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Having now given the three versions in extenso. I should like to add a few words in support of my allegation (in the Note at the commencement of the volume) that each version is in conformity with the canons of positive science.
The second, which may be called the sombre ending, needs no defence as far as natural science is concerned. Jesus simply dies; and is probably thrust hurriedly into the ground on, or near, the spot where he was executed.
The third may be called the apparitional ending, and in reference to the bearing of modern science upon this, a few remarks must be made.—The fact of apparitions as such seems to be scientifically established. But the method of physical procedure —if one may so express oneself—in these cases, we have, with our present amount of knowledge, no means of accurately ascertaining. I see no reason, however, why we should identify Jesus with the Messiah, etc., even if he “rose from the dead,” when rising from the dead, in the sense of apparitional appearance after death, is, as Messrs. Myers' and Gurney's recent work upon the subject exhaustively proves, so common as to become positively annoying.
It is difficult to see how a book like Westcott's “Gospel of the Resurrection,” based as its whole
In fact, as in nearly all that relates to religion, the old method of thought is being rapidly reversed. The resurrection of Jesus no longer, as was originally held, implies and involves the resurrection of the whole human race. The greater includes the less: it is the resurrection of the whole human race—uninterruptedly proceeding, by strict physical and psychical law, it may be—which involves and implies that of Jesus.
We now come to the ending given in the text; which may be called the resuscitational ending. As I have already remarked, I selected this for the body of the work, principally for dramatic and poetical reasons. It enables an author to develop in fuller detail the character of Mary; and, if the play should some day be acted, it would give special scope and opportunity to an actress of genius.
Apart from this, however, it is by no means
The following passage (the italics in which are my own) from William Rathbone Greg's “Creed of Christendom,” has great interest, as bearing upon this point:—“Three different suppositions may be adopted, each of which has found favour in the eyes of some writers. We may either imagine that Jesus was not really and entirely dead when taken down from the cross, a supposition which Paulus and others show to be far from destitute of probability (Strauss, iii. 288): or we may imagine that the apparition of Jesus to his disciples belongs to that class of appearances of departed spirits for which so much staggering and bewildering evidence is on record (see Bush's Anastasis, 156); or, lastly, we may believe that the minds of the disciples, excited by the disappearance of the body, and the announcement by the women of his resurrection, mistook some passing individual for their crucified Lord, and that from such an origin multiplied rumours of his re-appearance
Greg's “Creed of Christendom” (1883), Vol. II., pp. 153, 154.
It is worth while to add that, on a careful study and comparison of the eleven accounts of post-mortem appearances of Jesus given in the Gospels, the reader cannot fail to be struck by their curious vagueness, and by the fact that many of them harmonise almost equally well either with the apparitional or with the resuscitational theory of the resurrection.
Jesus of Nazareth | ||