one part of them to remain at their post, while the other gave information of the extraordinary occurrence.

Thus, according to God’s decree, intimation of Christ’s glorification had to be given officially and formally to His enemies, the authorities of this world who had put Him to death; and they themselves had furnished the occasion for this by their official sealing of His sepulchre, which included in it the official denial of His resurrection. But the authorities of the world suppressed the effect of this intimation by perpetrating and permitting deceit. The certainty of Christ’s resurrection, which God afforded the world in the form of worldly certainty and attestation, was deprived of power by the most glaring act of cabal and falsification which the world has seen; and God left this work of shame to run its wretched course, because the tidings of the resurrection must be spread abroad, not in the shape of worldly certainty, but of heavenly certainty, by showing, namely, that Christ’s resurrection effected essential sealings and unsealings in the kingdom of the Spirit and of essential life.

The chief priests held a council with the elders, in which they discussed the news brought by the watch. This assembly knew what was suited for the knowledge of the world better than ‘modern criticism’ does.¹ It was at once seen that the account of the legitimate watch must be acknowledged. We may imagine as we best can how much perception of the truth was here, and how much suppression of that perception, how much secret perplexity and how much hypocritical show of quietness of mind and of taking the matter easy. We are not told what was determined on in this unblessed council. This much is certain, the members had long been skilled in every evil practice. The issue of this consultation was, that the chief priests gave large money unto the soldiers, and at the same time inculcated on them that they should spread abroad the saying, ‘His disciples came by night, and stole Him away while we slept.’

This was certainly to demand from the soldiers an act of base boldness. They were bidden to become unfaithful to the most sacred experience of their lives, for they had, so to speak, stood before the Holy One under the lightning flash of judgment; they were told to do their best to nullify this by an audacious falsehood. They were to tell a falsehood which contained the double and gross contradiction, that they as sleepers had seen and known Jesus’ disciples, and that as watchers they had suffered His body to be taken away. They had finally to expose themselves to the danger of being severely punished by the Roman governor, for their professed negligence in watching.

How often do unstable men allow themselves to be seduced to surrender a matter of conscience for much money; especially subordinates allow themselves to be thus seduced by men in high positions! But on one supposition the chief priests might plausibly represent the matter to the rough heathen soldier as a falsehood now become necessary; namely, if they threatened to tell Pilate that the soldiers had not guarded the sepulchre against terrors which they might represent as imaginary, or if they insinuated that the disciples were magicians able to raise such terrors. As to the contradiction, its sharpness would be concealed if the testimony of the watch, that they had slept, was treated as really true, and the story about the stealing as a bold conjecture of the soldiers, founded upon this or that sign. Finally, the danger in telling this story was not great, in so far as it only circulated as a report among the people. The Romans could distinguish between official statements and private rumours. But in case of necessity, the chief priests promised to persuade Pilate, which implies that they would, if asked, reveal to him the truth of the occurrence.

But were the Roman soldiers open to bribery? One who knows human nature might smile at this question. History can tell much of the corruptibility of ancient and modern Romans, and especially of Roman guardians of Christ’s sepulchre. As matter of course, ‘criticism,’ in order to dispense with belief in the incorruptibility of the Gospel history, finds the corruptibility of the Roman soldiers very improbable in this case, in which they were asked to tell a falsehood which supposed inattention to duty.²

The soldiers thus entered into the proposal, and a saying arose, which was commonly reported among the Jews until the time that Matthew wrote his Gospel, nay, traces of it are still to be found in Jewish literature;³ a kind of myth, which asserts the non-resurrection of Jesus. But this myth is by its nature doomed to remain always an obscure piece of gossip among the Jews. The only significance which it has attained to is, that it serves for a symbol of all the vain attempts to represent the news of the resurrection of Christ as the consequence of a trick played at night, or of the self-deceit of the disciples—of a trick regarding which the initiated, the seeing sleepers or the sleeping seers (men of mere science who pretend to know how matters of faith, e.g., visions and appearances, are formed), especially the Jews of the later antichristian tradition who speculate upon the possibility of miracles,⁴ assure us they are able to set us right.

───♦───

Notes

1) See Strauss, ii. 565. Besides, the assertion, They believed the sayings of the soldiers, that Jesus rose from the grave in a wondrous way, pushes the fact too far for the aims of 'criticism.' Nothing can be gathered from the Gospels, except that they let the reports pass which the soldiers gave concerning their extraordinary experience; what these reports were, is not said.

2) See Strauss, ii. 565. Ebrard, 456, excellent on the opposite side. 'The whole of Christendom, that multitude of humble, quiet men, may have devised and adhered tenaciously to a barefaced lie; but the murderers of Jesus were incapable of persuading the soldiers to propagate a trifling untruth, which their own position rendered necessary.'

3) See Sepp, iii. 560.

4) As Spinoza, for example.