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St. Mark 16.1–8

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

The first question that must be considered is the historical one: Was the tomb empty? In a very useful chapter entitled ‘History and Criticism’ Professor A. M. Ramsey discusses ‘some of the types of conclusion reached by those who have applied the methods of critical science to the narratives of the Resurrection’. He mentions first the subjective-vision theory, according to which ‘the appearances of Jesus recorded in the Gospels were simply visions generated by the imaginations of the disciples out of an intense state of emotion or expectancy’. Some who have held this view have combined with it a belief in the survival of Jesus' soul. As Professor Ramsey points out, there are obvious difficulties in the way of accepting this theory—particularly the fact that the disciples' slowness to believe is a marked feature of the narratives. He then mentions the ‘telegram from heaven’ or what we might call the objective-vision theory (Theodor Keim, B. H. Streeter), according to which ‘the residuum of fact behind the narratives consists not in visions generated by the disciples but in visions imparted by God Himself, so as to assure the disciples that Jesus was alive…’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1952

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References

page 398 note 1 The Resurrection of Christ, pp. 45–57.

page 398 note 2 Part I, p. 294. Cf. Stauffer, E., Die Theologie des NTs, p. 115Google Scholar and also notes 431, 432, on p. 269. In note 432 he argues that Rom. 6.4 and Col. 2.12 imply the empty tomb.

page 399 note 1 In the text the words coming after stress the evidence of the empty tomb.

page 400 note 1 Pp. 62–156, to which I am much indebted in this and the next two paragraphs.

page 400 note 2 Ibid. p. 73.

page 400 note 3 Ibid. p. 73.

page 400 note 4 e.g. on pp. 86–93 he seems excessively anxious to show that the soul can survive the body and on p. 113 he says of the Greek (Orphic and Platonic) belief in the immortality of the soul that we may see in it ‘a very real preparation for the Christian hope. It was a true light’. But there are grounds for thinking that this belief in the natural immortality of the soul is positively blasphemous rather than just inadequate. It represents (1) a blurring of the distinction between God and man, the presumptuous claim on man's part that his real self is akin to God, sharing therefore by right in God's immortality (cf. Gen. 3.5—‘ye shall be as God’!); (2) a failure to take seriously the real nature of man, the fact that a man is a whole, the totus homo; (3) a failure to take sin seriously, pretending that it is only the body that is evil, while the soul is pure, whereas in actual fact it is the whole man who is a sinner and therefore the whole man has to die; (4) a failure to recognise that the future life of the soul as of the body is not something fallen man has by natural right, but something that he receives as a gift of God's grace; (5) a despising of the body and therefore also of the Creator. A very useful corrective to Professor Baillie's account of the matter is to be found in Nygren, A., Agape and Eros, Part II, vol. 1, pp. 6472Google Scholar, 114 f, 188–192, though Nygren is apt to be somewhat doctrinaire.

page 400 note 5 a despising of the body and therefore also of the Creator. A very useful corrective to Professor Baillie's account of the matter is to be found in A. Nygren, Agape and Eros, Part II, vol. 1, pp. 64–72, 114 f, 188–192, though Nygren is apt to be somewhat doctrinaire.

page 401 note 1 op. cit., pp. 125 f.

page 402 note 1 But Christ's resurrection transcends these ‘terms’, and the argument of the NT is not from a general resurrection to the resurrection of Christ, but the other way round. Cf. Baillie, op. cit., pp. 138 f.

page 402 note 2 1 Cor. 15.20, 23.

page 402 note 3 Cf. ‘Abraham's bosom’ in Luke 16.19 ff. See also Enoch 22.

page 402 note 4 See further Cranfield, C. E. B., The First Epistle of Peter, pp. 8486Google Scholar, G. Friedrich in TWzNT, II, p. 714, note 105, and p. 716, and Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 113–115.

page 402 note 5 Phil. 1.23.

page 402 note 6 Cullmann, O., Christus u. die Zeit, p. 214Google Scholar. On the question discussed in this paragraph see pp. 205–215 (i.e. the last chapter of the book). There is an Eng. Tr., Christ and Time (SCM Press).

page 403 note 1 I Cor. 15.44.

page 403 note 2 John 20.19, 26.

page 403 note 3 Luke 24.40 (unless we omit with D, etc.), John 20.27.

page 403 note 4 Cf. Stauffer, op. cit., p. 115. But we must not put more weight on the mere use of the passive than it can bear; for a glance at a Concordance will show that the passive of is often used without any properly passive force (e.g. Matt. 8.15, 9.19, Mark 2.12, 13.8, 22). Cf. Moulton, J. H., A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. I, p. 163.Google Scholar That the resurrection of Jesus was God's act is rather made clear by such statements as Acts 3.15. It has been suggested (TWzNT, II, 334) that John 2.19, 21; 10.17, 18 imply the idea that Jesus' resurrection was self-wrought, but this is not at all certain.

