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Resurrection Appearances of Jesus

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The Resurrection appearances of Jesus are reported by the Canonical Gospels to have occurred after the discovery of the empty tomb. Between the gospels there are four occasions on which Jesus appeared after the empty tomb, which, in order, are:

  1. To Mary Magdalene - Except according to Luke. Matthew also adds the other Mary to the same incident.
  2. To two of the other disciples - Except according to John and Matthew.
  3. To the eleven - According to all four gospels. Mark states they were preparing to eat, Luke that they were gathered together, Matthew that they were on a mountain that they had been sent to, and John that they were assembled indoors due to fear of the Jews.
  4. To Thomas Didymus - Only according to John.
The final appearance is reported as being forty days after the resurrection when he ascended into heaven (Luke 24:44-49), where he remains, until the Second Coming.

In addition, Paul of Tarsus claimed he saw the resurrected Jesus in [1 Cor 15] and that he was then appointed to be the Apostle to the Gentiles, see also Road to Damascus and Pauline Christianity.

Each appearance has been the focus of much literary comment during the mediaeval era, and the York Cycle of English mystery plays has a whole play about the appearance to Mary. However, The ending of Mark varies substantially between ancient manuscripts, and scholars are on near universal agreement that all the text after the description of Mary and Mary fleeing the empty tomb (the text which appears in many modern translations, and in the King James Version, amongst others) was simply not present in the original version. In other words, the appearances according to the original version of Mark were not what exists in the narrative of most modern Bibles (and some recent translations acknowledge this, placing braces around the remaining text, bracketing it, leaving it out altogether, or otherwise marking it as not original). Unhelpfully it is the general opinion of textual scholars that none of the known variant endings, including the traditional one, is actually the original ending.

According to the synoptic problem, and the theory of Markan priority, the accounts of Jesus' appearances in Matthew, Luke, and John, are ultimately copied from Mark's, with Matthew and Luke copying it more directly. Hence the problems with the ending of Mark also affects the remaining gospels, and casts doubt on the authenticity of the stories of Jesus' appearances, even if the original form of Mark were to prove to be a totally accurate historic record. In turn, this potentially casts an argument from silence about the historicity of the resurrection, and some scholars have argued that Mark never originally contained a resurrection narrative whatsoever, with the heterodoxy adding the ending when the original one came to embarrass their claims about resurrection. Amongst the variant endings, the most popular in ancient manuscripts is the so-called shorter ending (which the modern New Revised Standard Edition uses instead of the traditional ending), which is particularly lacking in any resurrection narrative, and hints at docetism.

Contents

The appearance to Mary Magdelane

While Mark doesn't mention when the incident occurred, Matthew states that Jesus appeared to Mary and Mary while they were returning to tell the disciples what they had seen. John, on the other hand, presents a completely different incident. John's account parallels the synoptic accounts of Mary's first visit to the tomb, though in John, Mary has already been to the tomb once, and Peter has already inspected it. Unlike the first visit, the second, in John, is much more similar to the synoptic account of the empty tomb, with Mary peering into the tomb and witnessing two angels inside dressed in shining white. Having been questioned by the angels about her concern for the tomb's emptiness, Mary turns and sees Jesus, according to John.

Mary's presence at the tomb, however, jars with the preceding narrative in John, which presents Mary as having left the tomb, and having told Peter that it was empty. C.K.Barrett has attempted to resolve this by suggesting that Mary may have gone with Peter to witness his examination of the tomb. Some scholars feel that Mary never really left the tomb in the original form of John, and that Peter's visit has somehow become misplaced before she sees the angels in the tomb, rather than after. Brown has argued that the text for John 20 was combined from two separate sources, that John inexpertly interlaced together. To many it seems illogical for Mary to not have actually looked into the tomb before going and telling Peter and the Beloved Disciple that Jesus' body was gone. This is the only time in the Gospel of John that angels appear, and so many scholars believe that the angels were a later addition to the narrative, perhaps in an attempt to harmonise the account of Mary's visit to the tomb with the synoptic Gospels. Rationalists like Schnackenberg, however, believe that the angels were added to reinforce the lack of a corpse - by indicating that the angels were sitting where the head and feet of Jesus's corpse should have been, it shows that a full examination of the spot had been conducted. As a later addition, or misplacing of the text, an explanation is provided for why the angels are so quickly forgotten in the rest of the chapter, and for why the angels failed to appear to Peter when he examined the tomb.

