JESUS lay in the tomb over the Sabbath. He would not regain consciousness for many hours, and in the meantime the spices and linen bandages provided the best dressing for his injuries. We may dismiss the story in Matthew alone that the chief priests requested Pilate that a guard be set over the tomb, and that they posted a watch, presumably on Saturday evening at the end of the Sabbath. The fantastic details make it appear that the story was a late reply to allegations that the body had been stolen by the disciples, which is confirmed by the words that ‘this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day’.1 Part of the story, as we have shewn, may have been suggested by the Simon bar Giora incident recorded by Josephus (above p. 165). The Jewish allegation, however, was a rational one and has to be entertained. As a distinguished Christian scholar has stated: ‘When stripped of supernaturalism the empty tomb may point rather to a removal of the body from the place where the women had seen it laid and its burial elsewhere.’ He concludes: ‘Thus when Jews spread abroad the story that the disciples of Jesus had “stolen” the body, they spoke the truth.’2 But if the body of Jesus was taken from the tomb by his friends on Saturday night, we should be ready to agree with the Gospels that the immediate disciples of Jesus knew nothing about this, and they would be quite sincere in indignantly repudiating any contention that they had been guilty of perpetrating a fraud.
Christians are surely right in protesting that the Church could not have been established on the basis of a deliberate falsehood on the part of the apostles, and therefore there must be another explanation for the removal of the body than an intention to pretend that Jesus had risen from the dead. An alternative to the accusation of theft is given by the Church Father Tertullian of Carthage at the end of the second century. Rhetorically addressing the Jews who are confounded by the Second Coming of Christ, he says, ‘This is he whom his disciples have stolen away secretly, that it may be said he is risen, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowd of visitors!’3
So another story was also current in the second century, which placed responsibility on ‘the gardener’, who took away the body of Jesus to save his vegetables. In the same century the Gospel of Peter speaks of crowds from Jerusalem and the neighbourhood who came early on the morning of the Sabbath (Saturday) to see the sepulchre of Jesus. A Coptic manuscript from Egypt now in the British Museum entitled The Book of the Resurrection and attributed to the Apostle Bartholomew has a variant of the story. The gardener is called Philogenes, whose son Jesus had cured. He speaks to Mary at the tomb, though the Mary here is the mother of Jesus not the Magdalene, and tells her:
‘From the very moment when the Jews crucified him, they had persisted in seeking out an exceedingly safe sepulchre wherein they might lay him, so that the disciples might not come by night and carry him away secretly. Now I said to them, There is a tomb quite close to my vegetable garden; bring him, lay him in it, and I myself will keep watch over him. I thought in my heart saying: When the Jews shall have departed and entered into their houses, I will go into the tomb of my Lord, and will carry him away, and will give him spices and sweet-smelling unguents and scents.’4
This strange tale may have originated from what is uniquely stated in the Fourth Gospel, where Mary Magdalene sees a man at the tomb whom she supposes to be the gardener, and says to him, ‘Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.’5 But what is this incident doing in the Gospel? Was it due to something which came to light later? We may never know. In any case we are bound to take seriously whatever may help to solve the mystery of the empty tomb. If we discard the charge that the body of Jesus was removed in order to claim that he had risen from the dead, or that the gardener on his own initiative had done it to preserve his crops, we are left with the perfectly natural and fully justifiable reason that Jesus was taken from the tomb at the first possible opportunity for the entirely legitimate purpose of reviving him. For this action at least two persons would have been needed, one of whom could well have been the gardener.
The argument of the last chapter will then hold good, that a plan was being followed which was worked out in advance by Jesus himself and which he had not divulged to his close disciples. What seems probable is that in the darkness of Saturday night when Jesus was brought out of the tomb by those concerned in the plan he regained consciousness temporarily, but finally succumbed. If, as the Fourth Gospel says, his side was pierced by a lance before he was taken from the cross his chances of recovery were slender. It was much too risky, and perhaps too late, to take the body back to the tomb, replace the bandages left there, roll the stone across the entrance, and try to create the impression that everything was as it had been on Friday evening. It would also have been thought most unseemly. Before dawn the mortal remains of Jesus were quickly yet reverently interred, leaving the puzzle of the empty tomb.
