The Fair Haven

by Samuel Butler

“Yet, see,” our opponents will exclaim in answer, “what a mighty river has come from a little spring. We heard first of two men going into an empty tomb, finding two bundles of grave clothes, and departing. Then there comes a certain person, concerning whom we are elsewhere told a fact which leaves us with a very uncomfortable impression, and she sees, not two bundles of grave clothes, but two white angels, who ask a dreamy pointless question, and receive an appropriate answer. Then we find the time of this apparition shifted; it is placed in the front, not in the background, and is seen by many, instead of being vouchsafed to no one but to a weeping woman looking into the bottom of a tomb. The speech of the angels, also, becomes effective, and the linen clothes drop out of sight entirely, unless some faint trace of them is to be found in the ‘long white garment’ which Mark tells us was worn by the young man who was in the tomb when the women reached it. Finally, we have a guard set upon the tomb, and the stone which was rolled in front of it is sealed; the angel is seen to descend from Heaven, to roll away the stone, and sit upon it, and there is a great earthquake. Oh! how things grow, how things grow! And, oh! how people believe!

“See by what easy stages the story has grown up from the smallest seed, as the mustard tree in the parable, and how the account given by Matthew changes the whole complexion of the events. And see how this account has been dwelt upon to the exclusion of the others by the great painters and sculptors from whom, consciously or unconsciously, our ideas of the Christian era are chiefly drawn. Yes. These men have been the most potent of theologians, for their theology has reached and touched most widely. We have mistaken their echo of the sound for the sound itself, and what was to them an aspiration, has, alas! been to us in the place of science and reality.

“Truly the ease with which the plainest inferences from the Gospel narratives have been overlooked is the best apology for those who have attributed unnatural blindness to the Apostles. If we are so blind, why not they also? A pertinent question, but one which raises more difficulties than it solves. The seeing of truth is as the finding of gold in far countries, where the shepherd has drunk of the stream and used it daily to cleanse the sweat of his brow, and recked little of the treasure which lay abundantly concealed therein, until one luckier than his fellows espies it, and the world comes flocking thither. So with truth; a little care, a little patience, a little sympathy, and the wonder is that it should have lain hidden even from the merest child, not that it should now be manifest.

“How early must it have been objected that there was no evidence that the tomb had not been tampered with (not by the Apostles, for they were scattered, and of him who laid the body in the tomb—Joseph of Arimathæa—we hear no more) and that the body had been delivered not to enemies, but friends; how natural that so desirable an addition to the completeness of the evidences in favour of a miraculous Resurrection should have been early and eagerly accepted. Would not twenty years of oral communication and Spanish or Italian excitability suffice for the rooting of such a story? Yet, as far as we can gather, the Gospel according to St. Matthew was even then unwritten. And who was Matthew? And what was his original Gospel?

“There is one part of his story, and one only, which will stand the test of criticism, and that is this:—That the saying that the disciples came by night and stole the body of Jesus away was current among the Jews, at the time when the Gospel which we now have appeared. Not that they did so—no one will believe this; but the allegation of the rumour (which would hardly have been ventured unless it would command assent as true) points in the direction of search having been made for the body of Jesus—and made in vain.

“We have now seen that there is no evidence worth the name, for any miracle in connection with the tomb of Christ. He probably reappeared alive, but not with any circumstances which we are justified in regarding as supernatural. We are therefore at length led to a consideration of the Crucifixion itself. Is there evidence for more than this—that Christ was crucified, was afterwards seen alive, and that this was regarded by his first followers as a sufficient proof of his having risen from the dead? This would account for the rise of Christianity, and for all the other miracles. Take the following passage from Gibbon:—‘The grave and learned Augustine, whose understanding scarcely admits the excuse of credulity, has attested the innumerable prodigies which were worked in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen, and this marvellous narrative is inserted in the elaborate work of “The City of God,” which the Bishop designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of Christianity. Augustine solemnly declares that he had selected those miracles only which had been publicly certified by persons who were either the objects or the spectators of the powers of the martyr. Many prodigies were omitted or forgotten, and Hippo had been less favourably treated than the other cities of the province, yet the Bishop enumerates above seventy miracles, of which three were resurrections from the dead, within the limits of his own diocese. If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses and all the saints of the Christian world, it will not be easy to calculate the fables and errors which issued from this inexhaustible source. But we may surely be allowed to observe that a miracle in that age of superstition and credulity lost its name and its merits, since it could hardly be considered as a deviation from the established laws of Nature.’—(Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, chap. xxviii., sec. 2).

