Before Matthew’s wholesale resurrection of the saints the resurrection of Jesus pales into insignificance. In the opinion of many supernaturalists Matthew has mixed too large a dose of the miraculous for even Christian credulity to swallow, and they would gladly omit this portion of it. Regarding this story Dr. Farrar says: “An earthquake shook the earth and split the rocks, and as it rolled away from their places the great stones which closed and covered the cavern sepulchres of the Jews, so it seemed to the imaginations of many to have disimprisoned the spirits of the dead, and to have filled the air with ghostly visitants, who after Christ had risen appeared to linger in the Holy City” (Life of Christ, vol. ii, p. 419). Dean Milman dismisses it in much the same way. Referring to the earthquake, he says: “The same convulsion would displace the stones which covered the ancient tombs and lay open many of the innumerable rock-hewn sepulchres which perforated the hills on every side of the city, and expose the dead to public view. To the awe-struck and depressed minds of the followers of Jesus, no doubt, were confined these visionary appearances of the spirits of their deceased brethren” (History of Christianity, vol. i, p. 336).
If the minds of the disciples were so greatly affected that they imagined they beheld the resurrected bodies of strangers whom they had never met and of whom they had probably never heard—for they were nearly a hundred miles from the graves of their own kindred—is it strange that they should imagine they saw the resurrected Master with whom they had daily associated for months and perhaps years? To characterize these resurrected saints as “ghostly visitants” and “visionary appearances,” and the resurrected Christ as a real being, is a distinction without a scintilla of evidence to support it. Both appearances, if they be historical, belong to the same class of mental phenomena; and are, indeed, the offspring of the same minds.
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When did the resurrection take place?
All: In the night.
Who witnessed it?
All: No one.
The author of “Supernatural Religion” says: “The remarkable fact is, therefore, absolutely undeniable, that there was not, and that it is not even pretended that there was, a single eye-witness to the actual Resurrection. The empty grave, coupled with the supposed subsequent appearances of Jesus, is the only evidence of the Resurrection” (p. 1004).