Why John describes Mary as loitering outside the tomb is unknown, though, in typically sexist style, Augustine of Hippo proposed that when the men went away, a stronger affection kept the weaker sex firmly in place, i.e. that Mary remained behind after Peter had left because she was soppy. Bruce believed that Mary was hoping someone would pass by who could give her some information, though why Mary does not seek out Joseph of Arimathea, the owner of the tomb, for information is an obvious question. One theory is that Joseph was so far above Mary's in terms of social class that it would not be right for her to disturb him, but a more obvious solution is presented by Schnackenberg - the Codex Sinaiticus version of John has Mary waiting inside rather than outside, and this may be the original form - though again this still raises the question of why she was waiting at all, with several textual scholars arguing that Mary waiting outside is a redaction that was added once the angels part of the narrative, for the original tomb visit, became misplaced.

Iconically, John depicts Mary as weeping, ultimately causing her name to become a word associated with her sentiment - Maudlin. Both the angels address Mary as woman, and then ask why she had been crying. This is not as uncouth as it first appears, since the underlying Greek term - gunai - was, in Greek, the polite way to address an adult female. According to those who view angels as mere agents of God, and hence de-facto omniscient, the angels should know why Mary is crying, and so their asking why Mary did so is often postulated to be rhetorical. While the synoptic Gospels demonstrate an awareness of Jewish beliefs, and people there are presented as being shocked and afraid of angels, John demonstrates no such awareness, instead presenting Mary as responding nonchalantly, and while some believe that this is due to Mary not recognising the figures as angels, due to grief or tears, scholars tend to see this as owing to issues surrounding the author of John. The conversation itself differs considerably from the one reported by the synoptics, and the angels are brief and do not give any hint of resurrection having happened, which Calvin attempted to justify by arguing that John was only including what was necessary to back up the resurrection. At this point the angels abruptly disappear from the narrative, and John and the synoptics begin to share the order of events again.

Mark very enigmatically only describes Mary's post-tomb encounter with Jesus by stating that he had cast seven devils out from her, presumably indicating an off-screen exorcism. Matthew instead reports that Jesus met Mary and Mary as they were returning to the other disciples, and instructed them to tell the disciples that they would see Jesus, while Mary and Mary worship Jesus' feet.

John presents a far more elaborate conversation. According to John, once Mary has explained to the angels about her concern at the emptiness of the tomb, she turns and suddenly sees Jesus, but mistakes him for a gardener (the word gardener is a hapax legomenon in the bible). In John's account of the conversation, Jesus repeats the angels' question of why Mary is weeping, and Mary responds similarly, by requesting to know what Jesus (whom she has mistaken for someone else) has done with Jesus' body. After this response, John states that Jesus says Mary's name, she turns, and apparently realises who he is, whereupon Jesus enigmatically tells her to Touch [him] not, for [he is] not yet ascended to [his] father and then to inform the disciples. To resolve the differences between the Gospels, some inerrantist scholars like Norman Geisler believe that after the events recounted by John, Mary runs into another group of women, whereupon the events of the synoptic accounts occur, though there is no evidence whatsoever for such a conclusion from John itself.

The significance of Mary Magdalene

That three of the Gospels portray Mary Magdalene as the first to see Jesus post-death, is generally considered to be of significance. Mary Magdelane was a major figure in Gnosticism, and one of the main teachers besides Jesus, the only other of similar significance being Thomas Didymous, supporters of Gnostic priority (that Gnosticism is the original form of Christianity) see this as clear evidence that Mark, and hence, due to Markan priority, the entire resurrection narrative, was intended to be interpreted gnostically. Though owing to intrinsic beliefs, about the nature of the physical world, Gnosticism generally viewed women as equals, in Judaism of the era women were not considered valid legal witnesses. Westcott, and other supporters of John's authenticity, sometimes use this to argue that the narratives must be factual, since someone faking it would be more likely to use a prominent and respected witness, though this neglects the possibility of well planned forgery.

Why John portrays Mary as initially not recognising Jesus, even though she had known well for a long time, is something of much debate. One theory is that, since Luke records two disciples as failing to recognise a post-death appearance of Jesus, the physical form of Jesus after resurrection must have been different, either due to the resurrection process itself, or due to the ordeal of crucifixion. More down to earth explanations have also been advanced, the most prominent being that Mary's tears had clouded her vision, or alternately that she is so focused on recovering Jesus' body, that she is temporarily blind to it being in front of her. However, John Calvin, and many other Christians, read this as a metaphor; that Mary's blindness despite seeing Jesus represents the blindness, according to Christians, of non-Christians who have already been informed about Jesus. Why Jesus initially encourages Mary's lack of recognition is also something of a mystery, though Dibelius, like many others, sees it as a literary conceit, since the trope of a returning hero being unrecognised or disguised dates back at least as far as Homer's Odyssey, and Feuillet sees echoes of the Song of Solomon in this passage.

