The Fair Haven

by Samuel Butler

“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 ye shall 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 that given by Luke; there is only one angel mentioned, but it may be said that it is possible that there may have been another who is not mentioned, inasmuch as he remained silent; the angelic vision, however, is again brought into the foreground of the story and the fear of the women is even more strongly insisted on than it was in Luke. The angel reminds the women that Christ had said that he should be seen by his Apostles in Galilee, of which saying we again find that the Apostles seem to have had no recollection. The linen clothes have quite dropped out of the story, and we can detect no trace of Peter and John’s visit to the tomb, but it is remarkable that the women are represented as not having said anything about the presence of the angel immediately on their having seen him; and this fact, which might be in itself suspicious, is apologised for on the score of fear, notwithstanding that their silence was a direct violation of the command of the being whom they so greatly feared. We should have expected that if they had feared him so much they would have done as he told them, but here again everybody seems to act as in a dream or drama, in defiance of all the ordinary principles of human action.

“Throughout the preceding paragraph we have assumed that Mark intended his readers to understand that the young man seen in the tomb was an angel; but, after all, this is rather a bold assumption. On what grounds is it supported? Because Luke tells us that when the women reached the tomb they found two white angels within it, are we therefore to conclude that Mark, who wrote many years earlier, and as far as we can gather with much greater historical accuracy, must have meant an angel when he spoke of a ‘young man’? Yet this can be the only reason, unless the young man’s having worn a long white robe is considered as sufficient cause for believing him to have been an angel; and this, again, is rather a bold assumption. But if St. Mark meant no more than he said, and when he wrote of a ‘young man’ intended to convey the idea of a young man and of nothing more, what becomes of the angelic visions at the tomb of Christ? For St. Matthew’s account is wholly untenable; St. Luke is a much later writer, who must have got all his materials second or third hand; and although we granted, and are inclined to believe, that the accounts of the visits of Mary Magdalene, and subsequently of Peter and John to the tomb, which are given in the fourth Gospel, are from a Johannean source, if we were asked our reasons for this belief, we should be very hard put to it to give them. Nevertheless we think it probable.

“But take it either way; if the account in the fourth Gospel is supposed to have been derived from the Apostle John, we have already seen that there is nothing miraculous about it, so far as it deals with what came under John’s own observation; if, on the other hand, it is not authentic we are thrown back upon St. Mark as incomparably our best authority for the facts that occurred on the Sunday after the Crucifixion, and he tells us of nothing but a tomb found empty, with the exception that there was a young man in it who wore a long white dress and told the women to tell the Apostles to go to Galilee, where they should see Christ. On the strength of this we are asked to believe that the reappearance of Christ alive, after a hurried crucifixion, must have been due to supernatural causes, and supernatural causes only! It will be easily seen what a number of threads might be taken up at this point, and followed with not uninteresting results. For the sake, however, of brevity, we grant it as most probable that St. Mark meant the young man said to have been seen in the tomb, to be considered as an angel; but we must also express our conviction that this supposed angelic vision is a misplaced offshoot of the report that Mary Magdalene had seen angels in the tomb after Peter and John had left it.

“It is possible that Mark’s account may be the most historic of all those that we have; but we incline to think otherwise, inasmuch as the angelic vision placed in the foreground by Mark and Luke, would not be likely to find its way into the background again, as it does in the fourth Gospel, unless in consequence of really authentic information; no unnecessary detraction from the miraculous element is conceivable as coming from the writer who has handed down to us the story of the raising of Lazarus, where we have, indeed, a real account of a resurrection, the continuity of the evidence being unbroken, and every link in the chain forged fast and strong, even to the unwrapping of the grave clothes from the body as it emerged from the sepulchre. Is it possible that the writer may have given the story of the raising of Lazarus (of which we find no trace except in the fourth Gospel), because he felt that in giving the Apostolic version with absolute or substantial accuracy, he was so weakening the miraculous element in connection with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, that it became necessary to introduce an incontrovertible account of the resurrection of some other person, which should do, as it were, vicarious duty?