From this point we are dealing with the accounts of the resurrection as related in the Gospels, and it has to be seen whether they are consistent with our hypothesis. We are nowhere claiming for our reconstruction that it represents what actually happened, but that on the evidence we have it may be fairly close to the truth. We have to allow that the Gospel accounts come to us from a time when the figure of Jesus had become larger than life, and his story had acquired in telling and retelling many legendary features. Yet we must not treat them as wholly fictitious and they have preserved valuable indications of what transpired. We can almost see the process at work which transformed the deep despondency of the companions of Jesus into the joyful conviction that he had triumphed over death as he said he would. What emerges from the records is that various disciples did see somebody, a real living person. Their experiences were not subjective.
It is well to remind ourselves again that Jesus was positive that he was the Messiah of Israel and applied himself in a remarkable manner to carrying out the predictions as he understood them. The Church was built on his persuasion that the messianic prophecies must be fulfilled. He was truly Jewish in being both visionary and pragmatist. His attitude towards the Messianic Hope of his time was not so unlike that of Theodor Herzl in calling for the return to Zion nearly nineteen centuries later. Jesus could have used Herzl's famous words in The Jewish State, ‘If you will it, it is no dream.’ We have seen how far he was prepared to go to compel events to answer to the predictions.
Jesus may not have overlooked that he might taste of death in spite of the measures he had secretly taken for his survival. He could have interpreted Isaiah liii in this sense: ‘He made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his deaths [plural].’ Two deaths, two burials were thus foreshadowed. He would die as it were on the cross, and yet again after the cross. But whatever would happen his faith assured him that in some way God would raise him up and receive him until his coming in glory with the clouds of heaven. Jesus knew, however, that his disciples would be in anguish, not readily crediting the prophecies. There can be no clear proof, but we are entitled to imagine him as we have done regaining consciousness after he was taken from the tomb, and using these precious minutes to beg his friends to deliver a message to his disciples. He would repeat what was so much a part of him, the Scriptures relating to his suffering and revival. ‘Tell them these things,’ he may have urged. ‘They must believe. Tell them that when I have risen I will meet them in Galilee as I said, and afterwards enter into glory.’ With this possibility in mind we have to look closely at our documents for what illumination they afford.
Very early on Sunday morning the women associates of Jesus led by Mary of Magdala set out for the tomb. Suddenly it occurred to them that they might have difficulty in rolling the stone from the entrance; but they continued on their way. When they arrived they were astounded and alarmed to find that the stone had already been moved. Had grave robbers been at work? Cases were known of entry being forced to obtain corpses or parts of them for magical or medicinal purposes. It was a capital crime to tamper with tombs and interfere with the bodies of the dead. An imperial decree found at Nazareth in 1870, which may date from the reign of the Emperor Claudius (A.D. 41–54), witnesses to this. Timidly the women approached and looked into the cave. What they saw alarmed them still more. There was a strange man there.
According to Mark's Gospel the man who was seen had been a young man in a white robe who had told the women that Jesus had risen, and that they were to inform Peter and the others that he would see them in Galilee as arranged. This is how the story came to be related afterwards. But it impresses as true that the women did find someone in the tomb, who could have been the gardener or the other unknown who had participated in the earlier events and perhaps was the man who administered the drugged drink to Jesus on the cross. If he spoke to the women, which is quite likely, they were in no state to take in what he said. All that registered at the time was that the body of Jesus was gone and that a strange man was there. Trembling and unnerved they fled, and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. Here the text of Mark breaks off.
The story progressed in the light of belief in the resurrection of Jesus. The young man became an angel, and then two angels. The words he had used could be recalled. The Fourth Gospel may be nearest the truth in making only Mary of Magdala go to Peter and the Beloved Disciple to break the dire news on behalf of the other women. There is no word here of any message from a risen Jesus to deliver. She only blurts out, ‘They've taken away the Master from the tomb, and we don't know where they have laid him.’ Who ‘they’ are is not specified.
