[2.13] John xxi. 9–14; compare Luke xxiv. 41–43. John combines in one the two scenes of the fishing and the meal. But Luke arranges the matter differently. At all events, if we consider with attention the verses of John xxi. 14, 15, we shall come to the conclusion that these harmonies of John are somewhat artificial. Hallucinations, at the moment of their conception, are always isolated. It is later that consistent anecdotes are formed out of them. This habit of coupling together as consecutive events facts which are separated by months and weeks, is seen, in a very striking manner, by comparing together two passages of the same writer, Luke, Gospel, xxiv. end, and Acts i. at the beginning. According to the former passage, Jesus should have ascended into heaven on the same day as the resurrection; whilst, according to the latter, there was an interval of forty days. Again, if we rigorously interpret Mark xvi. 9–20, the Ascension must have taken place on the evening of the resurrection. Nothing more fully proves than the contradiction of Luke in these two passages, how little the editors of the evangelical writings observed consistency in their stories.
[2.14] John xxi. 15, et seq.
[2.15] Ibid. xxi. 18, et seq.
[2.16] I. Cor. xv. 6.
[2.17] The Transfiguration.
[2.18] Matt, xxviii. 16–20; I. Cor. xv. 6. Compare Mark xvi. 15, et seq. Luke xxiv. 44, et seq.
[2.19] I. Cor. xv. 6.
[2.20] John affixes no limit to the resuscitated life of Jesus. He appears to suppose it somewhat protracted. According to Matthew, it could only have lasted during the time which was necessary to complete the journey to Galilee and to rendezvous at the mountain pointed out by Jesus. According to the first incomplete conclusion of Mark (xvi. 1–8), the incidents would seem to have transpired as found in Matthew. According to the second conclusion (xvi. 9, 20), according to others; and, according to the Gospel of Luke, the disentombed life would appear to have lasted only one day. Paul (I. Cor. xv. 5–8), agreeing with the fourth Gospel, prolongs it for two years, since he gives his vision, which occurred five or six years at least after the death of Jesus, as the last of the apparitions. The circumstance of “five hundred brethren” conduces to the same conclusion; for it does not appear that on the morning after the death of Jesus, the group of his friends was compact enough to furnish such a gathering (Acts i. 15). Many of the Gnostic sects, especially the Valentinians and the Sethians, estimated the continuance of the apparitions at eighteen months, and even founded mystic theories on that notion (Irenæus Adv. hær., i. iii. 2; xxx. 14). The author of the Acts alone (i. 3) fixes the duration of the disentombed life of Jesus at forty days. But this is very poor authority; above all, if we remark that it is connected with an erroneous system (Luke xxiv. 49, 50, 52; Acts i. 4, 12), according to which the whole disentombed life of Jesus would have been passed at Jerusalem or in its vicinity. The number forty is symbolic (the people spend forty years in the desert; Moses, forty days on Mount Sinai; Elijah and Jesus fast forty days, &c.). As to the formula of the narrative adopted by the author of the last twelve verses of the second Gospel, and by the author of the third Gospel, a formula according to which the events are confined to one day, the authority of Paul, the most ancient and the strongest of all, corroborating that of the fourth Gospel, which affords the most connected and authentic record of this portion of the evangelic history, appears to us to furnish a conclusive argument.
[2.21] Luke xxiv. 31.
[2.22] John xx. 19, 26.