The Resurrection Of Jesus In Luke

By I. H. Marshall

[University of Aberdeen, Scotland]

Our concern in this paper is the somewhat unfashionable one of attempting to discover the historical basis which lies behind Luke’s account of the resurrection of Jesus. We shall, therefore, discuss the more fashionable themes of Luke’s stylistic and theological handling of is material and the tradition-history of that material only to he extent that they may help us to answer the historical question. At the same time we can hardly hope to solve the historical question without a detailed consideration of the other Gospels.[1] All that can be attempted here is to set down the historical evidence as supplied by Luke, and the task of relating it in detail to the other evidence must be left aside for the moment.

The Lucan narrative is presented as a connected whole, marked by a unity of time and space.[2] It consists of the following parts. After the account of the burial of Jesus in Luke 23:50–56 there is the visit of the women to the tomb on Easter Sunday, followed by their announcement to the apostles of what they had experienced (24:1–12). Then in 24:13–35 comes the story of the appearance of Jesus to the two travellers on the way to Emmaus; on their return to Jerusalem they join the other followers of Jesus who tell them that Jesus has appeared to Simon, and while they are together Jesus again appears in their midst, convinces them of His identity and gives them instruction (24:36–43, 44–49). Finally, He leads them out to Bethany where He departs from them (24:50–53).[3] There is also another account of the ascension of Jesus in Acts 1:1–11 which repeats the story in the Gospel more fully and from a different angle. It has been argued that one or both of these narratives of the ascension may not be an original part of Luke’s work but I propose to assume that in fact both accounts come from his pen.[4] One further assumption which I propose to make is that in general the so-called ‘western non-interpolations’ in Luke 24 are a true part of the text,[5] although each individual reading should be considered on its merits.[6]

I.

In the course of the preliminary study for this paper it became evident time and again that the solution to the problem of the historicity of the various parts of the narrative depended upon the attitude taken to the Galilee versus Jerusalem question. The problem is a familiar one. According to Mark the resurrection appearance is to take place in Galilee, and according to Matthew it actually does, although Matthew also records an appearance to the women in Jerusalem (Mt. 28:9f.). According to Luke the appearances all take place in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood, and appear to be concentrated into one day. According to John 20 the appearances take place in Jerusalem, but the so-called appendix in John 21 relates an appearance in Galilee. How are these traditions related?

1. The usual conservative solution consists in a harmonization of the various traditions so that Jesus appears first in Jerusalem, then in Galilee and finally in Jerusalem again.[7] The objections to this view are as follows: (a) No one tradition reflects this threefold division of the appearances. (b) The stories of appearances in Galilee show traces that these recounted the first revelation of Jesus to the disciples. (c) Although Matthew records an appearance to the women in Jerusalem, this is manifestly a secondary development. (d). It is unlikely that the lost ending of Mark (if there ever was one) went on to record an appearance in Jerusalem. (e) If Jesus appeared to the disciples first in Jerusalem, why did they then leave Jerusalem and return to Galilee?[8]

The weight of these objections is varied. Nevertheless, they have led to considerable dissatisfaction among modern scholars with the traditional view.

2. The most common alternative among modern scholars is that the original appearances took place in Galilee, and there may have been other appearances later in Jerusalem. But there were no appearances at first in Jerusalem. There are, however, two schools of thought regarding what preceded the appearances. According to H. Grass and others, the story of the discovery of the empty tomb is a secondary feature of the tradition arising after the stories of the appearances, and it brought in its train the development of the further legends of Jesus’ appearances in Jerusalem.[9] However, H. F. von Campenhausen has built up a strong case for the historicity of the story of the empty tomb; after its discovery the disciples went to Galilee and there Jesus appeared to then.[10]

3. A number of earlier critics disputed the historicity of the Galilean appearances, and attempted to locate them all in Jerusalem, arguing that the Galilean stories are all attempts to show that the prophecy in Mark 14:27f. was fulfilled, when in fact it never was fulfilled.[11] This interpretation has fallen from favour among recent students. The basic argument is that if the Jerusalem tradition is alone true historically, it is very difficult to see how the Galilee tradition ever developed, whereas the opposite development is much more easily conceivable.

