Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (871 page)

* That it was the marks of the nails in the hand, which became visible in the act of breaking bread, by which Jesus was recognized (Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b. s. 882; Kuinol, in Luc. p. 734.) is without any intimation in the text.In the fourth gospel Jesus first stands behind Mary Magdalene as she is turning away from the grave; she however, does not recognize him even when he speaks to her, but takes him for the gardener, until he (in the tone so familiar to her) calls her by her name. When on this she attempts to manifest her veneration, Jesus prevents her by the words:
Touch me not,
m
h
m
o
u
a
p
t
o
u
,
and sends her with a message to the disciples. The second appearance of Jesus in John occurred under peculiarly remarkable circumstances. The disciples were assembled, from fear of the hostile Jews, with closed doors: when all at once Jesus came and stood in the midst of them, greeted them, and presented — apparently to their sight only — his hands and feet, that they might recognize him as their crucified master. When Thomas, who was not present, refused to be convinced by the account of his fellow disciples of the reality of this appearance, and required for his satisfaction himself to see and touch the wounds of Jesus : the latter, in an appearance eight days after, granted him this proof, making him touch the marks of the nails in his hands and the wound in his side. Lastly, at the appearance by the sea of Galilee, Jesus stood on the shore in the morning twilight, without being known by the disciples in the ship, asked them for fish, and was at length recognized by John, through the rich draught of fishes which he procured them; still, how ever, the disciples, when come to land, did not venture to ask him whether it were really he. Hereupon he distributed among them bread and fish, of which he doubtless himself partook, and finally held a conversation with John and Peter.
^*

Now the general ideas which may bc formed of the life of Jesus after his resurrection are two: either it was a natural and perfectly human life, and accordingly his body continued to be subject to the physical and organic laws; or his life was already of a higher,

* The part of this conversation which relates to John, has already (§ 116) been considered. In that relating to Peter, the thrice repeated question of Jesus:
Lovest thou me?
has reference, according to the ordinary opinion, to his as often repeated denial ; but to the words :
When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest, but when thou shall be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shalt gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not,
(v. 18 f.), the Evangelist himself gives the interpretation, that Jesus spoke them to Peter,
signifying by what death he should glorify God.
He must here have alluded to the crucifixion, which, according to the ecclesiastical legend (Tertull. de præscr. hær. xxxvi. Euseb. H. E. ii. 25) was the death suffered by this apostle, and to which in the intention of the Evangelist the words
follow me,
v. 20 and 22 (i.e. follow me in the same mode of death) also appear to point. But precisely the main feature in this interpretation, the stretching forth of the hands, is here so placed as to render a reference to crucifixion impossible, namely, before the leading away against the will; on the other hand, the girding, which can only signify binding for the purpose of leading away, should stand before the stretching forth of the hands on the cross. If we set aside the interpretation which, as even Lücke (s. 703) admits, is given to the words of Jesus
ex
eventu
by the narrator : they appear to contain nothing more than the commonplace of the helplessness of age contrasted with the activity of youth, for even the phrase,
shall carry thee whither thou wouldest not,
does not outstep this comparison. But the author of John xxi., whether the words were known to him as a declaration of Jesus or otherwise, thought them capable of being applied in the manner of the fourth gospel, as a latent prophecy of the crucifixion of Peter.superhuman character, and his body supernatural and transfigured: and the accounts, taken unitedly, present certain traits to which, on the first view, each of these two ideas may respectively appeal. The human form with its natural members, the possibility of being known by means of them, the continuance of the marks of the wounds, the human speech, the acts of walking and breaking bread, — all these appear to speak in favour of a perfectly nattiral life on the part of Jesus even after the resurrection. If it were possible still to demur to this, and to conjecture, that even a higher, heavenly corporeality might give itself such an aspect and perform such functions : all doubts must be quelled by the further statement, that Jesus after the resurrection consumed earthly food, and allowed himself to be touched. Such things are indeed ascribed even to higher beings in old myths, as for example, eating to the heavenly forms from whom Abraham received a visit (Gen. xviii. 8), and palpability to the God that wrestled with Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 24 ff.
):
but it must nevertheless be insisted that in reality both these conditions can only belong to material, organized bodies. Hence not only the rationalists, but even orthodox expositors, consider these particulars as an irrefragable proof that the body and life of Jesus after the resurrection must be regarded as remaining still natural and human.
^*
This opinion is further supported by the remark, that in the state of the risen Jesus there is observable precisely the same progress as might be expected in the gradual, natural cure of a person severely wounded. In the first hours after the resurrection he is obliged to remain in the vicinity of the grave; in the afternoon his strength suffices for a walk to the neighbouring village of Emnaus; and only later is he able to undertake the more distant journey into Galilee. Then also in the permission to touch his body there exists the remarkable gradation, that on the morning of the resurrection Jesus forbids Mary Magdalene to touch him, because his wounded body was as yet too suffering and sensitive; but eight days later, he himself invites Thomas to touch his wounds. Even the circumstance that Jesus after his resurrection was so seldom with his disciples and for so short a time, is, according to this explanation, a proof that he had brought from the grave his natural, human body, for such an one would necessarily feel so weak from the wounds and torture of the cross, as always after short periods of exertion to require longer intervals of quiet retirement.