Amongst those who see John as a deliberate piece of polemical heterodox propaganda, it is seen as a deliberate attack, by John against the gnostics, by portraying one of their key figures as being stupid. The frequently raised idea that John is heterodox propaganda has also been proposed to explain the reference to gardeners. A Jewish anti-Christian story from the period sought to discredit the resurrection, by claiming that a gardener named Judas moved Jesus' body to another tomb, to avoid the his cabbages being trampled upon by the crowds that came to see it coming to see it, causing the resurrection myth to arise when Mary and the others found the tomb empty. Hans Von Campenhausen has argued that John adds the mention of a gardener as a deliberate reference to this Jewish story, and as an attempt to discredit it, though Rudolf Schnackenberg regards the sequence of cause and effect to be the reverse - that the Jewish story originated from John's mention of a gardener. Amongst Victorian commentators, Hoskyns and Lightfoot regarded the mention of a gardener as a metaphor relating to the Garden of Eden.

Noli me tangere

What is meant by Jesus telling Mary to Touch [him] not, for [he is] not yet ascended to [his] father has historically been the subject of extremely heavy debate. Touch me not became an extremely well known phrase, albeit in Latin as Noli me tangere, and is still generally regarded as a direct reference to John's account of Jesus making this statement. The phrase does appear to be quite at odds with the other gospels and even with later parts of John, since John has Jesus asking Thomas Didymus to probe his wounds, and Mark has Mary and Mary holding Jesus by his feet (though feet was commonly used as an Old Testament euphemism for genitalia, it is near-universally thought to actually refer to feet on this occasion)

There are a wide variety of solutions, perhaps the most obvious being the suggestion of textual corruption, with some suggesting that the word not was not originally there, while W.E.P Cotter has proposed that the text originally said fear rather than touch (i.e. do not fear me), and W.D. Morris has proposed it originally said fear to touch (i.e. do not fear to touch me). There is however no linguistic evidence for these suggestions, and so most scholars concentrate on other avenues of argument. Some have proposed that Jesus' wounds were sore and so he disliked the pain inflicted by being touched, while others believe there to be ritualistic reasons involved. Kraft proposes that it was against ritual to touch a corpse, and Jesus wished to enforce this, regarding himself as dead, while C. Spicq proposes that Jesus saw himself as a (Jewish) high priest, who were not meant to be sullied by physical contact, and others still have proposed that Mary is being ordered to have faith and not seek physical proof.

All of the aforementioned non-textual solutions, however, neglect the fact that John later describes Thomas Didymous as being encouraged to touch Jesus' wounds, apparently contradicting the prior arguments. Consequently many proposals hinge on portraying Jesus as upholding some form of sexism, with Chrysostom and Theophylact arguing that Jesus was asking that more respect be shown to him, a view often linked to the notion that while it was not appropriate for a woman to touch Jesus it was fine for a man like Thomas. Kastner has argued that Jesus was naked, since the grave clothes were left in the tomb, and so John portrays Jesus as being concerned with Mary being tempted by his body, though this implies some sort of homophobia on John's part, since despite homosexual behaviour being ordinary and commonplace, in the hellenic world that John was written in, no such concern is presented against Thomas.

Interpretations concentrating more on the subsequent context have also been proposed. H.C.G. Moule suggested that Jesus is merely re-assuring Mary that he is firmly on Earth and she need carry out no investigation, and others have suggested that Jesus is merely concerned with staying on-topic, essentially instructing Mary don't waste time touching me, go and tell the disciples. Barrett has suggested that as Jesus prohibits Mary by arguing that he has not ascended to [his] father, he could have ascended to heaven before meeting Thomas (and after meeting Mary), returning for the meeting with Thomas, though this view implies that the meeting with Thomas is some form of second visit, hence raising several theological issues, including that of a second coming, and is consequently unfavourably viewed by most Christians. John Calvin argued that Mary (and Mary) had started to cling to Jesus, as if trying to hold him down on Earth, and so Jesus told them to give up; in consequence many Protestant translations, particularly those that are Calvinist, use cling to describe how Jesus refers to Mary's behaviour (i.e. do not cling to me), and touch elsewhere, such as with Thomas, even though both these are translations of the same Greek word.