The attempt to use Mark 14:27f. to refute this argument is not generally considered to be compelling.

4. In attempting to come to grips with this problem and to offer an acceptable solution we may make the following points: (a) Luke has a known tendency to emphasize the theological importance of Jerusalem, and especially its significance as the starting-point of the Christian mission. Moreover, the evidence of Acts 1:1–11 shows that in the Gospel he has given at least the impression of concentrating the appearances on one day although he knew that they took place over a longer period. One may rightly argue therefore that Luke’s concentration on Jerusalem is no sign that he was either ignorant of, or opposed to, traditions of appearances in Galilee; it was rather the case that to record such would not have fitted his theological purpose.[12] It should also be observed that the Jerusalem tradition was certainly not invented by Luke in the interests of his theology, since it is independently attested in the other Gospels.

(b) If the Jerusalem tradition is true, it is hard to account for the existence of the Galilee tradition alongside it if it is not also true. Granted that Jesus died in Jerusalem and that the early church began in Jerusalem, the story of appearances in Galilee is very odd, unless they actually took place. It may of course be argued that the two traditions reflect rivalry between two different groups in the church, but this is extremely improbable, since we have no clear supporting evidence for such rivalry.[13] Hence we may conclude that view number 3 is to be excluded; the appearances cannot be restricted to Jerusalem.

(c) It must also be insisted that, if appearances took place in Galilee, this does not exclude the possibility that appearances also took place elsewhere, namely in and around Jerusalem. Thus K. Lake wrote: ‘If the disciples saw the risen Lord in Galilee, there is no reason why they should not have seen him again after they returned to Jerusalem . . . if they (sc. the appearances) were real and objective, there is no reason why they should have been confined to any one locality, and if they were the merest hallucination, there is still less cause for thinking that it was peculiar to any one circle of disciples.’[14] Other critics have echoed these words,[15] and hence we need not dispute the possibility of appearances in Jerusalem after or alongside the appearances in Galilee. Accordingly, the problem resolves itself into the question of appearances in Jerusalem before the appearances in Galilee.

(d) The argument that the descriptions of the appearances in Galilee show that originally they were told as stories of first appearances would demand a detailed consideration of non- Lucan material. It midst suffice to say that the evidence is not entirely compelling.[16] It certainly does not rule out prior appearances to the women.

(e) Although the account of the appearance to the women in Matthew 28 has been dismissed as secondary, it does in fact fit in with the independent tradition in John 20 that Jesus appeared to Mary near the tomb, and this tradition deserves respect.[17]

(f) The story of the empty tomb in itself is historically credible.[18] Above all, the role of the women in it speaks against its being a late invention. The objections to it are its alleged incompatibility with the Galilee tradition and hence its secondary character, and also the suggestion that it may have replaced the story of n original appearance to Peter.[19] With regard to these objections, it should be noted first that the story in Mark is so far from being incompatible with the Galilean tradition that in its present form it actually refers to an appearance in Galilee. One may of course regard Mark 16:7 as an editorial addition,[20] but, if so, the point is all the stronger. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that, wherever Jesus appeared to His disciples, His tomb must belong to Jerusalem.

Second, the suggestion that the story of the empty tomb has replaced the story of the first appearance to Peter is pure hypothesis, and no explanation has been offered as to why this replacement should have taken place.[21]

(g) Accordingly, the main difficulty that remains is to explain why the disciples left Jerusalem. We can set aside the view that they had fled to Galilee before Easter; this view creates more difficulties than it solves.[22] We may also be sure that they did in fact go to Galilee.[23] The problem is to explain why they went after the discovery of the empty tomb and (if it is historical) the original appearance of Jesus in Jerusalem.

Three possible reasons may be suggested. (i) The command of the angel at the tomb is historical; it was made known to the disciples and in obedience to it they went to Galilee. The difficulty with this view is principally that it appears to rule out the possibility of any appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem before they departed for Galilee. But two factors make any decision here highly uncertain. The first is that the historicity of the command is problematical. It is accepted by Matthew, and indeed he repeats it as a saying of the risen Jesus to the women, but its historical status is not clear. The second factor is that we do not know how Mark related this scene to what followed, whether in actual events or in the putative ending of his Gospel.

