The Apostles. Ernest Renan
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not leave His Son a prey to hell; He will not suffer His elect to see corruption.{1.7} What is this tombstone which weighs upon Him? He will raise it up; He will reascend to the right hand of His Father, whence He descended. And we shall see Him again; we shall hear His charming voice; we shall enjoy afresh His conversations, and they will have slain Him in vain.
The belief in the immortality of the soul, which through the influence of the Grecian philosophy has become a dogma of Christianity, is easily permitted to take the part of death; because the dissolution of the body, by this hypothesis, is nothing else than a deliverance of the soul, hereafter freed from the troublesome bonds without which it is able to exist. But this theory of man, considered as a being composed of two substances, was by no means clear to the Jews. The reign of God and the reign of the spirit consisted, in their ideas, in a complete transformation of the world and in the annihilation of death.{1.8} To acknowledge that death could have the victory over Jesus, over him who came to abolish the power of death, this was the height of absurdity. The very idea that he could suffer had previously been revolting to his disciples.{1.9} They had no choice, then, between despair or heroic affirmation. A man of penetration might have announced during the Saturday that Jesus would arise. The little Christian society, on that day, worked the veritable miracle; they resuscitated Jesus in their hearts by the intense love which they bore towards him. They decided that Jesus had not died. The love of these passionately fond souls was, truly, stronger than death;{1.10} and as the characteristic of a passionate love is to be communicated, to light up like a torch a sentiment which resembles it and is straightway indefinitely propagated; so Jesus, in one sense, at the time of which we are speaking, is already resuscitated. Only let a material fact, insignificant of itself, allow the persuasion that his body is no longer here below, and the dogma of the resurrection will be established for ever.
This was exactly what happened in the circumstances which, being partly obscure on account of the incoherence of their traditions, and above all on account of the contradictions which they present, have nevertheless been seized upon with a sufficient degree of probability.{1.11}
On the Sunday morning, at a very early hour, the women of Galilee who on Friday evening had hastily embalmed the body, repaired to the cave where they had provisionally deposited it. These were, Mary of Magdala, Mary Cleophas, Salome, Joanna, wife of Khouza, and others.{1.12} They came, probably, each from her own abode; for if it is difficult to call in question the tradition of the three synoptical Gospels, according to which many women came to the tomb,{1.13} it is certain, on the other hand, that in the two most authentic accounts{1.14} which we possess of the resurrection, Mary of Magdala plays her part alone. In any case, she had at this solemn moment a part to play altogether out of the common order of events. It is her that we must follow step by step; for she bore on that day during one hour all the burden of the Christian conscience; her witness decided the faith of the future. We must remember that the cave, wherein the body of Jesus was inclosed, had been recently hewn out of the rock, and that it was situated in a garden hard by the place of execution.{1.15} For this latter reason only had it been selected, seeing that it was late in the day, and that they were unwilling to violate the Sabbath.{1.16} The first Gospel alone adds one circumstance, viz. that the cave was the property of Joseph of Arimathea. But, in general, the anecdotical circumstances added by the first Gospel to the common fund of tradition are without value, above all when it treats of the last days of the life of Jesus.{1.17} The same Gospel mentions another detail which, considering the silence of the others, is destitute of probability; viz. the fact of the seals and of a guard detailed to the tomb.{1.18} We must also recollect that the mortuary vaults were low chambers hewn in the side of a sloping rock, on which was contrived a vertical cutting. The door, usually downwards, was closed by a very heavy stone, which fitted into a rabbet.{1.19} These chambers had no locks secured with keys; the weight of the stone was the sole safeguard they possessed against robbers and profaners of tombs; thus were they arranged in such a manner that either mechanical power or the united effort of several persons was necessary to remove the stone. All the traditions are agreed on this point, that the stone had been placed at the orifice of the vault on the Friday evening.
But when Mary Magdala arrived on the Sunday morning, the stone was not in its place. The vault was open. The body was no longer there. The idea of the resurrection was with her, as yet, but little developed. That which occupied her soul was a tender regret, and the desire to pay funeral honors to the corpse of her divine friend. Her first feelings then were those of surprise and grief. The disappearance of this cherished corpse had taken away from her the last joy on which she had depended. She could never touch him again with her hands. And what was he become? … The idea of a profanation presented itself to her, and she revolted at it. Perhaps, at the same time, a ray of hope beamed across her mind. Without losing a moment, she runs to the house where Peter and John were reunited.{1.20}
“They have taken away the body of our Master,” she said, “and we know not where they have laid him.” The two disciples arise hastily and run with all their might. John, the younger, arrives first. He stoops down to look into the interior. Mary was right. The tomb was empty. The linen cloths which had served as his shroud were lying apart in the vault. In his turn Peter arrives. The two enter, examine the linen cloths, no doubt spotted with blood, and remark, in particular, the napkin which had enveloped his head rolled by itself in one corner of the cave.{1.21} Peter and John returned to their homes overwhelmed with grief. If they did not then pronounce the decisive words, “He is risen!” we may affirm that such a consequence was their irrevocable conclusion, and that the creative dogma of Christianity was already propounded.
Peter and John having departed from the garden, Mary remained alone at the edge of the cave. She wept copiously; one sole thought preoccupied her mind: Where had they put the body?
Her woman’s heart went no further from her desire to clasp again in her arms the beloved corpse. Suddenly she hears a light rustling behind her. There is a man standing. At first she believes it to be the gardener. “Oh!” she says, “if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, that I may take him away.” For the only answer, she thinks that she hears herself called by her name, “Mary!” It was the voice that had so often thrilled her before. It was the accent of Jesus. “Oh, my master!” she cries. She is about to touch him. A sort of instinctive movement throws her at his feet to kiss them.{1.22}
The light vision gives way and says to her, “Touch me not.” Little by little the shadow disappears.{1.23}
But the miracle of love is accomplished. That which Cephas could not do, Mary has done; she has been able to draw life, sweet and penetrating words from the empty tomb. There is now no more talk of inferences to be deduced, or of conjectures to be framed. Mary has seen and heard. The resurrection has its first direct witness.
Frantic with love, intoxicated with joy, Mary returned to the city; and to the first disciples whom she met, she says, “I have seen Him, He has spoken to me.”{1.24} Her greatly agitated mind{1.25}, her broken and disconnected accents of speech, caused her to be taken by some persons for one demented.{1.26} Peter and John, in their turn, relate what they had seen; other disciples go to the tomb and see likewise.{1.27} The fixed conviction of all this first party was that Jesus had risen again. Many doubts still existed; but the assurance of Mary, of Peter, and of John, imposed upon the others. At a later date, this was called “the vision of Peter.”{1.28}
Paul, in particular, does not speak of the vision of Mary, and attributes all the honor of the first apparition to Peter. But this expression is very indefinite. Peter only saw the empty cave, and the linen cloth and the napkin. Only Mary loved enough to pass the bounds of nature and revive the shade of the perfect master. In these kinds of marvellous crises, to see after the others is nothing; all the merit is in seeing for the first time, for the others afterwards model their visions on the received type. It is the peculiarity of fine organizations to conceive the image promptly, justly, and with a sort of intimate sense of the end. The glory of the resurrection belongs, then, to Mary of Magdala. After Jesus, it is Mary who has done most for the foundation of Christianity. The shadow created by the delicate sensibility of Magdalene wanders still on the earth. Queen and patroness of idealists, Magdalene knew better than any one how to assert her dream, and impose on every one the vision of her passionate soul. Her great womanly affirmation: “He has risen,” has been