“Who believes in the miracles, or who would dare to quote them? Yet on what better foundation do those of the New Testament rest? For the death of Christ there is no evidence at all. There is evidence that he was believed to have been dead (under circumstances where a misapprehension was singularly likely to arise), by men whose minds were altogether in a different clef to ours as regards the miraculous, and whom we cannot therefore fairly judge by any modern standard. We cannot judge them, but we are bound to weigh the facts which they relate, not in their balance, but in our own. It is not what might have seemed reasonably believable to them, but what is reasonably believable in our own more enlightened age which can be alone accepted sinlessly by ourselves. Men’s modes of thought concerning facts change from age to age; but the facts change not at all, and it is of them that we are called to judge.

“We turn to the fourth Gospel, as that from which we shall derive the most accurate knowledge of the facts connected with the Crucifixion. Here we find that it was about twelve o’clock when Pilate brought out Christ for the last time; the dialogue that followed, the preparations for the Crucifixion, and the leading Christ outside the city to the place where the Crucifixion was to take place, could hardly have occupied less than an hour. By six o’clock (by consent of all writers) the body was entombed, so that the actual time during which Christ hung upon the cross was little more than four hours. Let us be thankful to hope that the time of suffering may have been so short—but say five hours, say six, say whatever the reader chooses, the Crucifixion was avowedly too hurried for death in an ordinary case to have ensued. The thieves had to be killed, as yet alive. Immediately before being taken down from the cross the body was delivered to friends. Within thirty-six hours afterwards the tomb in which it had been laid was discovered to have been opened; for how long it had been open we do not know, but a few hours later Christ was seen alive.

“Let it be remembered also that the fact of the body having been delivered to Joseph before the taking down from the cross, greatly enhanced the chance of an escape from death, inasmuch as the duties of the soldiers would have ended with the presentation of the order from Pilate. If any faint symptom of returning animation shewed itself in consequence of the mere change of position and the inevitable shock attendant upon being moved, the soldiers would not know it; their task was ended, and they would not be likely either to wish, or to be allowed, to have anything to do with the matter. Joseph appears to have been a rich man, and would be followed by attendants. Moreover, although we are told by Mark that Pilate sent for the centurion to inquire whether Christ was dead, yet the same writer also tells us that this centurion had already come to the conclusion that Christ was the Son of God, a statement which is supported by the accounts of Matthew and Luke; Mark is the only Evangelist who tells us that the centurion was sent for, but even granting that this was so, would not one who had already recognised Christ as the Son of God be inclined to give him every assistance in his power? He would be frightened, and anxious to get the body down from the cross as fast as possible. So long as Christ appeared to be dead, there would be no unnecessary obstacle thrown in the way of the delivery of the body to Joseph, by a centurion who believed that he had been helping to crucify the Son of God. Besides Joseph was rich, and rich people have many ways of getting their wishes attended to.

“We know of no one as assisting at the taking down or the removal of the body, except Joseph of Arimathæa, for the presence of Nicodemus, and indeed his existence, rests upon the slenderest evidence. None of the Apostles appear to have had anything to do with the deposition, nor yet the women who had come from Galilee, who are represented as seeing where the body was laid (and by Luke as seeing how it was laid), but do not seem to have come into close contact with the body.