(ii) The story of the angelic command may at the very least imply that the disciples returned to Galilee under a sense of divine compulsion. A fairly obvious reason for this sense of compulsion would be their desire to tell the disciples of Jesus in Galilee what had happened. It is surprising that this motive should have attracted so little comment among the scholars, but it seems to me to be an adequate motivation for departure. It would explain a departure after an appearance of Jesus rather than apart from any appearances, but both views are possible. The objection has been raised that this sort of reunion of the disciples in Galilee would have amounted to a founding of the church, whereas this event is firmly tied to Jerusalem, but this is to make too much out of the reunion.[24]

(iii) The return of the disciples to Galilee may be associated with the probable movements of festival pilgrims returning to their homes. This theory has been put forward by C. F. D. Moule who envisages the disciples acting in accordance with the official Jewish calendar.[25] By itself the theory is not wholly compelling, since the unusual events associated with the death of Jesus and the empty tomb could easily have led the disciples from Galilee to alter their normal plans. In conjunction with some other motives, however, it helps to provide a plausible picture.

A variant of this theory has recently been proposed by J. Carmignac who argues that the disciples followed the Qumran festival calendar, which was three days ahead of the official calendar.[26] He further argues that when the women did not tell the disciples to go to Galilee where Jesus would appear to them, He had to change His plan and therefore appeared there and then to them in Jerusalem, manifesting Himself to Peter, to the travellers to Emmaus and to the Eleven; the disciples continued in Jerusalem until after the feast of unleavened bread was over, but this did not give them sufficient time to return to Galilee before the next Sabbath, and so on the following Sunday they were still in Jerusalem where Jesus appeared to Thomas. Thereafter they went to Galilee, where they experienced further appearances.

This theory is breathtaking in its ingenuity. It has the merit of explaining the length of the disciples’ stay in Jerusalem. Its weak point is the curious change of plan attributed to Jesus. This seems decidedly odd and in any case an unnecessary refinement. It is an attempt to cope with the problem that the account in Mark and Matthew appears to exclude the possibility of appearances to the disciples in Jerusalem. One is perhaps led back to the possibility that the angelic command is not part of the original story, and that in its present form it may reflect a preoccupation with Galilee on the part of Mark. We are left with a set of possibilities regarding this part of the problem. But enough has been said to show that the traditional view in a modified form is perfectly viable. If this is the case, then the major problem in the way of accepting the resurrection stories in Luke is removed, and we are free to consider them on their historical merits without having our study of them prejudiced from the outset.

II.

The story of the burial of Jesus demands some attention at the outset because of its close links with the narrative of the visit to the tomb. It is also of importance because, if Luke had a source for his resurrection narrative alongside Mark (which I assume that he was using in any case), then it is necessary to trace its full extent. In the case of this story, therefore, we may structure our discussion as an answer to the question of Luke’s sources. Here, as throughout our study, we are indebted to the posthumous study by V. Taylor, which looks for evidence of a non-Marcan source and provides a helpful analysis of Lucan stylistic characteristics throughout the narrative.[27]

The first part of the story (23:50–54) describes the action of Joseph in burying Jesus, and closely follows Mark 15:42–46. Taylor argues, however, that there is a knowledge of Johannine tradition here,[28] and Grundmann claims that a special source has influenced Luke in verses 50, 51a and 53b.[29] Decision is difficult since here, as throughout our study, individual details which might or might not represent Lucan re-working of Mark will be judged in the light of our verdict on the passage as a whole. In the present case, however, the detailed differences from Mark do look more like Lucan alterations than additions from another source.[30]

1. Luke has transferred Mark’s time note from the beginning to the end of the story, thus coinciding with the position of the time note in John 19:42.[31] Although this transposition could be due to use of a source, it may also be due simply to the desire to link the time note more closely with the action of the women.

2. Joseph is ‘a good and just man’ who did not agree with the Sanhedrin. The former of these points can simply be paraphrase of Mark’s εὐσχήμων.[32] The latter comment is a fairly obvious deduction from Joseph’s behaviour. The phraseology is Lucan; Luke stresses the presence of Jewish piety (1:6; 2:25, 37).

