Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 109
Let us now turn to the account of Luke.
‘Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in glittering garments: And as they were afraid and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words, And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which had come to pass.’
When we compare this account with John’s, we are struck with the resemblances and the discrepancies. Luke and John both agree that Christ was seen alive after the crucifixion. Both agree that the tomb was found empty, very early on the Sunday morning (i.e. within thirty-six hours of the deposition from the cross), and neither affords us any clue whatsoever as to the time and manner of the removal of the body; but the angelic vision is by Luke placed in the van of the narrative, and Peter’s going to the tomb is reported as having taken place in consequence of it. The angels instead of being seen by only one, are seen by many; the women are not represented as almost stolidly indifferent at the presence of supernatural beings, they are afraid and bow down their faces to the earth: instead of making an almost objectless enquiry, the angels have a definite purpose; they allude moreover to past prophecy, which the women at once remember. True the apostles a few verses lower appear to remember nothing of the sort; they regard the story of the women as mere idle tales, but that is of minor moment. What shall we say? Does it seem improbable that the simple facts as told by John, should before the time when Luke’s Gospel was written, have assumed the form in which we here find them? To my mind no, and that too with no conscious fraud on the part of any one of those through whose mouths the story must have passed. In John we have an eye witness. When he tells us of what he saw, there is the visible impress of truth in his story. When he tells us of what Mary Magdalene said she saw, we see the myth in its earliest and crudest form: there is no attempt at circumstance in connection with it: it is given by an honest man, pure and simple, and abundant reason for suspecting its historical character is given along with it; reason which to our minds is sufficient for rejecting it, but which would naturally have no weight whatever with John’s, or indeed with ours if we had been placed as John was placed. But surely it would not be long in such times before many a little embellishment was engrafted on to the original story; no one would mean to deceive, but we know how among uneducated enthusiastic persons the marvellous has a constant tendency to become more marvellous still, and as far as we can see, all the causes which bring this about were more strongly at work shortly after the time of Christ’s reappearance, than they have been in any instance which we can call to mind. The main facts were that Christ’s tomb was found empty on the Sunday morning, that Mary Magdalene had seen angels within it, and that shortly afterwards Christ was seen alive. Whether the angels were seen first or last, by one or many, appears at first sight to be of little moment, but we may be very sure that the story would not lose in the telling, and that the angelic vision would soon find its way into the most important place and receive such little circumstantial details as it appeared to stand most in need of; in fact the first Christians would not have been men and woman at all unless this had been so; but they were men and women, and they unconsciously exaggerated; the only wonder is that they did not exaggerate more: for we must remember that even though the apostles themselves be supposed more faultless, more judicially unimpassioned, and less liable to inaccuracy than they probably were (being men), there could not but be some converts in the very earliest ages who would be of an inferior stamp. No matter how small a society is, there are bad in it as well as good — there was a Judas even in the twelve; but to use a less harsh expression, there would be incautious reporters in the church before long; visions and dreams would be vouchsafed to many: many a marvellous narrative may possibly be referable to this source: there is no trusting an age which is liable to give a supernatural interpretation to any extraordinary dream. It was when Peter had been fasting and was hungry that we are told he dreamed of eating unclean food. I would not lay stress on the accuracy of the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, and should hardly feel sure that Peter ever dreamed of the sheet let down from Heaven at all; he may or he may not have done so, but we know what fancies crowd upon us in dreams, and observe that when we lay stress on any particular thing that we have dreamt, the chances are a thousand or a hundred thousand to one that we go wrong. It is not the safest people who believe in such fancies, neither is there any end to what may come of it if an age once seriously confuses its sleeping and waking realities. In such an age then Luke may have said with a perfectly clear conscience that he had carefully sifted the truth of what he relates; but our own, being older and wiser than his, recognises a different standard of credibility. He would believe at once what we should reject at once; yet it is probable that he too had heard much which he rejected; he seems to have been dissatisfied with all the records of whose existence he was aware; the account which he gives is most likely to have been a very early one; it might well be not a week later than the facts themselves, only told in Galilee not at Jerusalem, so that I can see no reason for charging Luke even with credulity: a mind which is highly sceptical for its own age may seem slavishly credulous to the next; and Luke may have, perhaps not unjustly, almost prided himself on the scepticism and impartiality with which he had rejected other accounts which had reached him. He believed firmly all that he wrote, and very possibly he believed all the more firmly from knowing how much he disbelieved; those who pride themselves on accuracy generally are more firmly persuaded when they are misled at all than other people are: they are aware of the general bias of their minds and feel that their habitual caution gives them a right to hold strongly whatever they do hold; if then by an almost irresistible chain of causes their standard of caution is not quite high enough, we can expect nothing but a greater degree of confidence in proportion to the generally greater degree of scepticism.
