Delphi complete works of.., p.110
Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 110
It will be necessary to consider this defence of Matthew’s accuracy against the objections of the German commentators.
I. The German commentators maintain that the chief priests are not likely to have known of any prophecy of Christ’s resurrection when his own disciples had evidently heard of nothing to this effect. Alford answers.
1. They had heard the words but did not understand their meaning: hatred enabled the chief priests to see clearly what love did not reveal to the understanding of the apostles. True, according to Matthew, Christ had said that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly so the Son of Man should be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth; but it would be only hatred which would suggest the interpretation of so obscure a prophecy: love would not be sufficiently keen-sighted to understand it.
I answer firstly that if the apostles had seen Lazarus raised when corruption had already set in, and had after this ever heard any words capable of suggesting the idea that Christ should himself rise — it is impossible that they should not have expected the resurrection: secondly, hatred is not keener sighted than love: thirdly, when Matthew’s accuracy is being impugned it is entirely beside the mark to quote Matthew in support of that accuracy: if Matthew in his version of the Resurrection be the inaccurate historian which the German commentators suppose, it is equally possible that he may have been inaccurate in recording the fact of the prophecy’s having been uttered.
1. Alford says that the raising of Lazarus would show the chief priests what sort of a thing the resurrection from the dead was to be, and that the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy concerning his crucifixion would naturally lead them to look further to what else he had announced.
I answer. Firstly: if the raising of Lazarus showed the chief priests what sort of a thing the resurrection was to be, it would show the apostles also: secondly, that if the fulfilment of the prophecy of the crucifixion would lead the chief priests to look further to the fulfilment of the prophecy of the resurrection, so would it lead the apostles: thirdly, that even Matthew does not represent the chief priests as believing that Christ would rise and as attempting to thwart a bona fide resurrection; he only represents them as anxious to guard against fraud on the part of the apostles.
I. The German commentators ask how was it possible that the women who were solicitous about the removal of the stone should not be still more so about its being sealed and a guard set? If the German commentators have asked their question in this shape, they have asked it badly and Alford’s answer is sufficient: they should have asked, how the other three writers can all tell us that the stone was already gone when the women got there, and yet Matthew’s story be true? and how Matthew’s story should be true without the other writers having known it? and how the other writers should have introduced matter contradictory of it, if they had known it to be true?
II. The German commentators say that in the Acts of the Apostles we find Gamaliel expressing himself as doubtful whether or no Christianity was of Cod, whereas had he known the facts related by Matthew he could have had no doubt at all. He must have known that Christianity was of God.
Alford answers that perhaps Gamaliel was not there. To which I would rejoin that though Gamaliel might have had no hand in the bribery supposing it to have taken place, it is inconceivable that such a story should not have reached him; the matter could never have been so quiet but that it must have leaked out. Men are not so utterly bad or so utterly foolish as Dean Alford seems to imply; and it by no means follows that because Gamaliel was not actually present when the guard were bribed that therefore he should be unaware of the circumstance.
III. The German commentators argue from the silence of the other evangelists: Dean Alford replies by denying that this silence is any argument: I would answer firstly, that on a matter which the other three writers must have known to have been of such intense importance their silence is a conclusive argument of either their ignorance or their indolence as historians. Dean Alford has well substantiated the independence of the four narratives, he has well proved that John could never have seen the other gospels, and yet he supposes that John either did not know the facts related by Matthew, or thought it unnecessary to allude to them. Neither of these suppositions is tenable: but there would be nevertheless a shadow of ground for Dean Alford to stand upon if the other evangelists were simply silent: but why does he omit all notice of their introducing matter which is absolutely incompatible with Matthew’s accuracy?
There is one other consideration which must suggest itself to the reader in connection with this story of the guard. It refers to the conduct of the chief priests and the soldiers themselves. The conduct assigned to the chief priests in bribing the guard to lie against one whom they must by this time have known to be under supernatural protection, is contrary to human nature. The chief priests (according to Matthew) knew that Christ had said he should rise: they did not believe that he would rise, but feared (so Matthew says) that the apostles would steal the body and pretend a resurrection: the motive assigned to them is natural, and believable enough, were it not contradicted by the narratives of the other three writers and the evident ignorance of any prophecy among the apostles themselves: but when we read of their bribing the guards to tell a lie under such circumstances as those which we are told had just occurred we say that such conduct is incredible: men are too great cowards to be capable of it. The same applies to the soldiers: they would never dare to run counter to an agency which had nearly killed them with fright on that very self-same morning. Let any man put himself in their position: let him remember that these soldiers were previously no enemies to Christ, nor as far as we can judge is it likely that they were a gang of well selected villains: but even if they were they would not have dared to act as Matthew says they acted. One word more will be enough: the discipline of the Roman army would never have permitted the bare possibility of such a thing being hushed up: the soldiers must have had an officer of some sort, and there can exist no question, but that had the events related in Matthew ever happened they would have been reported to Pilate, and investigated.