3. Luke adds the feature that the tomb had not been previously used. This detail is paralleled in John 19:41, but it is also reflected in Matthew’s description of the tomb as ‘new’ (a word also used by John), and it is best to see the influence of oral tradition.

In the second part of the story we are told how certain women from Galilee (cf. 23:49) saw the tomb and how His body was placed. They then prepared spices and rested on the Sabbath.

1. Luke withholds the names of the women until 24:10, although Mark gives a list of names here (Mk. 15:47) as well as earlier (Mk. 15:40) and later (Mk. 16:1). This avoids redundancy, as well as the problem caused by the differences between Mark’s lists.[33]

2. Luke stresses that the women came from Galilee, a motif which we find often elsewhere.[34]

3. Luke interprets Mark to mean that the women saw not merely the tomb but also the actual position of the body of Jesus.[35] If so, they must have gone inside the tomb, but Luke does not state that they helped with the actual burial. There is no conflict with John’s account that the burial was performed by Joseph and Nicodemus.

4. The most important difference is that in Mark the women buy spices to anoint the body after the Sabbath is over, but in Luke they apparently buy them before the Sabbath is over and then rest on the Sabbath. Now the stress on keeping the Sabbath may be Lucan,[36] since elsewhere he stresses the Jewish piety of his characters, but it seems unnecessary to bring forward the purchase of the spices in order to make this point. (a) It may be that Luke is following a different source which ordered the events differently from Mark.[37] But if so, why are there no other clear traces of the source in the narrative, particularly as there is reason to suppose that when Luke has a Marcan and a non-Marcan source for the same or similar material he tends to prefer the latter? (b) It has been suggested that Luke misunderstood Mark to mean a purchase of spices after the Sabbath ended at midnight; knowing that a purchase at that hour was unlikely, he wrote a more plausible version of the story.[38] (c) Verse 6b with its μέν construction should be taken closely with 24:1; it then marks the beginning of a new paragraph.[39] It is then possible to take the reference to the purchase of the spices in 56b as the concluding phrase in the account of the burial.[40] If we allow a break between the two parts of the verse, then here is no time note attached to the purchase; the reference to the sabbath gives a general link between the story of the burial and the visit to the tomb. The difficulty with this view is that the reference to the purchase in 24:1 suggests that it gook place some little time before the visit to the tomb.

Throughout the narrative there is, then, little to suggest the use of another written source. Nor do the Lucan editorial modifications greatly alter the narrative or occasion any real problem, with the possible exception of the time of purchase of the spices. Any problems in the passage, therefore, are already there in Mark’s account, and we may be excused from discussing them at this point. It must suffice to say that the account has the form of a historical narrative, and that there is no reason to dispute it substantial historicity.[41]

III.

The story of the women at the tomb (Lk. 23:56b–24:12) poses the same problem of whether Luke has used another source alongside Mark.[42] A detailed examination of the differences between Luke and Mark with reference to this question is required.

1. Luke’s statement that the women rested on the sabbath (verse 56b) can easily be explained as a paraphrase of Mark 16:1.

2. Luke has the names of the women at the end of the story instead of at the beginning; see below.

3. The time in Luke is ‘very early’. This is a vague phrase, Lucan in style, and could be a paraphrase of Mark’s similar phrase.[43] Luke has omitted Mark’s defining phrase ‘when the sun had risen’, which causes difficulties in Mark’s own narrative.

4. Luke omits mention of the purchase of the spices and of the purpose of anointing Jesus;[44] the whole motif is missing in Matthew and John.

5. Luke omits the question of the women about the removal of the stone. He has not previously mentioned its existence, and probably takes it for granted that his readers will understand the reference to it.[45]

6. He drops Mark’s phrase about the size of the stone, which is rather illogically placed and is redundant in Luke’s abbreviated narrative.

7. Luke has a neat balance between ‘they found the stone . . .’ and ‘they did not find the body . . .’, which is no doubt due to his own re-writing of the incident. In Mark the women enter the tomb, see the angel and so are frightened; the angel then draws their attention to the empty grave space;[46] in Luke the women enter the tomb, see the empty grave space and are perplexed; then the two angels appear, causing fear to the women, and explain the situation. The emptiness of the tomb, which is only implicit in Mark, is thus stressed, and it becomes unnecessary for the angel to point out the place where Jesus had lain (Mark 16:6).

