The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.
The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f.;23–26;Mark v. 22 ff.;Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally asἄρχων εἷςa certain ruler, without any name; the two others as aruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and[477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthewἄρτι ἐτελεύτησεmean, as Kuinöl maintains,197est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark,ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Lukeἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198
Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;199while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;201the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:202and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel ofNicodemus.203Luke’sμονογενὴς(one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and theἐτῶν δώδεκαtwelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed[478]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words asἡ παῖς ἐγείρον,maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard theταλιθὰ κοῦμιof Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to theἐφφαθὰin the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.204
In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationalists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead.205The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the wordsοὐκ ἀπέθανε,is not dead, are followed byἀλλὰ καθεύδει,but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not[479]dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism,—for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead, in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus,John xi. 14,Λάζαρος ἀπέθανε,Lazarus is dead, which is directly the reverse of the passage in question,οὐκ ἀπέθανε τὸ κοράσιον,the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus,αὕτη ἡ ἀσθένεια οὐκ ἔστι πρὸς θάνατον,this sickness is not unto death(v. 4), andΛάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται,our friend Lazarus sleepeth(v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows:puellam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say,νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται,the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.206
But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions,ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς,he took her by the hand, andἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον,the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the wordsεὐθέωςandπαραχρῆμαin the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.
In the case of resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesusspeaksto the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.209But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do[480](John v. 28; comp.1 Thess. iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;210but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while:—directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her,Weep not.211But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,212spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words:νεανίσκε, σοὶ λέγω, ἐγέρθητι,Young man, I say unto thee arise!resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no means appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.213
In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar toJohn (chap. xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness[481]of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists,—which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.
The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,214namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger,This sickness is not unto death(v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,215after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples,Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may awake him out of sleep(κεκοίμηται—ἐξυπνίσω—v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived.216From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15)I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe(ἵνα πιστεύσητε). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabler217has remarked,πιστεύωcannot mean merely the negative:not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as:ἵνα μὴ ἐκλείπῃ ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν,that your faith fail not(seeLuke xxii. 32); and moreover we[482]nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.
From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.),Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα, ὅτι, ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ τὸν θεὸν, δώσει σοι ὁ θεὸς, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows,Thy brother shall rise again,ἀναστήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is notπιστεύωbutοἶδα, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only willest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (ἀναστήσεται), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply.218But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.),I am the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim—a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha,Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?evidently alluding tov. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect. That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.219
When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call[483]him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the wordsἐνεβριμήσατο(v. 33) andἐμβριμώμενος(v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (ἐδάκρυσεν). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifiesfremere in aliquemorin se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense ofincrepare aliquem(Matt. ix. 30;Mark i. 43,xiv. 5),ἐμβριμᾶσθαιis determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but withτῷ πνεύματιandἐν ἑαυτῷ, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate inv. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews,Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?there lies an intimation that they werescandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the wordἐμβριμᾶσθαιis first usedv. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (ὀλιγοπιστία) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves,Behold, how he loved him!appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particularthe Jewsin this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply;220but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to theβασιλικὸς, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke,Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question,Doth this offend you?andWill ye also go away?(vi. 61,67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh reply,What have I to do with thee, Woman?(ii. 4)—who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate,—would here find peculiar reason for this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.221And how could the words of the Jewsv. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The[484]Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist.
Even supranaturalists admit that the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave,Κύριε, ἤδη ὄζει(v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial.222But more weight must be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40):Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the wordsτὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦin our present passage we need only refer tov. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was notunto death,πρὸς θάνατον, butfor the glory of God,ὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦ. Here the first member of the antithesis,not unto death, clearly shows that theδόξα τοῦ θεοῦsignifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the most critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled.223After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man,Come forth!he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expressionglorify thy son, to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern;[485]how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.224
These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been addedex eventuby the narrator. Paulus himself found the wordsἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸν(v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifyingperhaps, which Jesus had inserted.225This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabler. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already inv. 4, he is inclined to lay the wordsὑπὲρ τῆς δόξης τοῦ θεοῦfor the glory of God, to the account of the Evangelist: againv. 15, he conjectures that in the wordsχαίρω δι’ ὑμᾶς, ἵνα πιστεύσητε, ὅτι οὐκ ἤμην ἐκεῖ,I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Marthav. 22,ἀλλὰ καὶ νῦν οἶδα κ.τ.λ.he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer.226By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or,[486]if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.
In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression—a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer—receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.
But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding.227The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible.228With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in[487]this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.
But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth.229This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist, or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.
The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher[488]call as a teacher.230But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus,v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;231since, according to expressions, such asἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ υἱὸς τ. θ.(v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means! never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously;232and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles.233The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia,234from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistorical.
The alleged conduct of the disciples also,v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus,he sleeps, I will awake him,κεκοίμηται, ἐξυπνίσω αὐτὸνthink that he referred to a natural sleep? One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (κοίμησις) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.235[489]
The observation of the Jews,v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,236especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of themwent abroad into all that land, throughout all Judæa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.
A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus,v. 41 f.After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Lücke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf.237But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless[490]they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throwv. 42out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand.238But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding,v. 41; and to this opinion Lücke has shown himself not altogether disinclined.239Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is soonlywith these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers—in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points,—the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.240
As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:241and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.
That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone;—especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative,—is a difficulty in more than one respect.242Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather[491]than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early asiii. 7, or20, leaped fromLuke vi. 12(17) toMatt. xii. 15; and only ativ. 35(21 ff.) returns toLuke viii. 22(16 ff.);243thus passing over the resurrection of the youth (Luke vii. 11 ff.). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples,μαθηταὶ ἱκανοὶ; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;244lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests,—to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occurred in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; innumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleiermacher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.