To my mind the reasons for rejecting the testimony of Matthew seem overwhelming; at the same time I do not feel that we should be justified in imputing to him any conscious fraud. Let him have written (whoever he was — for we know nothing about him) a little later or a little farther off, and the exaggerations might have easily come about. Christ was seen alive and angels had visited his tomb — it is by an easy transition that they visit it as soon as the women come, and speak to many, instead of being seen by only a weeping woman looking into the bottom of a tomb — and it is no very great addition to find that a single angel was actually seen to roll the stone from the door of the sepulchre itself. It must have been early objected by unbelievers that there was no evidence that the tomb had not been tampered with: and though the eager framer of the story of the guard (whoever he was) must be charged with pure invention, we cannot wonder that so desirable an addition to the completeness of the evidence of a miraculous resurrection should be early and easily accepted: twenty years would more than suffice for the rooting of the story, and as far as we can gather, Matthew’s Gospel was then still unwritten.
We may perhaps take this opportunity to remark that of all the writers Matthew deals most largely in the marvellous and John the least. John is silent on the miraculous conception, the temptation in the wilderness (which can hardly be made room for in his Gospel at all), the transfiguration, the darkness and earthquake of the crucifixion and the ascension. We are compelled to believe with Dean Alford that John had never seen any of the other three Gospels, and that he had no design of supplementing them. Strange that the eye witness should be silent on so many of the most important miracles and that we should obtain our knowledge of them from those who were not eye witnesses — men of whom we know absolutely nothing. True John tells of some great miracles, and tells them with remarkable circumstantiality, but on the whole the miraculous element does not prevail in his gospel to anything like the extent which it does in those of the men who we have no reason to suppose ever were eye witnesses of any part of what they tell us. If John believed what we know he did believe as to the resurrection, it is no wonder that this belief should have distorted both his memory and his judicial faculty. He would believe much that he never would have believed otherwise, and hence (as I take it) the miracles which he does record. No man could stand against the pressure to which John’s mind was subjected; neither is it surprising that the further we get from the known fountain head the more miracles we find. It would be inevitable, and no one should be dealt with harshly on account of it.
Let us as a commentary on the Christian miracles take the following passage from Gibbon.
‘The grave and learned Augustine whose understanding scarcely admits the excuse of credulity, has attested the innumerable prodigies which were worked in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen, and this marvellous narrative is inserted in the elaborate work of the ‘City of God,’ which the Bishop designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of Christianity. Augustine solemnly declares that he had selected those miracles only which had been publicly certified by persons who were either the objects or the spectators of the powers of the martyr. Many prodigies were omitted or forgotten and Hippo had been less favourably treated than the other cities of the Province: and yet the Bishop enumerates above seventy miracles of which three were resurrections from the dead in the space of two years and within the limits of his own diocese. If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses and all the saints of the Christian world, it will not be easy to calculate the fables and errors which issued from this inexhaustible source. But we may surely be allowed to observe that a miracle in that age of superstition and credulity lost its name and its merits, since it could scarcely be considered as a deviation from the ordinary and established laws of nature.’ (Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, chap, xxviii end of §11. and near the end of the chapter itself).
Who believes these miracles? Yet on what better foundation do those of the New Testament rest?
Nevertheless as Dean Alford well says, the evidence as to the main fact of Christ’s resurrection is absolutely unimpeachable. Christianity must have had a foundation, and the reappearance of Christ after he had been supposed dead is at once the best attested and the most credible foundation for it. It seems to me that the reappearance of Jesus Christ is as well attested as the assassination of Julius Caesar. If Christ did not reappear, the very foundations of historical criticism are unsound: but I cannot think that there is any evidence worth the name for more than this, namely, that Christ was crucified and seen alive afterwards. Of his death there is absolutely no evidence at all. There is evidence that he was believed to have been dead, but there is no more; he was believed to have been dead by men who might have been easily deceived — by men whose minds were altogether in a different key with regard to the miraculous than ours are, and whom therefore we cannot fairly judge by any modern standard. We cannot judge them, but we can weigh the facts which they relate. Men’s modes of thought concerning facts change, but the facts change not at all; in order then to get at the truth as nearly as possible we must turn to St. John’s account of the crucifixion. Here we find that it was about twelve o’clock when Pilate brought out Christ for the last time: the dialogue that followed, the preparation for the crucifixion and the leading Christ outside the city to the spot where the crucifixion was to take place can hardly have occupied less than an hour. By six o’clock (so we gather from John) the body was entombed, so that the actual time during which Christ was upon the cross can be little more than about four hours. Say five — say six — say whatever the reader chooses, the crucifixion was avowedly too hurried for death in ordinary cases to ensue. The thieves had to be killed. Immediately after the crucifixion the body is delivered to friends. And within thirty-six hours afterwards it is seen alive again.