Let us now turn to Mark. He writes thus: —
‘And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had brought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen, he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid. Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. And they, when they heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not.’
Here we have substantially the same version as we find in Luke: there is only one angel, but this is an inaccuracy which we would not lay stress upon; the vision is again placed in the van of the narrative, and the fear of the women is brought even more prominently forward. The angel reminds the women that Christ had said that he should be seen by his apostles in Galilee, of which saying we again see that the apostles have no recollection. The linen clothes have quite dropped out of the story, and we can detect no remnant of Peter and John’s visit to the tomb unless a faint trace of it is to be seen in the command to tell Peter and the rest, that Christ was risen. We have the same substratum of facts, the tomb empty when the women came there, a report of angels seen within it, and the subsequent reappearance of Jesus Christ — but neither John, Luke, nor Mark afford us the slightest clue as to the time and manner of the removal of the body from the tomb; there is nothing in any of their narratives to preclude its having been taken away on the very night of the crucifixion itself. But Christ reappeared: his reappearance was conceived to be miraculous; Mary Magdalene said she had seen angels in the tomb — who would doubt her when so far greater a marvel than this was palpably manifest to all? Who would care to enquire very particularly whether there were two angels or only one? who would scrutinise the exact moment of their appearance, and what minutely accurate account of their words could be expected? Any speech that was tolerably plausible would have been accepted under the circumstances by both the reader and myself, and none will cavil at Mark for inaccuracy any more than at Luke. The amplification of the story was inevitable; the very candour of the writers in leaving so many loop-holes for escape from the miraculous, is proof (if proof were needed) of their sincerity; nevertheless it is also proof that they were each more or less inaccurate; and we have in the reappearance of Christ himself an abundant palliation for the amount of inaccuracy which we find. Given one great miracle, proved with a sufficiency of evidence for the proclivities and capacities of the age, and the rest is easy. This groundwork we have in the fact that Christ was crucified and was afterwards seen alive.
Let us now turn to Matthew. Here we find all changed. If his account is trustworthy we have the very thing which was wanted: we have the knowledge given us of the time and manner of the removal of the stone from the tomb. We find that it was not gone when the women came, but that it had been sealed and a guard set upon it. Let us read his version.
‘Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch. In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him (cf. John xx. 16, 17). Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.’
The question arises how far is this narrative true, and how far is it exaggerated? That there is either exaggeration or omission somewhere is clear, for nothing can be plainer, according to the other three writers, than that the tomb was empty when it was first seen on the Sunday morning — of these three John was an eye witness and we can depend upon him; Luke we have every reason to suppose was the companion of St. Paul, and as careful a writer as the condition of the times would allow; but of Matthew we know positively nothing. Perhaps the simplest way of examining his narrative will be by way of commenting on Alford’s notes upon the twenty-eighth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, and on his last note on the twenty-seventh.