8. Luke refers to the body of ‘the Lord Jesus’, a phrase which I would retain,[47] since ‘Lord’ may be here Luke’s way of pointing to the fact that Jesus is now risen and is Lord over death (Acts 4:33).

9. There are three new features in verse 4. The women are said to be perplexed; thus Luke indicates why the angelic message was needed.

10. The one angel in Mark has become two in Luke. Most critics regard the doubling as due to the effects of popular story-telling or to Luke’s desire to provide two witnesses as in the transfiguration story.[48] In any case the phrase by itself hardly justifies the postulation of another source.

11. Luke’s phrase implies that only at this point did the angels actually appear whereas in Mark and Matthew the angel would seem to be already present when the women come to the tomb. There may be a link here with John in whose account the two angels are not present when Peter and the beloved disciple enter the tomb but are there later when Mary peeps in. But the phraseology is typically Lucan[49] and may simply be his normal way of referring to the arrival of heavenly visitors.

12. The motif of fear replaces that of amazement. The same paraphrase is found in Matthew, and may be partly inspired by Mark 16:8.

13. Luke adds the detail that the women bowed to the ground. This is a typical feature in accounts of theophanies and visions of angels (cf. Ezk. 1:28; 44:4; Dn. 8:17; Acts 9:4). It could have been added by Luke.

14. The angelic ‘Do of be amazed’ has disappeared, rather surprisingly since Luke has it elsewhere. It is also missing in John.

15. The question ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’ replaces the statement ‘You seek Jesus’. The change in vocabulary may be Lucan.[50]

16. Both Luke and Matthew have the inverted order ‘He is not here; he is risen’, which gives a better climax.[51]

17. Both Matthew and Luke give as proof of the resurrection of the absent Jesus the fact that He had prophesied this; thus Mark’s reference to the prophecy of Jesus that He would be seen by His disciples in Galilee is changed into a prophecy of His resurrection. Luke’s mention of Galilee as the scene of the prophecy is usually regarded as his substitute for mention of Galilee as the place of the appearance of Jesus.[52]

18. Luke’s summary of the passion and resurrection prediction of Jesus is unique. The precise wording is different from that of the other predictions and the question of use of a source is raised.[53] It has been argued that the saying has Semitic features which suggest use of a source, but this argument is weakly based.[54] Again it has been argued that Luke does not create ‘Son of man’ sayings,[55] but this saying is really a summary of existing sayings, and so the point may not apply. 

It may perhaps be regarded as a summary of the earlier sayings, drawing especially on Mark 14:41 and the reference to the crucifixion in Mark 16:6.[56]

19. Verse 8 sounds like a Lucan motif, found also in Acts 11:16, but the evidence hardly permits a sure verdict.

20. Verse 9 drops the fear and silence of the women and explains how they told what they had seen to the Eleven and the others. There is a similar account in Matthew, and a parallel in the command of the risen Jesus to Mary in John 20:17. Since the story in Mark must have been told by the women to somebody—otherwise it could not have been narrated by Mark—it must be assumed either that Mark went on to narrate how the women told their story to the other disciples,[57] or that there was a common tradition to this effect which has not been reproduced in Mark as we have it. But from this point onwards the question of the extent of this tradition arises. In other words, as soon as Mark has concluded, the question of another source used by Luke becomes a more pressing one. Although, therefore, comparison with Mark now becomes impossible, we must still continue asking whether the rest of the story is drawn from a source.

21. Verse 10 is odd. It interrupts the story, and gives the names of the women remarkably late in the narrative. The syntax of the verse is obscure, and the names differ somewhat from those in Mark. We take the names first. (a) Mary Magdalene stands at the head of the list, as in Mark. The word order ἡ Μαγδαληνή Μαρία is odd and unparalleled,[58] and it is difficult to see why Luke should have altered it from its Marcan form. (b) Joanna has already appeared in Luke 8:3, but is otherwise unknown.[59] (c) Mary the ( )[60] of James apparently corresponds to the Mary who is named as the mother of James and Joses in Mark 15:40; but in Mark 15:47 we have Mary the ( ) of Joses and in Mark 16:1 Mary the ( ) of James. If the same woman is meant throughout, then in both of these passages the word ‘mother’ should be supplied;[61] in the lack of a context such as is provided by Mark 15:40, however, one would naturally think that two women were meant, Mary the wife of Joses and Mary the wife of James. Has Luke been misled through forgetfulness of Mark 15:40 to turn the mother of James into his wife? Or were the persons named sufficiently well known in the church to avoid the possibility of confusion?[62] (d) Mark includes Salome, whom Luke does not mention. Matthew implicitly identifies her as the wife of Zebedee.[63]

