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Concerning the
Resurrection of Jesus
By
Walter Scott
RESPECTING Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish nation seems to have been
divided into two principal parties--that which favored, and that
which rejected his pretensions. That the views of his scheme too,
entertained by both, were not almost, but altogether political, we
have all the reason, I think, in the world, to believe. The
opposition party regarded the whole as a political cabal, and its
abettors as reformers of the state. Radicals, whose ultimate objects
were to put down the prevailing party; to abandon allegiance to the
Romans; to assert the independence of the Jewish nation; and, under
the conduct of Jesus as their general, or, as his own party would
have it, their king, to maintain it sword in hand.
This is the only view that accords with the warlike spirit of the
times, the popular belief respecting Messiah's reign and kingdom,
and with what we read in the four evangelists. Now, it was to check
the spirit of that enterprize that the leaders of the opposite party
voted the destruction of Jesus, who was looked upon by the great men
as the life's blood of this conspiracy. From the moment when Caiphas
delivered his sentiments on the grand question, "what was to be done
for the safety of the state!" the death of Jesus was eagerly desired
by them all.
These princes, preferring rank and honor with their present
inglorious ease under foreign masters, to the distant and uncertain
advantages of a noble and magnanimous declaration of the nation's
independence--these lordlings, conceived power and pomp to be the
chief good and the only thing worthy of ambition. They conceived
that to form the object of the Lord's ambition also, and endeavored
by mean arts to draw from him this secret.
The views of his followers were nothing different in kind from those
of his opposers; they were equally worldly and political; and both
parties, contemplating the destinies of the Lord Jesus under this
mistaken and degraded point of view, it is not wonderful that his
resurrection from the dead should be an event equally distant from
the expectations of all.
Both parties, too, seem to have considered his decease as an
unequivocal refutation of his pretensions--as an event which at once
reflected the greatest discredit on the party, and great apparent
ponderosity and importance to those who had slain him, and who,
during the whole of his public ministry, had steadily persisted in
rejecting and disproving his pretensions.
Had the Lord then not appeared to some of his followers on that day
on which he arose, the dispute of the two parties would not have
been whether he had risen from the dead, but only which of them had
stolen the body from the sepulchre. This is evident from the easy
assent which the two disciples gave to the hasty suggestions of Mary
Magdalene. They believed that the opposite faction had stolen the
body; John alleging for it as a reason, that the disciples knew not
yet that he must rise from the dead.
The anticipation of such an event was equally foreign from the
conceptions of his murderers, who barricaded the tomb, and sealed it
with the seal of the state, not to prevent his resurrection, but, as
they themselves said, to prevent his followers from taking the body
by stealth.
I think too, that the rulers really and sincerely believed his
followers to have taken away the body, and that, in the first
instance, they regarded the wonders told them by the soldiers, of
earthquakes and angels, to be nothing more than cunningly devised
fables, trumped up by his disciples for the safety of the guards,
who, as they believed, had permitted them (the disciples)
undisturbedly, perhaps for a sum of money, to bear away the body in
the dark. But their bribing the soldiers again, may seem to
contradict this opinion.
Well then, suppose, for argument's sake, that the rulers did believe
the reports of the guards, viz. that the Lord had risen. If they
did, then they must have believed that he would also immediately
appear among them again in person, to assert the reality of his
claims, and maintain the certainty of the confession, for which he
had been put to death; for of his ascent into heaven they had no
conceptions. If they believed him to be risen, to have said that his
disciples had stolen him, would have been a miserable invention, and
nowise suited to the exigency of the case. Such an invention would
never have counterbalanced one single well attested appearance of
the Lord; and we have seen that they, having no just notions of his
reign and kingdom, would have expected to see him again in person,
if so be they believed the reports of the soldiers. After all, if
the Pharisees expected him to rise, why did they put him to death?
The rulers, then, believed the guards to be telling a falsehood, and
they bribed them to report what the Pharisees themselves conceived
to be the true state of the case. As the opposing faction all along
regarded the enterprize as a political one, they foresaw that if
once its abettors should get the dead body into their possession,
they might make it the instrument of greater mischief to the nation
than it had been when alive. They foresaw that one of the reformers
might personate their former leader, exhibit himself at a distance,
and set up for Messiah on the grounds of having risen from the dead.
Such an evidence they foresaw would be altogether irresistible; the
Jews would flock to his standard, and the cause would derive
accessions from all quarters of the land--such accessions, too, as
nothing but the arm of the imperial government would be able to
break or dissolve. If once the Romans had engaged in the quarrel,
their rulers would have seen a realization of all their former
fears. The temple and the city, they foresaw, would ultimately have
become the grand bone of contention, and this whole enterprize, or,
as they called it, last error, issue in consequences more fatal to
their place and nation than the first, under the conduct of Jesus of
Nazareth. All these forebodings of the rulers seem to have arisen
out of what the Lord said or dropt concerning his resurrection.
The Pharisees then suspected his followers of having stolen the
body, and his followers, with the exception of those who saw him on
the first day, seem to have suspected the Pharisees or rulers; a
circumstance which in itself indeed proves that neither party had
done it; for if either party had stolen the body it never could have
conscientiously blamed the other, as we have seen it did; if the
rulers had it, the disciples would not have dared to say that it was
alive; and if the disciples had it under their control, and said it
was alive, they would have embraced the first opportunity of
exhibiting him in order to refute the calumny of the rulers, who
said the body were in the possession of the party, but it was not
alive.
These things show us, at all events, that on the first day the body
was not where it had been originally laid, and where both parties
hoped to find it; they show us that both parties agree in this, viz.
that the body was missing from the sepulchre, and now there seems to
be only two possible ways of accounting for its departure.
Seeing, then, it was not removed by any of the parties concerned, it
must either have been taken off by some unconcerned party, or have
departed itself; which last opinion, indeed, is the more probable of
the two; for to suppose that any unconcerned party would endanger
themselves, or bribe the guards for a dead person, about whose fate
they had been altogether unconcerned whilst alive, would be
nonsense. But to suppose that there was any unconcerned party in the
capital where Jesus was crucified, would argue great ignorance of
the spirit of the times.
He was not stolen by any party, either concerned or unconcerned
about his fate; and the only conclusion remaining is, that the body
departed itself, that "the Lord Jesus has arisen indeed." He has
also ascended up on high; he led captivity captive, and has given
gifts to men, who have announced to us by the Holy Spirit, the
things which are given to us by God without any cause.
Walter Scott
From The Christian Baptist, October 1823
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