Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/273

 as taking some part in the interment. To the circumstance of the burial in the rock sepulchre, Matthew adds an audacious fiction of his own; namely, that the chief priests, remembering Christ's prediction that he should rise on the third day, obtained leave to seal the stone of the tomb and keep it watched, lest the disciples should take the body by night and pretend that he was risen (Mk. xv. 42-47; Mt. xxvii. 57-66; Lu. xxiii. 50-56; Jo. xix. 38-42).

Certainly if the Evangelist had meant to convey the impression that no human means could prevent the resurrection of Christ, he would have been perfectly right. An actual body was not necessary for the purpose. For the legends appertaining to the resurrection belong to a region in which imagination, unhampered by the controlling influence of historical fact, has been permitted the freest play. Of the appearances of Jesus after his death we have accounts by no less than seven different hands, each story being distinct from, though not always inconsistent with, the other six. Let us begin with what is probably the oldest of all, containing but a germ of the rest; the first eight verses of the last chapter of Mark. There we are told that on the day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary James's mother, and Salome went to the sepulchre at sunrise. They found it empty, the stone having been rolled away. A young man in white clothes was sitting in it. He told them that Jesus was risen, and desired them to tell the disciples that he was going to Galilee, where they would see him. All that follows in this Gospel is added by a later hand, and the very first verse of the addition is plainly written in total disregard of what has just preceded it. Observe then that the simplest form of the story of the resurrection contains no mention of any actual appearance of Jesus whatever, but merely an assertion that the body was not in the tomb, and that a man, sitting inside it, made certain statements to three women. To this the forger has added that Jesus appeared first to Magdalene, whose account, given to the disciples, was disbelieved by them; secondly, to two disciples while walking, whose evidence was also disbelieved; thirdly, to the eleven at dinner, to whom he addreseed a discourse (Mk. xvi).

The writer of thee first Gospel is much more elaborate. He