One could argue that Luke has reconstructed Mark’s list to get continuity with his own list of Galilean women in 8:3 by substituting Joanna for Salome; this would give him two out of three names in common with the earlier list. But the other peculiarities of the verse[64] rather suggest that a separate list is being used and incorporated at this point.[65]

22. Verse 11 is Lucan in style, but the motif is widespread in the tradition (Luke 24:41; Matthew 28:17; Mark 16:11, 14; John 20:25, 27). It is not a Marcan motif. It could, however, be a Lucan insertion designed to pave the way for the account in verse 22–24.[66] On the other hand, these verses do not say that the account of the empty tomb was disbelieved; it was the report that Jesus was risen which could not be confirmed.

23. The greatest difficulty is caused by verse 12. It should be accepted as part of the text of the Gospel and not as an addition by a later redactor; the style is manifestly Lucan.[67] At the same time it is unlikely to be a Lucan composition or to have been written on the basis of the parallel narrative in John. It is an independent piece of tradition rather awkwardly inserted. H. Grass argues that it is easy to see why it was added to the Gospel but not easy to see why it should ever have been omitted. It could, however, have been omitted because of its apparent disharmony with verses 24 (the plural τινες) and 34 (the Lord appeared to Simon).[68]

From this detailed study it emerges that for the most part Luke is simply following the narrative in Mark with editorial revision. Only in a few places, notably in verses 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 is there a possible case that other traditions have been used. But these traditions hardly formed a consecutive narrative, and they appear to be oral, isolated additions to the basic story.

This, however, is but the preliminary to a further study of the passage to determine is historical value. Grass has argued that Luke has here simply used Mark with considerable freedom, and therefore his account has no independent historical value; even, however, if another source had been used, he says, it would still have no historical value.[69] We have seen reason to qualify the first part of this statement; what about the second part?

Some of the differences which we have noted between Luke and Mark are obviously trivial and insignificant. Others are more important.

1. It has been argued that Luke is able to set the visit earlier than in Mark since the women do not have to spend time getting the spices and could proceed straight to the tomb. Thus Luke’s narrative emphasizes their zeal and devotion by bringing them to the tomb as early as possible.[70] This argument is dubious, since once the Sabbath ended at sunset the purchases in Mark were possible. The early arrival of the women at the tomb fits in with the pattern of behaviour in Palestine according to which daily activity began extremely early by our standards. On the other hand, we must ask whether Luke knew that the Jewish day ended at sunset and did not rather operate with a solar or midnight to midnight calendar. There is evidence that Luke himself used a calendar in which the day began at dawn,[71] but this does not mean that he was ignorant of the Jewish calendar.[72] It seems unlikely that he has misunderstood Mark.

In John 20:1 the visit by Mary takes place while it is still dark. Matthew’s time note is difficult to interpret, but suggests a time shortly before dawn.[73] The same, rather vague period of time may well be designated as while it is still dark or when it is beginning to become light. It is Mark’s phrase ‘when the sun had risen’ which is inconsistent with the other Gospels and with his own ‘very early’. Dawn at this time of year was shortly before 6.00 a.m. and occurs quite suddenly with no extended period of twilight. I suspect that there is some corruption in Mark’s account,[74] and that we should follow the fairly consistent tradition in the other Gospels. Here, therefore, Luke’s account may be preferable to Mark’s.