The news was a terrible shock and completely mystifying. At once confirmation was sought. Surely there must be some mistake! The two disciples ran to the tomb, and John the priest being much younger outdistanced Peter and got there first. As a priest he would not enter the tomb until he knew there was no corpse there to make him ritually unclean. He only looked in and saw the grave clothes lying. Peter was not concerned about defilement, and went straight in. It was true. The body was gone and only the wrappings were there neatly folded. John then entered, and suddenly it came to him that Jesus had risen. Until then, says this Gospel, it had not been apprehended that the Scriptures had foretold the resurrection. Puzzled and wondering the two returned to John's house.
This was the beginning, the empty tomb and a flash of inspiration on the part of the Beloved Disciple. But there was no confirmatory evidence.
Mary, it would appear, had followed the disciples to the tomb, and when they left she remained behind weeping. Through her tears she perceived a man standing by the tomb, whom she took to be the gardener, and said to him, ‘Sir, if you have moved him, tell me where you have put him and I will take him away.’ The man, according to the Fourth Gospel, then reveals himself to her as Jesus, and tells her not to catch hold of him. He gives her much the same message as it came to be reported the young man in the tomb had given the women, as recorded by Mark, to which the Fourth Gospel makes no reference.
The unknown man is the key figure so far, the most important clue we have. He could, as we have conjectured, have been the man who gave the potion to Jesus at the cross, who had assisted in conveying the body to the tomb and the next night had helped to move Jesus, and when he was found to have died to have taken part in burying him. The women had seen him dimly inside the tomb when they arrived early on Sunday morning. When they fled he was still in the vicinity, and Mary of Magdala suddenly saw him when she looked up through her tears. Her question to him had hit the nail on the head, because he had in fact been concerned in removing Jesus, and he may defensively have answered, ‘Keep away from me,’ or, ‘Leave me alone.’ But why should he have lingered at the tomb to he seen on these two occasions? It may well be that he had indeed been trying to give a message which Jesus, as we have suggested, in a brief period of consciousness, had instructed him to deliver to his disciples. He may have been too frightened to reveal himself when Peter and John came to the tomb, not knowing who they were at the time, and being fully aware he had committed a crime in taking away the body of Jesus. Because of the distraught state of the women he had encountered he could not be sure even now that his message had registered.
Clearly Mary did not recognise the man she saw as Jesus. But just finding him suddenly beside her caused her in her half-crazed condition to identify him as Jesus, who had spoken to her and then disappeared. We know that she was unbalanced, since Jesus had had to cast out of her seven demons. She was deeply devoted to him, passionately perhaps, and may have nurtured the delusion that he was in love with her. In her great grief it would be consistent with that delusion that he should appear to her to console her and call her endearingly by name.
Mary rushed back to the disciples with her tale of having seen the Master. So another ingredient was added to the story. There had been the empty tomb, the man seen by the women who was converted into an angel, the conviction of the Beloved Disciple, and now the man who had spoken to Mary of Magdala had become an appearance of Jesus himself. From this moment incredulity began to struggle with dawning faith. Simon and John could confirm that they had found the body of Jesus gone, though the linen wrappings were still in the tomb. They confessed, however, that they had not themselves seen Jesus.6
The mood was now one of suppressed excitement. Grave doubt was there and sorrow, but also a preparedness for anything to happen however extraordinary. If Jesus was alive who could tell how or when he would appear, what he would look like? On the testimony of Jesus himself had not Elijah been revealed in the guise of John the Baptist? They were highly superstitious countrymen, to whom the doctrine of the transmigration of souls was not alien.
We move to the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus narrated only by Luke. This author appears to have written his Gospel in Greece at the beginning of the second century and Robert Graves has shown that certain ingredients in the story are strongly reminiscent of the first chapter of The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius, published at this time.7 This does not mean that the story was a complete invention, but that Luke used the work of Lucius as a literary aid as he did various passages from Josephus.