“Nevertheless there are some points on which all the three writers are agreed: we have the same substratum of facts, namely, the tomb found already empty when the women reached it, a confused and contradictory report of an angel or angels seen within it, and the subsequent reappearance of Christ. Not one of the three writers affords 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 the narratives which is incompatible with its having been taken away on the very night of the Crucifixion itself.

“Is this a case in which the defenders of Christianity would clamour for all the facts, unless they exceedingly well knew that there was no chance of their getting them? All the facts, indeed—what tricks does our imagination play us! One would have thought that there were quite enough facts given as the matter stands to make the defenders of Christianity wish that there were not so many; and then for them to say that if we had more, those that we have would become less contradictory! What right have they to assume that if they had all the facts, the accounts of the Resurrection would cease to puzzle us, more than we have to say that if we had all the facts, we should find these accounts even more inexplicable than we do at present? Had we argued thus we should have been accused of shameless impudence; of a desire to maintain any position in which we happened to find ourselves, and by which we made money, regardless of every common principle of truth or honour, or whatever else makes the difference between upright men and self-deceivers.

“It may be said by some that the discrepancies between the three accounts given above are discrepancies concerning details only, but that all three writers agree about the ‘main fact.’ We are continually hearing about this ‘main fact,’ but nobody is good enough to tell us precisely what fact is meant. Is the main fact the fact that Jesus Christ was crucified? Then no one denies it. We all admit that Jesus Christ was crucified. Or, is it that he was seen alive several times after the Crucifixion? This also we are not disposed to deny. We believe that there is a considerable preponderance of evidence in its favour. But if the ‘main fact’ turns out to be that Christ was crucified, died, and then came to life again, we admit that here too all the writers are agreed, but we cannot find with any certainty that one of them was present when Christ died or when his body was taken down from the Cross, or that there was any such examination of the body as would be absolutely necessary in order to prove that a man had been dead who was afterwards seen alive. If Christ reappeared alive, there is not only no tittle of evidence in support of his death which would be allowed for a moment in an English court of justice, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence which points inexorably in the direction of his never having died. If he reappeared, there is no evidence of his having died. If he did not reappear, there is no evidence of his having risen from the dead.

“We are inclined, however, as has been said already, to believe that Jesus Christ really did reappear shortly after the Crucifixion, and that his reappearance, though due to natural causes, was conceived to be miraculous. We believe also that Mary fancied that she had seen angels in the tomb, and openly said that she had done so; who would doubt her when so far greater a marvel than this had been made palpably manifest to all? Who would care to inquire very particularly whether there were two angels or only one? Whether there were other women with Mary or whether she was quite alone? Who would compare notes about the exact moment of their appearing, and what strictly accurate account of their words could be expected in the ferment of such excitement and such ignorance? Any speech which sounded tolerably plausible would be accepted under the circumstances, and none will complain of Mark as having wilfully attempted to deceive, any more than he will of Luke: the amplification of the story was inevitable, and the very candour and innocence with which the writers leave loophole after loophole for escape from the miraculous, is alone sufficient proof of their sincerity; nevertheless, it is also proof that they were all more or less inaccurate; we can only say in their defence, that in the reappearance of Christ himself we find abundant palliation of their inaccuracy. Given one great miracle, proved with a sufficiency of evidence for the capacities and proclivities of the age, and the rest is easy. The groundwork of the after-structure of the other miracles is to be found in the fact that Christ was crucified, and was afterwards seen alive.”

There is no occasion for me to examine St. Matthew’s account of the Resurrection in company with the unhappy men whose views I have been endeavouring to represent above. For reasons which have already been sufficiently dwelt upon I freely own that I agree with them in rejecting it. I shall therefore admit that the story of the sealing of the tomb, and setting of the guard, the earthquake, the descent of the angel from Heaven, his rolling away the stone, sitting upon it, and addressing the women therefrom, is to be treated for all controversial purposes as though it had never been written. By this admission, I confess to complete ignorance of the time when the stone was removed from the mouth of the tomb, or the hour when the Redeemer rose. I should add that I agree with our opponents in believing that our Lord never foretold His Resurrection to the Apostles. But how little does it matter whether He foretold His Resurrection or not, and whether He rose at one hour or another. It is enough for me that he rose at all; for the rest I care not.