page 403 note 5 Pace the resurrexit and ῐυατάυτα of the Creeds!

page 403 note 6 Phil. 3.21.

page 404 note 1 In addition to literature already referred to, mention may be made of the following: A. Oepke in TWzNT, I, pp. 368–372, on , etc., and in II, pp. 332–337, on etc.; A. M. Ramsey, op. cit., pp. 100–121; N. H. Snaith, I believe in…, pp. 115–121, The Distinctive Ideas of Ike Old Testament, p. 89, note 2, and “Life after Death: the Biblical Doctrine of Immortality,” in Interpretation ⅓ (1947), pp. 309–324; E. Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 189–192; J. A. T. Robinson, The Body (1952).

page 405 note 1 The Four Gospels (1924, 5th imp. 1936), pp. 351–360.

page 406 note 1 To the list given by Dr Taylor, op. cit., p. 609, should be added: A. M. Farrer, The Glass of Vision (1948), pp. 136–146; A Study in St. Mark (1951), pp. 172–181.

page 406 note 2 In JTS, vol. xxxi, pp. 175180.Google Scholar

page 406 note 3 The Gospel Message of St. Mark, pp. 80–97, 106–116.

page 408 note 1 The Glass of Vision, p. 138.

page 408 note 2 For a good discussion of the claim that the Church is the extension of the Incarnation see Newbigin, J. E. L., The Reunion of the Church (1948), pp. 5583Google Scholar. Cf. Barth, K., Dogmatik im Grundriss, pp. 149 fGoogle Scholar, Flew, R. N. (Editor), The Nature of the Church, p. 321.Google Scholar

page 409 note 1 Cf. Barth, K., Credo (Eng. Tr.), pp. 113116.Google Scholar

page 409 note 2 I Cor. 15.5.

page 409 note 3 Luke 24.34; also [12]. But could 24.24 conceivably suggest that the women had claimed to have seen Jesus?

page 410 note 1 Matt. 28.9; cf. 28.1.

page 410 note 2 Unless we were to adopt the text of D and k in verse 7: praecedo vbs in Galileam; illic me videbitis, sicut vobis dixi. W and Syr.hier also have the 1st person πρoáγω, and 40, 72, a, ff, and q have the 1st person sing, in the clause; but D and k are alone in reading με (me) for . The Dk reading, of course, implies that the “young man” is the risen Lord Himself. This makes the latter part of verse 6 very awkward. The Latin MSS c and k omit , which would be extremely odd on the lips of the risen Jesus, and k and 251 and l 253 omit after μαθηî. But the text of Dk here is certainly unlikely. Moreover, an explanation of how it could arise is not far to seek: we suggest that first was assimilated to the Matt, parallel (the angel's solemn assurance), and then and were altered to fit in with the 1st person. The Bezan could be a slip for .

page 410 note 3 Luke 24.10. Cf. 23.49, 55, 8.2 f.

page 410 note 4 John 20.1, 11, 18. But could the plural ‘we know” in 20.2 be a hint that there were others with her? On the question of the women's names see further V. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 651–653.

page 410 note 5 c, ff, n, q, Aug.cons, Tich.r.

page 411 note 1 op. cit., p. 444.

page 411 note 2 See Black, M., An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, pp. 99Google Scholar f for a full discussion of the verb , which occurs in Matt. 28.1 and Luke 23.54. According to Black, Geiger, A. (in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xii. 365)Google Scholar and Moore, G. F. (in Journ. American Orient. Soc, xxvi, 323 ff)Google Scholar have claimed that it has a Semitic sense and is equivalent to Heb. 'or or Aram, negah idiomatically used of the breaking of the Jewish day at sunset or the drawing on of the following day any time after sunset. The verb is rare in secular Greek, where it always refers to the real dawn. In ecclesiastical Greek it is used in the sense claimed for it in the two Gospel passages. Black refers to Burkitt, F. G. in JTS, xiv, 546Google Scholar. He also cites in support the Gospel of Peter ii.5 (James, M. R., Apocryphal NT, p. 91Google Scholar) and Turner, C. H. (JTS, xiv, 189Google Scholar). See also V. Taylor, op. cit., p. 604.

page 411 note 3 Das Ev. nach Matthäus, p. 276.

page 412 note 1 28.16 ff.

page 413 note 1 Cf. Barth, , Kirchliche Dogmatik, 3/3, p. 595.Google Scholar

page 413 note 2 The Gospel of St. Mark, p. 439.

page 413 note 3 The Resurrection of Christ, p. 67.

page 414 note 1 Cf. Barth, Credo (Eng. Tr.), p. 100.