The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical / Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine Revelation

by C. A. Row

Again: If for the purposes of the argument we accept the impossible supposition that a few deluded fanatics persuaded themselves that they had seen their Master risen from the dead, and that they set themselves to persuade others that this was a fact, then it is clear that the wish of making converts to their belief must have been a very gradual and slow process. This, in the face of all the evidence supplied by history, does not require further proof. It would be impossible to make converts at all, without adducing some overwhelming evidence of the truth of their assertion. But on the supposition that it was a delusion of the imagination, such evidence could not be forthcoming. Such beliefs are only possible after the lapse of very considerable intervals of time, if they are possible even then.

But in the present case recollections were all fresh. Will the attempt to persuade persons who live in the city where a public execution has taken place, that the man executed is alive again, succeed? Will it succeed anywhere in the neighbourhood, while the events are still in everybody's recollection? Living actors must have died out, memories of the past must have become faint, before such things can be made to wear even the semblance of possibility. But the plain historical facts refuse to concede the requisite interval during which such a belief could slowly grow up. While the belief was growing, the Church would have been perishing from want of a Messiah to step into the place of the dead Jesus. On the contrary, the growth of the belief was rapid. The Church speedily rose from its ruins. Before St. Paul's conversion, it had increased to such numbers as to be worth persecuting. There was a Church at Jerusalem; there were Churches in Judæa; there were Christians in Damascus. Before this event the small knot of deluded fanatics had persuaded thousands; they had formed the Society which subverted the religion and institutions of the Roman empire, and of which all the progressive races of men profess—now in the 19th century of its existence—to be still members. The facts of unquestionable history utterly refuse to the advocates of this theory the time necessary for imparting to it even a passing plausibility.

I infer, therefore, that the theory that one or more credulous enthusiasts among the disciples of Jesus fancied that they saw their Master risen from the dead, while in reality they were labouring under some mental hallucination, and that they communicated their enthusiasm to the rest, and that these created the Christian Church, is unsound in philosophy, contradicts the facts of history, and the phenomena of human nature, [pg 466] as testified to by past experience, and is destitute of the possibility of verification, and also is contrary to analogy. It follows, therefore, that this portion of the alternative before us must be pronounced utterly inadequate as a solution of the facts.

Let us now consider the other alternative, that Jesus did not actually die, but, although He had been crucified, escaped with His life; that His disciples saw Him after His crucifixion; and, being persuaded that He had expired, mistook His appearance for a restoration to life.

This alternative need not detain us long. It is involved in a considerable number of the difficulties which are connected with the assumption that some one or more of the disciples fancied that they saw Him when they did not really see Him, and that they persuaded the others that He was risen from the dead. These difficulties I have already disposed of. But it has in addition some difficulties peculiarly its own, which I will now briefly notice.

I admit that it was possible to recover from the effects of crucifixion, if taken down from the cross in time. This we learn from Josephus, who, on his return one day from going to examine a place for the encampment of the Roman forces, found that three of his friends had been crucified during his absence. By his entreaties, he obtained the orders of Titus for their being taken down. Two died under cure; one recovered. Josephus is silent as to whether they had been scourged before they were crucified. This was no doubt an important point in reference to the possibility of recovery. Such was the usual practice; although when the Romans crucified the Jews in large numbers, as they had now been in the habit of doing for some time, it may be a question whether it was always inflicted. [pg 467] These persons had probably been suspended on the cross for some hours before they were taken down. They were treated with the utmost care, with a view to their recovery; yet two out of the three died. Such are the facts, as related by Josephus.

It has been suggested that Jesus was only in a swoon when taken down from the cross; that in the sepulchre He recovered His consciousness, to which the large quantity of spices used at His burial might have contributed; that He managed to creep out of the grave to some place of security, where He was seen by a few of His disciples, but that He died not long after. This, it is said, the disciples mistook for a Resurrection, and that it formed the basis of the renewed life of the Church. Let it be observed that there would be the same difficulties in re-constituting the Church on such a basis, and in procuring converts to this belief, as there would have been on the other alternative, which I have shown to be untenable. These, therefore, I need not consider.

This theory pre-supposes not only that the body of Jesus was interred, but that it was committed to the custody of His friends. This fact we have from the Gospels; as well as the additional fact that the time during which He was suspended on the cross did not exceed six hours at the utmost. But we also learn from them that, before Pilate ordered the body to be delivered up, he took care to ascertain, from those in charge, the certainty of the death; and the fourth Gospel affirms that one of the soldiers, in order to remove all doubt on the subject, pierced his side with a spear. Now without the aid of the Gospels it would not have been known that the body was committed to the custody of His friends. If, therefore, their historical testimony is good for this fact, it is absurd to refuse [pg 468] them credence when they testify to the other facts. We say distinctly: if the truth of the one set of facts is denied, because the Gospels are unhistorical, the truth of the other set (for the Gospels are the sole authorities) must not be assumed on their testimony. Apart from this, we are only at liberty to assume that the crucifixion was conducted in the usual manner; and that the bodies were disposed of accordingly, i.e. that, if the crucified persons were buried at all, they were buried ignominiously. It has also been affirmed that Pilate sacrificed Jesus by compulsion, and that the centurion on guard was not ill-disposed towards him. This again, I say, we only learn from our present Gospels, and I must again protest against the practice of accepting their testimony on one side and ignoring it on the other. The Romans, moreover, were not the sort of men to allow a crucified victim to be taken down from the cross until they were well assured that he had hung there long enough to extinguish life; and from the frequency of such executions they would learn how long it would require, and what on such occasions were the symptoms of death; nor did they concede to persons so executed an honourable burial.

But further: It never occurred to the Jews that it was possible that the crucified Jesus had escaped with His life, and that this fact was really at the bottom of the announcement of His resurrection. If it was known to any person concerned that He had thus escaped, nothing could have been more dangerous on the part of His followers than to announce that He was risen from the dead. This was the very thing to promote inquiry, and to arouse a suspicion among His enemies that He had not really died, and thus to induce them to make every effort to ascertain the place of His retreat. The quickest way to put an end to the story of the Resurrection [pg 469] was to produce the living Jesus, weak and exhausted from His wounds; or, if He had really died, to produce His body. But not a single whisper has come down to us from the opponents of Christianity that He did not really die. If such an idea had afforded even a probable account of the story of the Resurrection, it would certainly have occurred to Paul when a persecutor, and he would have had recourse to it as a means of dissipating the delusion. Such are some of the first difficulties which surround this mode of accounting for the story of the Resurrection. A sepulchre was a place ill-fitted for a man, exhausted by scourging and crucifixion, to recover in; nor was there a retreat at hand. But, as we scrutinize the matter more closely, these difficulties become impossibilities.

It is clear that from the hour of His supposed death on the cross, Jesus disappears from history, except in the form of Jesus the Messiah raised again from the dead, the great Founder of the Christian Church. If, therefore, His supposed Resurrection was nothing but a recovery from a swoon, one of two things is certain: either He died shortly after from exhaustion, or He lived somewhere in deepest retirement, only receiving visits from those of His followers who were in the secret, and in due course He expired. Perhaps it may be urged that His friends succeeded in carrying Him off into some distant country, and that some one or more of His followers, who had seen Him slowly recovering, mistook this for a resurrection, and propagated the story.