We know that the prophet like unto Moses was a favourite representation in Acts of the Christ. Now, in the account which Josephus gives of the end of Moses, he states that, although he wrote in the holy books that he died lest they should say that he went to God, this was not really his end. After reaching the mountain Abarim he dismissed the senate; and as he was about to embrace Eleazar, the high priest, and Joshua, "a cloud suddenly having stood over him he disappeared in a certain valley."(1) This, however, we merely mention in passing.
Our earlier examination of the evidence for the origin and authorship of the historical books of the New Testament very clearly demonstrated that the testimony of these works for miracles and the reality of Divine Revelation, whatever that testimony might seem to be, could not be considered of any real value. We have now examined the accounts which the four Evangelists actually give of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, and there can be no hesitation in stating as the result that, as might have been expected from works of such uncertain character, these narratives must be pronounced mere legends, embodying vague and wholly unattested tradition. As
evidence for such stupendous miracles, they are absolutely of no value. No reliance can be placed on a single detail of their story. The aim of the writers has obviously been to make their narrative of the various appearances of Jesus as convincing as possible,(1) and they have freely inserted any details which seemed to them calculated to give them impressiveness, force, and verisimilitude.
A recent apologetic writer has said: "Any one who will attentively read side by side the narratives of these appearances on the first day of the resurrection, will see that they have only been preserved for us in general, interblended and scattered notices (see Matt, xxviii. 16; Luke xxiv. 34; Acts i. 3), which, in strict exactness, render it impossible, without many arbitrary suppositions, to produce from them a certain narrative of the order of events. The lacuna, the compressions, the variations, the actual differences, the subjectivity of the narrators as affected by spiritual revelations, render all harmonies at the best uncertain."(2) Passing over without comment, the strange phrase in this passage which we have italicised, and which seems to claim divine inspiration for the writers, it must be obvious to any one who has carefully read the preceding pages that this is an exceedingly moderate description of the wild statements and irreconcilable contradictions of the different narratives we have examined. But such as it is, with all the glaring inconsistencies and impossibilities of the accounts even thus subdued, is it possible for any one who has formed even a faint idea of the extraordinary nature of the allegations which have to be attested, to
consider such documents really evidence for the Resurrection and bodily Ascension?
The usual pleas which are advanced in mitigation of judgment against the Gospels for these characteristics are of no avail. It may be easy to excuse the writers for their mutual contradictions, but the pleas themselves are an admission of the shortcomings which render their evidence valueless. "The differences of purpose in the narrative of the four Evangelists,"(1) may be fancifully set forth, or ingeniously imagined, but no "purpose" can transform discordant and untrustworthy narratives into evidence for miracles. Unless the prologue to the third Gospel be considered a condemnation of any of the other Synoptics which may have existed before it, none of the Evangelists makes the smallest reference to any of his brethren or their works. Each Gospel tacitly professes to be a perfectly independent work, giving the history of Jesus, or at
least of the active part of his life, and of his death and Resurrection. The apologetic theory, derived from the Fathers, that the Evangelists designed to complete and supplement each other, is totally untenable. Each work was evidently intended to be complete in itself; but when we consider that much the greater part of the contents of each of the Synoptics is common to the three, frequently with almost literal agreement, and generally without sufficient alteration to conceal community of source or use of each other, the poverty of Christian tradition becomes painfully evident. We have already pointed out the fundamental difference between the fourth Gospel and the Synoptics. In no part of the history does greater contradiction and disagreement between the three Synoptics themselves and likewise between them and the fourth Gospel exist, than in the account of the Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. It is impossible to examine the four narratives carefully without feeling that here tradition, for natural reasons, has been more than usually wavering and insecure. Each writer differs essentially from the rest, and the various narratives not only disagree but exclude each other. The third Synoptist, in the course of some years, even contradicts himself. The phenomena which are related, in fact, were too subjective and unsubstantial for sober and consistent narrative, and free play was allowed for pious imagination to frame details by the aid of supposed Messianic utterances of the Prophets and Psalmists of Israel.