2. A second important difference concerns the appearance of the angel(s) and the associated details. We have seen that in Mark the angel points out to the women the empty space in the tomb, asserts that Jesus has risen, and tells them to announce to the disciples that He will go before them to Galilee. In Luke the angels reproach the women for looking for the living one in the tomb; they should have remembered that He prophesied both His death and His resurrection. These two messages differ radically from each other. The angelic message in Matthew is substantially the same as that in Mark. In John two angels appear to Mary and ask her why she is weeping, but they play no further part in the story, since at this point Jesus Himself appears to Mary. In each case the message attributed to the angel(s) appears to reflect the thought of the Evangelist. The difference in the number of the angels is probably due to variant traditions rather than to the theological motivation of Luke (and John), although Luke may have seen theological significance in the number which he preferred to use.

If this is the case, the function of the angels becomes the literary one of providing a commentary on the situation. Their function, therefore, is not so much legendary as literary.[75] Some scholars would attribute the original appearance of the angels in the story to the growth of legend,[76] but in the present form of the stories the significant point is not the presence of the angels but what they said.

It should be carefully observed that this suggestion is not based on any rationalistic objection to the possibility of angelic messages. Each such narrative must be considered on its own merits. The suggestion arises rather from a consideration of the literary phenomena, which seem to point to some such view. The function of the angelic message is thus similar to that of speeches in ancient history, and the choice of the messengers, heavenly rather than earthly, is dictated by the circumstances.

It must also be pointed out that our conclusion need not imply that no angel or angels appeared to the women, but rather that what originally happened is now partially hidden from us.[77]

What, then, of the character of the story minus the angels? If, in effect, we remove verses 4–8 from it, we are left with a story which, like that of the burial, is entirely like a normal historical narrative; there is nothing legendary or mythical about it. The one abnormal feature is the disappearance of the body, and we have yet to learn why it has disappeared; as the story stands, a human reason is possible, but the angelic commentary points forward to a different explanation. The story is entirely probable, for it is extremely likely that the tomb would be visited by the followers of Jesus.[78]

3. There need be no discrepancy between the lists of names of women who visited the tomb in Luke and Mark, since Luke covers himself with a reference to other, unnamed women who were also present. The real difficulty is with the number of women involved. We must choose between either an indefinite number or one, namely Mary Magdalene, and the former is more likely.[79]

It is of interest that Luke refers to certain women by name and to ‘the rest’. The expression is similar to that in verse 9 which speaks of ‘the Eleven and all the rest’. There may be a reflection of an early list of women who were the female equivalent of the apostles as witnesses to the appearance of the risen Jesus, but different lists may have existed, so that the line between the named witnesses and the others was indistinct.[80]

4. The disbelief of the apostles, not recorded in Mark, is extremely likely. It is surely probable that somebody would go to the tomb to check up on the story. The tradition that it was Peter is plausible enough in itself. The problems that arise are: (i) Was Peter in Jerusalem at this point in view of the tradition of Galilean appearance? We have already shown that this is quite likely. (ii) Jesus is reported as having appeared to Peter. Why has the story of this been lost, and why was this story told instead? It must, I think, be taken as certain that Luke did not know a story about the appearance of Jesus to Peter; it is sometimes argued that Luke suppressed it because it was connected with Galilee and therefore uncongenial for his purpose.[81] But it is a decisive argument against this view that nobody else knows the details of the story either, and hence it is more probable that Luke shared in the general ignorance. The reason why he has recorded the story of Peter’s visit to the tomb is that it confirms the women’s story that the tomb was empty.

We have examined our points where Luke differs from Mark. Luke’s statement regarding the time of the women’s visit is preferable to Mark’s.[82] His account of the angels appears to be later in form than Mark’s. His list of the women present faces the same difficulty as Mark’s, namely whether there were several or one. His additional information that Peter visited the tomb to confirm what the women said is quite plausible, provided that the women did tell what had happened at the tomb; I would accept this point of view.[83] At two points, therefore, Luke may reserve superior traditions to Mark; at the other two points both writers stand very much on the same footing. Luke’s alterations, therefore, are only partly due to his own theological interest. He has stressed the fact that the resurrection is in accord with Jesus’ own prophecies, but that is his only basic change in the story. The historicity of the story in Luke depends upon the historicity of the story in Mark, but to enter into this question would widen the scope of this paper to an impossible extent.

IV.