But the New Testament narratives, as we have seen, also contain particulars which favour the opposite idea of the corporeality of Jesus after the resurrection : hence the advocates of the opinion hitherto detailed must undertake so to interpret these apparently antagonistic features that they may no longer present a contradiction. Here it may seem that the very expressions by which the appearances of Jesus are ordinarily introduced, as
w
f
q
h
, used of the

* Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, b. s. 834 ff.L.J. 1, b. s. 265 ff.
;
Ammon, ut sup.; Hase, L. J. § 149; Michaelis, ut sup., s. 255
f. Comp. also Neander, L. J. Chr. s. 650.appearance in the burning bush (Exod.
iii
2,
LXX.);
o
p
t
a
n
o
m
e
n
o
V
,
of the appearance of the angel in Tobit xii. 19;
e
f
a
n
h
,
of the angelic appearances in Matt. i. and ii., may seem already to point to something supernatural. As still more decided indications, the idea of a natural going and coming which may be presupposed in some scenes, is contradicted in others by a sudden appearance and disappearance; the
supposition of an ordinary human body is opposed by the frequent non-recognition on the part of friends, nay, by the express mention of
another form,
e
t
e
r
a
m
o
r
f
h
;
above all, the palpability of the body of Jesus appears to be opposed by the capability which, according to the first impression from the text, is lent to him in John, namely, that of entering through closed doors. But, that Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus at first for the gardener, is thought even by commentators who ordinarily are not diffident of the miraculous, to be most probably accounted for by the supposition that Jesus had borrowed clothes from the gardener, who very likely dwelt near to the grave; moreover, say these writers, both in this instance and in the journey to Emmaus, the disfiguration of the countenance of Jesus by the sufferings of crucifixion may have contributed to prevent his being recognized, and these two circumstances are alone to be understood from the expression
e
t
e
r
a
m
o
r
f
h
, another form,
in Mark.
^*
As to the disciples going to Emmaus, in the joyful astonishment caused by the sudden recognition of him whom they had believed dead, Jesus, it is said, may easily have withdrawn from them unobserved in the most natural manner; which, however, they, to whom the whole fact of the resuscitation of Jesus was a miracle, might regard as a supernatural disappearance.
^†
Nor, we are told, do the expressions :
e
s
t
h
e
n
m
e
s
w
a
u
t
w
n
or
e
i
V
t
o
m
e
s
o
n
he stood in the midst of them,
especially in John, where they are accompanied by the ordinary words
h
l
q
e
n
he came,
and
e
r
c
e
t
a
i
he comes,
imply anything supernatural, but merely the startling arrival of one who had just been spoken of, without his being expected; and the assembled disciples took him for a spirit, not because he entered in a miraculous manner, but because they could not believe in the real resuscitation of their deceased master.
^‡
Lastly, even the trait which is supposed to be decisive against the opinion that the body of the risen Jesus was a natural and human one, — the coming when the doors were shut
e
r
c
e
t
a
i
q
u
r
w
n
k
e
k
l
e
i
s
m
e
n
w
n
in John, — has long been interpreted even by orthodox theologians so as no longer to present any obstacle to that opinion. We will not discuss explanations such as that of Heumann, according to which the
doors
were not those of the house in which the disciples were assembled, but the doors of Jerusalem in general, and the statement that they were shut is an intimation of its having been that hour of the night in which it was customary to close the

* Tholuck, in loc., comp. Paulus, exeg. Handh, 3, b. s. 866, 88m. A similar natural explanation has lately been adopted by Lücke, from Hug.

† Paulus, ut sup. s. 882.

‡ Paubus, ut sup. 883, 93; Lücke, 2, s. 684 f.doors, while the
fear of the Jews
represents the motive, not for the closing of the doors, but for the assembling of the disciples. Apart from these expedients, Calvin himself pronounces the opinion that the body of the risen Jesus passed
per medium ferrum et asseres,
to be
pueriles argutiæ,
for which the text gives no occasion, since it does not say that Jesus entered
per januas clausas,
but only that he suddenly appeared among his disciples,
cum clausæ essent januae.
^*
Still Calvin upholds the entrance of Jesus of which John here speaks as a miracle, which must consequently be supposed to consist in this, that Jesus entered
cum fores clausae fuissent, sed quæ Domino veniente subilo patuerunt ad nutum divinæ majestatis ejus.
^†
While more modern orthodox divines only contend for the less definite position, that in the entrance of Jesus some miracle took place, its precise character being unascertained :
^‡
Rationalism has found means entirely to banish the miraculous from the event. The closed doors, we are told, were opened to Jesus by human hands; which John omits to notice, only because it is understood as a matter of course, nay, it would have been absurd of him to say: they opened the doors for him, and he went in.
^§