Historically, the phrase formed one of the main arguments in the debate on Christology, seemingly suggesting some form of intangibility - a view shared in the modern era by Bultman - and hence appearing to advocate docetism (a view where Jesus' body is not resurrected as a physical object - do not touch me because you can't). This is quite at odds with John's general emphasis elsewhere against docetism, and so those who regard John as deliberate polemic and propaganda tend instead to see this verse as an attack against Mary - i.e. get away from me. Gnostics frequently viewed Mary Magdelane as being greater than the other disciples, and much closer to Jesus on both a spiritual and personal level, and hence Jesus treating Mary with disdain would be a deliberate attack on the respect and emphasis that gnosticism placed on her, much in the same way that Thomas Didymus is presented, somewhat mockingly, as doubting Jesus is physically there until he actually confirms it, while Gnostics viewed Thomas as a great teacher who had many revelations, and advocated docetism.

Mary's report

Mark reports merely that Jesus met Mary, and Luke doesn't even report this, but Matthew reports Jesus as instructing Mary to arrange for the disciples to meet him, while John has Jesus giving Mary a specific message to deliver - that he ascend[s] to [his] father and [her] Father, and to [his] God and [her] God. Matthew also reports that while Mary and Mary were returning to the disciples, the watchmen of the city informed the chief priests of the things that were done, and the sanhedrin gave money to the soldiers to spread the message that Jesus' corpse had been stolen by his disciples. Matthew mentions that this had become a common claim of the Jews, and it is probable that Matthew portrays it as being sanhedrin-inspired propaganda in order to discredit what must seem an obvious accusation.

Typically for John, the message that Jesus gives Mary seems to strongly assert a specific Christology, though many dispute quite which one. Jesus identifies the intended recipients of his message as being his adelphoi, a Greek term meaning both cousin and brother, which Alford believes is an implication that a new closeness exists between Jesus and his followers and an indication that Jesus is still fully human and a brother to other men. The message itself is one that is central to the debate between Monophysitism and Dyophysitism, with Dyophysitism holding that the passage asserts that Jesus was both human and divine. That the passage is seen more to uphold the heterodox position than the non-heterodox position is often cited as evidence that the author of John wrote the Gospel as deliberate propaganda for the purpose of refuting non-heterodoxy in the second century, rather than being a devout work of an eyewitness from the first century, a period when the Monophysitism/Dyophysitism debate was a non-issue. That the message seems more concerned with the ascension than with the resurrection itself is sometimes read, particularly by Pentecostalists to imply that the ascension has far greater importance.

Textual features

In John, after Mary has first turned around and seen Jesus, and after Mary and Jesus have started conversing, when Jesus states her name Mary turns around again and speaks to him. Almost no-one believes that this means that when Jesus calls her name she turns her back to him and converses, and so the question arises as to how she could still be facing him if she has twice turned around. One school of thought is that Mary had turned away between these two turns, Kastner arguing that she had done so due to Jesus being nude, while another school of thought suggests, like Brown, that the first turn was only partial and the second was a complete turn - as if she was standing at right angles to Jesus the first time she speaks. Schnackenberg and many textual scholars argue that the initial part of the narrative is misplaced, and hence that these two turns occurred at originally quite separate incidents.

According to John, when Jesus calls Mary's name she responds by stating Rabboni. Mark translates (into Greek) the word Rabboni, claiming it means beloved teacher, while John translates it (into Greek) as teacher. The exact translation of Rabboni is disputed, but most linguists see it as sharing the same etymology as Rabbi, though a more polite form - something like my dear Rabbi. Mark's translation agrees with this, since Rabbi is generally considered to mean teacher, while John's demonstrates slightly less knowledge of Aramaic, apparently unaware of Aramaic grammar. While many religiously conservative scholars, like W.F. Albright, agree with this linguistic analysis, a few have sought to claim the term as evidence of divinity; Hoskyns, for example, has claimed that the similarly spelt word Rabbuni was used in works of the period as a name for God, and hence that Mary was claiming that Jesus was divine. Due to the lack of certain forms of punctuation in early manuscripts of the Gospels, it is uncertain whether Rabboni is used as an exclamation of recognition, or whether it is questioning and uncertain - Rabboni?.

John uses the wording Miriam when Jesus is described as speaking Mary's name, which according to Brown is more Hebrew than the Aramaic term Mariam (from which, via Latin, her English name - Mary - derives). Several scholars argue that this is evidence that the author of John wasn't actually a disciple, and didn't really understand Jewish culture, since though Hebrew was still the liturgical and scriptural language, everyday speech of the period was generally Aramaic. Other scholars, though, disagree, arguing instead that authors in this period tended to vary between Miriam and Mariam indiscriminately.

See also

References

External links

 

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