Speaking of the independence of the four narratives (in his note on Matt, xxviii. 1-10) and referring to their ‘minor discrepancies,’ the dean says ‘supposing us to be acquainted with every thing said and done in its order and exactness we should doubtless be able to reconcile or account for the present forms of the narratives; but not having this key to the harmonising of them, all attempts to do so in minute particulars must be full of arbitrary assumptions and carry no weight with them: and I may remark that of all the harmonies those of the incidents of these chapters are to me the most unsatisfactory. Giving their compilers all credit for the best intentions, I confess they seem to me to weaken instead of strengthening the evidence, which now rests (speaking merely objectively) on the unexceptionable testimony of three independent narrators, and one who besides was an eye witness of much that happened. If we are to compare the four and ask which is to be taken as most nearly reporting the exact words and incidents, on this there can, I think, be no doubt. On internal as well as external ground that of John takes the highest place, but not of course to the exclusion of those parts of the narrative which he does not touch.’
Surely the above is a very extraordinary note. The difficulty of the irreconcilable differences between the four narratives is not met or attempted to be met: the Dean seems to consider the attempt as hopeless: no one, according to him, has been as yet successful, neither can he see any prospect of succeeding better himself: the expedient therefore which he proposes is that the whole should be taken on trust, that it should be assumed that no discrepancy which could not be accounted for would be found if the facts were known in the exact order in which they occurred. In other words he ignores the difficulty. Yet the difficulty is a very grave one. A story so extraordinary that we should never believe it were it to be told us as having happened in our own times is given us by four different writers in four more or less different ways. The confusion in which the differences leave us is allowed to be so hopeless that any attempt to reconcile them leaves the matter worse than at first. We know that the age in which the accounts were written was credulous and unscientific, while three of the writers are unknown to have been personally concerned in what they tell us. These three deal most in the miraculous, while the fourth, whom we accept as an eye witness, writes in such a way as to suggest a simple explanation of the whole. Nevertheless, according to the Dean, we are to feel no doubt: by the simple process of passing over the difficulty our faith will remain unshaken.
Let us now turn to note on Matt, xxvii. 62-66.
With regard to the setting of the watch and the sealing of the stone, the Dean tells us that the narrative following (i.e. the account of the guard and the earthquake) ‘has been much impugned and its historical accuracy very generally given up even by the best of the German commentators (Olshausen, Meyer; also De Wette, Hase, and others). The chief difficulties found in it seem to be: (1) How should the chief priests, etc., know of Christ’s having said, in three days I will rise again, when the saying was hid even from his own disciples? The answer to this is easy. The meaning of the saying may have been and was, hid from the disciples; but the fact of its having been said could be no secret. Not to lay any stress on John ii. 19 (“Jesus answered and said unto them — destroy this temple and in three days I will build it up”), we have the direct prophecy of Matt xii. 40 (“For as Jonah was in the whale’s belly three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights”): besides this there would be a rumour current through the intercourse of the apostles with others that he had been in the habit of so saying. As to the understanding of the words we must remember that hatred is keener sighted than love; that the raising of Lazarus would show what sort of thing rising from the dead was to be; and the fulfilment of the Lord’s announcement of His crucifixion, would naturally lead them to look further to what more he had announced. (2) How should the women who were solicitous about the removal of the stone not have been still more so about its being sealed and a guard set? The answer to this last has been given above — they were not aware of the circumstance because the guard was not set till the morning before. There would be no need of the application before the approach of the third day - it is only made for a watch, έως τής τρίτης ήμβρας (ver. 64,) and it is not probable that the circumstances would transpire that night — certainly it seems not to have done so. (3) That Gamaliel was of the council, and if such a thing as this and its sequel had really happened, he need not have expressed himself doubtfully (Acts v. 39,) but would have been certain that this was from God. But first it does not necessarily follow that every member of the Sanhedrim was necessarily present, and applied to Pilate, or even had they done so that all bore a part in the act of xxviiii. 12 (the bribing of the guard to silence). One who like Joseph had not consented to the deed before — and we may safely say that there were others such - would naturally withdraw himself from further proceedings against the person of Jesus. (4) Had this been so the three other evangelists would not have passed over so important a testimony to the Resurrection. But surely we cannot argue in this way — for thus every important fact narrated by one evangelist alone must be rejected, e g. (which stands in much the same relation), the satisfaction of Thomas, — and other such narrations. Till we know more about the circumstances under which, and the scope with which each gospel was compiled, all à priori arguments of this kind are good for nothing.’
