INTRODUCTION

1. For our knowledge of the facts connected with the life of Christ we depend upon the recollections of the Apostles and other immediate followers of the Lord. These reminiscences were delivered to their first converts during the days that followed the Pentecost, in the ordinary intercourse of life, or in instructions given by word of mouth to catechumens or to Christian congregations. They delivered them unto us, S. Luke bears witness,1 which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. The tradition thus created was reduced to writing by not a few of those who received it.2 As the Christian student to-day reads and ponders the surviving records, he makes it his aim to win back from them, so far as he can, the primitive impression of the works and words, the sufferings and the triumphs of Jesus Christ.

2. Not the least precious of these recollections are those which are now to be examined, and which relate to the appearances of the risen Lord after His Passion. The available evidence on this subject is to be found almost exclusively in the New Testament, where it may be collected from the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles of S. Paul, and the Apocalypse. Of these documents the oldest is the first Epistle of S. Paul to the Corinthians,

which was written little more than five and twenty years after the Crucifixion. Next comes the Gospel according to S. Mark; S. Matthew, S. Luke (Gospel and Acts), and S. John (Gospel and Apocalypse) follow at uncertain intervals, but all probably before the end of the first century. The precise date of the composition of these books, however, is not of the first importance; we are more concerned to know what opportunities the writers possessed of getting at the facts from the original witnesses or from those who had heard their story.

3. The evidence of S. Paul2 leaves no reason for doubting that on five occasions, at least, witnesses who were still living when he wrote believed themselves to have seen the risen Lord during the six weeks that followed His death. With two of these witnesses, S. Peter and S. James, the Lord's brother, S. Paul had an interview at Jerusalem three years after his conversion, and it is reasonable to suppose that he then heard their experiences from their own lips. But important as it is to the Christian apologist, S. Paul's statement is of little service to one who would construct a narrative of the appearances. His purpose is merely to summarize teaching which he had given at Corinth when he first preached the Gospel there. Accordingly, he enumerates only the most important of the appearances, or those of which he had first-hand information, and he does not enter into any particulars. His list will be useful to us only so far as it helps us to verify, and at one or two points supplement, the narratives of the Gospels.

4. It is to the Gospels, then, that we must turn for

1 About A.D. 56.

2 In I Cor. xv. 5-7.

3 See Gal. i. 18 f., and Bp. Chase's remarks in Cambridge Theological Essays, p. 392.

details. As we have said, they are all later than S. Paul's first letter to Corinth; nor is it possible to speak with the same confidence as to the sources upon which they draw. But an early second century belief, which modern research tends to confirm, attributed the substance of S. Mark's Gospel to the teaching of S. Peter;1 and if S. Mark had been preserved intact, we should undoubtedly have possessed in his last chapter a document of the highest value. Unhappily the original S. Mark comes to an abrupt end in the middle of the first post-Resurrection scene, and the appendix, which begins at Mark xvi. 9, is by a later writer of secondary authority. It is probable, however, that S. Matthew has, according to his custom, worked up into his last chapter much of the matter contained in the lost ending of S. Mark, adding certain incidents for which he relied upon his own resources.3 S. Luke begins on the same general lines as S. Mark and S. Matthew, but presently goes his own way, and contributes one of the most convincing of the postResurrection narratives, for which he was probably indebted to first-hand testimony. Lastly, the fourth Gospel, which, here as elsewhere, is almost wholly independent of the synoptists, supplies accounts of four great manifestations of the risen Lord. These, however much they may have been idealized by the writer, bear every mark of being based on the personal knowledge of the great Christian teacher to whom we owe at least the substance of the book.5

See the writer's S. Mark, p. xxiii f.

2 With the words for they were afraid (xvi. 8).

3 On the authorship of S. Matthew see W. C. Allen in the Critical International Commentary.

4 Lc. xxiv. 13 ff.

5 As to the appendix which forms c. xxi. see xxi. 24, and p. 54, note 2.

5. From this brief statement it will be clear that the Gospel records of the appearances, considered as evidence, are not all of equal value. The last twelve verses of S. Mark, for example, are the work of a writer whose name is not certainly known,1 and whose information can scarcely be held to be as trustworthy as that of the interpreter of S. Peter. The Palestinian writer of the first Gospel has apparently relied here and there on rumours current at Jerusalem in his own time, which may or may not have had a place in the original tradition. It is at least probable that S. Luke adheres less closely to the original story in his earlier and later scenes 2 than in the graphic incident which fills the middle of his last chapter. And the closing chapters of S. John's Gospel may, like much else in that wonderful book, have taken some of their colour from the author's own mind. It is fair to recognize such inequalities in the evidence, and to make due allowance for them.

6. As we cannot claim for the narratives of our Gospels an immunity from the subtle changes which oral tradition undergoes in its passage into a written form, so again we must not assume that the original tradition was in all cases uniformly good. One story may have been told less fully or less accurately than another, or the same story may have from the first taken two or more different forms. The impressions of the eyewitnesses may have varied, or the excitement of the moment may have left the memory dazed and unable to form any distinct impressions of what was seen and heard. But to discredit a narrative altogether, because it betrays imperfections such as these, is unreasonable; they are, in fact, on the whole,

1 Mr. Conybeare's plea for Aristion falls short of a demonstration. 2i.e. in xxiv. 1-12, 36-53. 3 xxiv. 13-35.

signs of veracity, for they are just the flaws which we might expect to find in faithful reports proceeding from independent witnesses, especially if the circumstances were of an unusual and disquieting character, and the witnesses persons who were unaccustomed to interpret to others the impressions left upon their own minds. The real student will recognize that it is his duty not to reject such evidence wholesale, but to sift it and elicit the truth which lies at the bottom of conflicting or inadequate testimony. If he does this with perfect honesty, he will find that the process of sifting the Gospel narratives of the Appearances will bring to light a great preponderance of solid fact, which can be set aside only by the stubborn scepticism that is born of pre-suppositions.

7. When we pass beyond the New Testament, the echoes of the earliest tradition become few, and for the most part untrustworthy. Even to these, however, it will be worth our while to listen. Among the surviving fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, a Palestinian work of the first century, there is a strange story concerning the Lord's interview with James,1 which must be told in its proper place. Another fragment, perhaps from the same Gospel,2 relates the words of the risen Lord at His first meeting with the Ten in a form which differs slightly from that given by S. Luke. The Gospel of Peter, a second century book, at the point where our fragment comes to an abrupt end, seems to be about to relate, with some features peculiar to itself, the story of the meeting by the shore of the lake. The

1 Given by Jerome, de Viris illustr. 2.

2 See Ignatius, Smyrn. 3, and Lightfoot's note.

3 See the writer's Akhmîm fragment of the Apocryphal Gospel of S. Peter, pp. 24, 28,