Pastor Pastorum; Or, The Schooling of the Apostles by Our Lord

by Henry Latham

I will now quote St Paul's account of the chief occasions when our Lord appeared; but I can only discuss one or two points of the History.

“And that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also.”[333]

I take the view, that within a few days of the [pg 451] Resurrection, the Apostles, by our Lord's command, returned to Galilee. If the Resurrection had been immediately followed by a time of agitation—one of persecution for instance—so that the Apostles could not have let their minds dwell on what had happened, the lessons of that period would have been soon effaced; but our Lord, as we have seen, is ever careful to provide seasonable opportunity for reflection, and it was not likely that He would suffer it to be wanting now.

The Apostles in Galilee, engaging again in their old callings, would have leisure to review, not only the last few days, but the whole of the two eventful years since they had been called from their work to follow Christ. It was probably here in Galilee that the Apostles received a command to return to Jerusalem; for we cannot account for the presence there of all the eleven, at the time of the Ascension, together with the mother and brethren of our Lord, except by special direction of our Lord. They would not, without some injunction, have remained at Jerusalem after the Resurrection,[334] neither would they have gone up thither for Pentecost, having been so lately at the Passover. Whether the appearance to the “five hundred brethren at once”[335] be, as I think it was, identical with that on the mountain in Galilee recorded in St Matthew's Gospel, c. xxviii., v. 16, is a matter of discussion.

But where else, except in Galilee could five hundred disciples have been got together? It could not have been at Jerusalem, at the Ascension, because the brethren there only numbered one hundred and twenty souls.[336] St Matthew, it is true, only speaks of the eleven disciples as going “into Galilee unto the mountain,” but others must have been present because we are told that “some doubted,” and the eleven would not have doubted. This admission shews that when the writer drew up his account, he felt no eagerness to strengthen the evidence for the Resurrection; and that He had no fear of its being disbelieved by those for whom he wrote. The eagerness that St Matthew does shew is to find instances of the fulfilment of Scripture, not to support his statements of fact. It seems to me likely, that, in Galilee, among His earliest followers, our Lord should have appeared more publicly than He did elsewhere; here only could He find a body of believers who should serve as witnesses, and, inasmuch as among these five hundred, there must have been men in different states of belief, it falls in with our Lord's way, so often noted, that He should appear in a form, not indisputably recognisable at once and by all, but with His aspect so changed, by some glorification perhaps, that those who were half-hearted in their belief might remain in doubt or disbelief if they chose; while the faithful and [pg 453] loving would be in no uncertainty about their Master's lineaments and voice.

The appearance “to James” which is related by St Paul alone, is important, and calls for special notice.

There are three persons called “James” in the sacred books, and there may be a question which of these it is of whom St Paul speaks. I am of opinion that it is James the brother of our Lord. The Corinthians, to whom St Paul is writing, would hardly know of any other; he was the head of the church at Jerusalem and when Paul speaks of “James” simply, as in Galatians ii. 9, 12, he means always the brother of the Lord. “James, the son of Zebedee,” Acts xii. 2, is designated “the brother of John” for distinction's sake, and of James the son of Alphaeus we never hear. Every disciple however in the Church at Corinth had heard of James, the “pillar” of the Church at Jerusalem.[337]

Nothing is heard of our Lord's brethren during the week of the Passion; possibly, they were not in Jerusalem, but, from the Acts, as has been just said, we find that they were present there at the time of the Ascension.

“These all with one accord continued steadfastly in [pg 454] prayer, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” Acts i. 14.

This adhesion of the brethren falls in with the supposition that our Lord appeared to His brother James after the Resurrection in Galilee. It was natural that James and the younger brethren should have found difficulty in comprehending that their elder brother, who had played among them as a child was of a nature essentially different from their own; and that this exceptional hindrance to belief should be counterpoised by an exceptional, but not absolutely decisive, revelation is what we might expect. It is not inconsistent with our Lord's treatment of doubt; for the difficulty arose out of circumstances and not from adverse will. Of James, our Lord may have felt sure; and Joses and Jude and Simon,[338] no one of whom could have been much over thirty years of age, while one or two of them must have been quite young men, may have been brought to full discipleship by what they heard from James.