Would a modern jury believe that the death had been actual and complete? I cannot think it, unless there was brought forward such convincing testimony as to the actual death that there could be no possibility of doubt upon the subject. If Christ had had his head cut off, if he had been burnt, or even if modern medical testimony as to the completeness of the death had reached us, and yet within thirty-six hours he was again seen alive, walking, talking, and eating, there could be nothing for it but to admit the miracle: or, again, if his legs had been broken, or his feet pierced, and he was seen walking very shortly afterwards, we could say nothing; but what irreparable mischief is done to the body by the mere act of crucifixion? The feet were not always, nor perhaps (so Alford tells us, quoting from Justin Martyr) generally pierced, nor is there a particle of evidence to show that they were so in this instance. A man who is crucified dies from pure exhaustion: is it improbable that under these circumstances he might swoon away, and that every outward appearance of death might precede death itself even by some hours? Men have been left for dead, been buried for dead by their best friends — nay, they have been pronounced dead by physicians under circumstances where a mistake was far less likely to happen than at the hurried crucifixion of Jesus Christ. These reflections are surely very obvious. True the Roman soldiers thought that Christ was dead, and it is not likely that they should have been deceived. It is not likely that they should have been deceived, but it is even less likely that Jesus Christ, if he had been once really dead should have been seen alive again. It is not probable that a man judicially condemned to die should escape death, but on the other hand such cases have happened before now; and John — a most unexceptionable eye witness of what took place — tells us many things which would lead us to believe that what is not commonly probable might have easily happened in this case.
The crucifixion was hurried, the body was delivered at once to Joseph and Nicodemus, who, though they doubtless believed Christ to be dead when they received him from the cross, would neither in common humanity kill him when they found out their mistake, nor forfeit their high position by being known as the restorers of a condemned man. They would keep their own secret, certainly from the apostles, and probably, if they could, even from Christ himself. It is noticeable that we hear of them no more. Nevertheless, there arises the question, how far the spear-wound, recorded by John, is to be considered as necessarily fatal. Unless it can be distinctly proved that this spear-wound must have been fatal, it seems that the balance of probability would lie greatly in favour of Christ’s having escaped death. If the spear-wound can be shown to have been necessarily fatal, the death of Christ is proved. The resurrection becomes supernatural; the ascension ceases to be marvellous; the miraculous conception, the temptation in the wilderness, anything and everything, becomes believable about one in whose case all human experience is found to fail; but the proof of the necessity of death’s having ensued upon the infliction of this would must be as clear as daylight before we are justified in rejecting the natural solution of the mystery, and adopting the supernatural instead. And we must own, also, that once let Nicodemus and Joseph have kept their own counsel — and they had a great stake to lose if they did not keep it — once let the apostles believe that Christ’s restoration to life was miraculous, and men’s minds would become so unsettled, that in a very short time all the recognised and all the apocryphal miracles of Christ would pass current without a shadow of difficulty. This is the centre point of the whole. Let this be believed, and, considering the times, which it must be always remembered were, in respect of credulity, widely different to our own times, considering the previous hopes and expectations of the apostles, considering their education, Oriental modes of thought and speech, familiarity with the idea of miracles, and considering also the unquestionable force and greatness of Christ’s character, with the really remarkable circumstances of the case, — I say, once let the resurrection be believed (and under these circumstances it is not remarkable that it should have been believed) and the rest is all explicable — the mystery of Christianity is solved. The question then turns upon the nature of the wound inflicted by the centurion. Can it be proved to have been necessarily fatal? Let us see what Dean Alford says upon this point.
In his note on John xix. 34, Alford writes: ‘The lance must have penetrated deep, for the object was to ensure death’ [the object is a matter of pure conjecture; the soldiers thought Christ to be already dead, or they would have broken his legs; what need then to kill a dead man? It may have been given to ensure death, and even in this case it may have failed; it may have been given in more wanton mockery of the dead king of the Jews; no one can say anything about it with even an approach to certainty from the evidence before us], ‘and see John xx. 27.’ [Dean Alford means to say that the wound must have been large enough for Thomas to get his hand into it, because Christ says, ‘reach hither thine hand and thrust it into my side;’ but surely words are not to be pressed in this way; I might as fairly myself press the earlier part of the same verse in a manner which would shock me to write as much as it would the reader to read.] ‘Probably into the left side on account of the position of the soldier’ [no one can arrive at the position of the soldier from the evidence before us, and no one would attempt to do so unless actuated by an almost nervous anxiety to direct the spear into the heart of Christ]: ‘and of what followed’ [the Dean here insinuates that the water must have come from the pericardium; yet in his next note we are led to infer that he rejects this supposition, inasmuch as the quantity of water would have been ‘so small as to have scarcely been observed.’ Is this fair manly argument?]
