cheenc03a.pdf

RESURRECTION- AND A SDENSION-NARRATIVES
various accounts one deduction which goes very deep :
no words were heard from the risen
heard,
No
Jesus. (a) At first right the hearing of
words might appear not to be excluded
by the rirnple 'was seen ' (i+B7) of Paul. It is to he
noted. however, that where Pwl soeaks of havine
received messages from heaven, he expressly specifies
'ievelationr' (iisonahii+alr) ar well as 'virionr' (driaoioi :
2 Cor. 12r-4), and where the distinction is employed it
is clear that spoken words come under the farmer not
the latter category.
lbl As aeainst this. aooeal will douhtlerr he made to
th$ &port; in Actr as i; the appeamnces of Jesus to
Paul on the journey to Damascus. Not succersfully,
however: they contradict one another so violently
(see ACTS, 5 2) that it is difficult to imagine how it
could ever hive been porrible for an author to take them
UD into his book in their oresent forms. not to soeak of
tl;. impo5ribility of accep;mg them in where they
are unsupported by the epistles of Paul. In these
eoistler, there is not the sliehrert countenance for the
belief that Paul heard wo;ds, although he had the
strongest motive5 for referring to them had he been
in a position to do so. It is on the appearance on the
journey to Damarcus that he baer his claim. to have
been called to the apostolate by Jesus himselt The
claim \>.as hotly denied by his opponents : it *.as to his
interest, therefore, to bring forward everything that could
validly he adduced in its support. In pressing it (r Cor.
9,. 'Am I not an apostle?') he assuredly would not
have stopped short at the quertion, 'Have I not reen
Jesus our Lord?' had he been in a position to go on
and ask, 'Has he not himself named me his apostle?'
with such words engraven on his memory as those we
read in Actr 96 2210 or (above all) 2616.18. The
analogy of the angelic appearances cited above (5 r7c)
thus no longer holds good Words are heard from
angels ; no words were heard from Jesus.
(c) What hold. good of the appearance to Paul ir true
also (see 5 17 a) of the others of which we read. If, too,
we apply a searching examination to the words which
hnve been reported, it is precisely the most characteristic
of them that we shall find ourselver mort irresistibly con-
strained to abandon. The rwuest for food and the
invitation to touch the wound; of the crucified Jerun
(Lk.2?394r Jn.20~~) are, as we have seen in 5 17e.
lnadm~iilhle. So also, ar has been seen in 6 " r6r. . the
saying, I am not yet ascended unto the Father (2017).
The power to fargive sins or to declare them unforgiven
(2023) belongs to God alone. and cannot be handed
over bp Jesus to his disciples (see MINlsmu, $ 4). rhe
doctrine that the passion of Jesus was necessary in virtue
of a divine aooointment is invariablv broueht fonrard
by Paul as th; 'gospel that had heen'nrade"manifeii to
himself alone and muit be laboriourly maintained in the
face of its gainrayerr : how triumphantly would he not
have been able to meet them had he only heard the lerrt
suggestion that the men of the primiiire church had
heard the same doctrine from the mouth of Jesun himself
in the mariner recorded in Lk. 2421.11 14-46 ! Once
more. how could the original apostles have been able to
call themselves disciples of Jesus if, after having been
sent out by him as mirrionarier to the Gentiles (Lk.
2zr7,f Mk. 16 16 and the canonical text of Mt. 28 q),
they actually made it a stipulation at the council of
Jerusalem (Gal. Z9) that their activity war to be confined
within the limits of Israel? As fur the text of Mt. 2819
on baptism and the trinitarian formula, see MINrsmu,
5 5e. cp Hibd. lourn., Oct. rgoz, pp. raz-108 : and
on Jo. 21 15-zz see above, 5 9 1.
An equally important point ir that
the 19. scene (i&lilee
the firat appearances happened in
the first Galilee. The moat conviricing reason:,
for this conclusion have already been
appearances' summarised under GusPrLs (5 138o).
(a) In addition to what is said there special emph-is
463
. . ,
traditioi: there must have been some reason why the
one locality was changed for the other.
(b) Such a rearon for transferring the appearances
from Galilee to Jerusalem has been indicated in GOSPBLS
(8 138a). Its force becomes all the greater when it is
renlised how small has been the success of even the mort
to look for appearances if.not in' Jerusalem where the
grave, the women, and the disciples were? Thus the
tradition which induced them to dace the aoaearancer ..
in Galilee must have been one of very great stability.
. .
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