The essence of the story is that the disciples, one of whom was Cleophas, according to tradition an uncle of Jesus,8 were approached by a stranger as they talked sadly about the events of the past days. They told him about the hopes of Jesus which had been entertained, that he would prove to be the Messiah, and the stranger encouraged them by quoting some of the messianic predictions. They responded eagerly by requesting him to sup with them and tell them more. He agreed, and afterwards took his leave. In Luke's text he vanishes. Cheered by the stranger's discourse, the disciples were soon telling each other that the man must have been Jesus all the time. ‘Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures?’
According to Josephus the village of Emmaus was about four miles north-west of Jerusalem. The tomb in which Jesus was laid was also north-west of the city. The disciples may have come from the tomb, which in view of the reports they had wished to see for themselves. The stranger who caught up with them could have been the man at the tomb, trying to fulfil the behest of Jesus. He could not be sure that the distracted women he had met so far had grasped and passed on the message he had been pressed by Jesus to deliver to the disciples. Now he tried again.
This of course is only a theory which would fit the recorded circumstances. We do not know just how much of the story is authentic. Again an important ingredient is the failure to identify Jesus, this time by his own relations. The man on the road to Emmaus clearly was not Jesus.
According to Luke the two told their story when they returned to Jerusalem, to be greeted by a statement of an ‘appearance’ to Simon Peter. In this atmosphere there is reported to have occurred the ‘appearance’ to the apostles in the Judean tradition followed by Luke and John. This is at variance with the Galilean tradition followed by Matthew, which is echoed in the appended final chapter of John. In the Judean tradition Jesus positively identifies himself to the apostles in Jerusalem, exhibiting his wounds and eating food. We may regard the information as in the highest degree questionable in view of the rival record in Matthew, which suggests that the apostles did not see Jesus in Jerusalem and after the Passover returned to Galilee still unconvinced trusting that Jesus if he was alive would manifest himself to them at the place he had appointed. If the Judean version was true the apostles by this time should have been absolutely certain that Jesus had risen. This version gives the impression of being a Jerusalemite response to the Galilean story. In both there is an eating by Jesus of broiled fish.
We are then left with consideration of the ‘appearances’ in Galilee. The fullest version is in the Fourth Gospel, but we need only concern ourselves with the basic elements. Peter decides to go fishing, and six other disciples accompany him. They have no luck all night. Looking towards the shore in the early morning they see a man standing there who hails them and inquires if they have anything to eat. They reply that they have nothing as yet; but just then they obtain a substantial catch. The success is linked with the man on the shore. The Beloved Disciple, first to believe that Jesus had risen,9 exclaims, ‘It is the Master!’ This is good enough for Peter, and he jumps overboard and makes for where the man is. The man was thus assumed to be Jesus, but John says, ‘The disciples did not know it was Jesus.’ When they came to land after beaching the boat they found fish cooking on a fire, and the stranger invited them to eat with him. ‘None of the disciples dare ask him, “Who are you?” knowing it was the Master.’ But this was just what they did not know. The essence of the matter is that the apostles who knew Jesus so well entirely failed to recognise him in the man they saw. They were only persuaded by the belief of the Beloved Disciple. The stranger here was as obviously unidentifiable as Jesus as had been the man whom Mary met at the tomb, and the man on the road to Emmaus. It would seem to be the same with the man on the mountain in Galilee referred to by Matthew. When the disciples saw him they prostrated themselves before him, ‘but some doubted’.10
A likely explanation of the circumstances is that all along, beginning with the young man first seen at the tomb by the women, one and the same man was being seen, and he was not Jesus. This man was bent on fulfilling what was perhaps a promise to Jesus when he lay dying after his removal from the tomb on Saturday night, that he would faithfully deliver to Peter and the other disciples a message that the Messiah had risen in accordance with the prophecies, and that they would see him at the place he had told them about in Galilee. The man, who had shown his quality at the cross, did his best. He gave the message to the women and to Mary of Magdala, and spoke also to the disciples who had visited the tomb and were taking the road to Emmaus. But he could not be satisfied. He had not seen Peter and the other ten and did not know where to find them. When he did get news of them, it was that they had gone back to Galilee. The man followed: he may have been told by Jesus where the rendezvous was to be. Finally he was able to discharge his obligation.
Naturally it cannot be said that this is the solution of the puzzle. The men may not have been in every case the same. There is room for other theories, such as that the man concerned, if there was but one, was a medium, and that Jesus, risen from the dead into the After Life in the Spiritualist sense, spoke through him in his own voice, which enabled his presence to be recognised. Too little is told, and that little quickly became too legendary, and too contradictory, for any assured conclusion.
The view taken here does seem to fit the requirements, and is in keeping with what has been disclosed of the Passover Plot. The planning of Jesus for his expected recovery created the mystery of the empty tomb. Without that plan it is difficult to find a valid reason why his body should have been removed from its first resting place, and without the empty tomb belief in his resurrection would probably not have registered. It was this material fact, which seemed to confirm the faith Jesus had expressed that he would rise again in accordance with the Scriptures, which prompted the beginnings of conviction. It was reinforced by the appearance on the scene of a messenger, which is what angel means, whom Jesus before he died had instructed to communicate the faith which was his to the end to his sorrowing followers. It was an old Jewish saying, ‘A man's messenger is as himself.’ New-born hope and wish fulfilment caused the messenger to be identified with the Master.
There was no deliberate untruth in the witness of the followers of Jesus to his resurrection. On the evidence they had the conclusion they reached seemed inescapable. There was nothing to tell them what had become of his body. They could not know that the Prophet like Moses had been finally laid to rest like Moses himself in an unknown grave.
Neither had there been any fraud on the part of Jesus himself. He had schemed in faith for his physical recovery, and what he expected had been frustrated by circumstances quite beyond his control. Yet when he sank into sleep his faith was unimpaired, and by an extraordinary series of contributory events, partly resulting from his own planning, it proved to have been justified. In a manner he had not foreseen resurrection had come to him. And surely this was for the best, since there would have been no future for a Messiah who returned temporarily to this troubled world possibly crippled in mind and body.
By his planning beyond the cross and the tomb, by his implicit confidence in the coming of the Kingdom of God over which he was deputed to reign, Jesus had won through to victory. The messianic programme was saved from the grave of all dead hopes to become a guiding light and inspiration to men. Wherever mankind strives to bring in the rule of justice, righteousness and peace, there the deathless presence of Jesus the Messiah is with them. Wherever a people of God is found labouring in the cause of human brotherhood, love and compassion, there the King of the Jews is enthroned. No other will ever come to be what he was and do what he did. The special conditions which produced him at a peculiar and pregnant moment in history are never likely to occur again. But doubtless there will be other moments having their own strange features, and other men through whom the vision will speak at an appointed time. Meanwhile we have not exhausted the potentialities of the vision of Jesus.
‘When I am raised up,’ Jesus is reported to have said, ‘I will go before you into Galilee.’ Let those who wish to partake of the faith and strength of purpose of this amazing man seek for him there in the land he loved, among its hills and beside its living waters.
1. Mt. xxviii. 15.
2. The Burial of Jesus by Prof. J. Spencer Kennard, Jr. (Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. lxxiv, 1955).
3. Tertullian, De Spectaculis, xxx. An echo of this story is found in the ninth century in the Epistola contra Judaeos of Amulo, Archbishop of Lyons, who quotes a Jewish tradition that Jesus when taken from the cross was put into a tomb ‘in a certain garden full of cabbages’ (caulibus pleno).
4. The Book of the Resurrection, translated by E. A. Wallis Budge from Oriental Manuscripts No. 6804 in the British Museum.
5. Jn. xx. 15.
6. Lk. xxiv. 24; Jn. xx. 2–10.
7. In the Golden Ass, ‘a traveller overtakes two countrymen earnestly discussing a local miracle, becomes engrossed in their talk, and continues with them until they reach their goal. Later, one of the countrymen says, “You must surely be very much of a stranger here, if you are ignorant . . .” of a further wonder’ (The Nazarene Gospel Restored, p. 763).
8. Cleophas was a brother of Joseph the father of Jesus. The other disciple may have been his son Simeon, Jesus’ first cousin, who was chosen to become leader of the Nazoreans after the death of Jacob (James) the brother of Jesus.
9. Jn. xx. 8.
10. Mt. xxviii. 16–17.