Before proceeding further, it may be not without value to take another look at the stories of the burial and the empty tomb, and see what conclusions might be reached regarding Luke’s redactional ability if we did not possess the parallel passages in Mark and Matthew. 1. The names of Joseph and of his hometown Arimathaea would then be ‘obviously’ signs of lateness in the tradition, since, as Bultmann claims, in the original forms of stories it is not usual to give names.[84] The mention of Arimathaea by Luke is obviously on a level with his use of Emmaus; both are otherwise unimportant Jewish towns whose names are used to give local colour. The name of Joseph is so common that it need not be drawn from tradition. Its use may be based on that of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who figures at the beginning of the Gospel, thus achieving some correspondance between beginning and end. Perhaps it is intended to be based on the type of Joseph who was responsible for the burial of Jacob (Gn. 50:1–14). 2. The description of Joseph as a councillor fits in with Luke’s otherwise attested tendency to refer to people of high rank and official position; a variety of rulers, governors and wealthy people are to be found in his pages. 3. The description of Joseph as a good and just man is likewise a Lucan trait, since he likes to depict the Jewish piety. of his characters. 4. Similarly, the fact that Joseph was awaiting the kingdom of God is reminiscent of the description of the characters in the birth stories, Simon and Anna, and must belong to the same circle of ideas. See 2:25, 38. 5. The way in which Joseph asks for the body of Jesus from Pilate may be linked with Luke’s ‘aristocratic outlook’. In Mark and Matthew the disciples are generally portrayed as ordinary people, of a kind who would be hardly likely to approach Pilate. 6. The linen cloth was also a fairly expensive form of material and fits into the same circle of ideas. 7. The description of the grave may imply one made with hewn stones,[85] thus corresponding to Hellenistic practice, and is no doubt a Lucan formulation. 8. The description of the women as having come from Galilee is Lucan since he stresses in Acts the continuity between the witnesses’ knowledge of Jesus in Galilee and their accompaniment of Him to Jerusalem. 9. The fact that the women saw the tomb and burial fits in with Luke’s stress on eye-witness, and prepares the way for the story of the empty tomb.

Other details of the story which reflect Lucan redaction have already been discussed under another heading. There is scarcely a feature of the story which cannot be accounted for in this way, and the conclusion is surely that the story has been invented by Luke, no doubt on the basis of the brief mention of the burial 1 Corinthians 15:3–5. We know that Luke likes to historicize and make concrete theological details.[86] This is what he has done with the story of the burial. Since— according to our hypothesis—the burial is not described anywhere else in the New Testament, the conclusion is unavoidable that Luke has created the whole story.

The same thing is true of the account of the empty tomb. 1. The event takes place by night. In Luke and Acts night is the regular time for an epiphany (Luke 2:8; cf. 9:32; Acts 12:6) or for dreams and visions. That it was the first day of the week was determined for Luke by the church’s liturgical habit of meeting on that day to celebrate the resurrection. 2. The reference to the spices is a clear indication that the story is unhistorical and was written by someone with no knowledge of Jewish burials. The anointing motif is found in Luke 7:36–50. Luke has transferred the story of the anointing of Jesus which he found in Mark 14 to its proper place after the death of Jesus. What was originally an Easter story read back into the lifetime of Jesus has been replaced in its proper location. 3. The removal of the stone from the door of the tomb, obviously by supernatural agency, fits in with the ideas of the supernatural found in Acts 12 and 16 where prisoners are freed by earthquake and similar agencies. Luke would naturally think of the resurrection in the same way. The coincidences with Acts 12 are strong, and would naturally suggest that Luke composed the present narrative on that model. 4. The entry of the women into the tomb is demanded by Luke’s idea of witness; they must be eye-witnesses to the fact that Jesus was no longer there. 5. The detail of the angels is manifestly Lucan; Luke makes considerable us of angels in his narrative as divine agents and commentators; one has only to contrast Mark where the solitary mention of angels in the life of Jesus in 1:13 is manifestly due to the tradition, since Mark himself makes no use of the detail. 6. The fear of the women before the angel is of course a natural reaction, but is typical in Lucan accounts of angelic appearances, 1:12; 2:9. 7. The angelic message shows Lucan traits, such as the mention of Galilee as the place where the passion predictions were made.

Once again, the other details in the story have already been accounted for as Lucan redaction, and again the conclusion lies near that we have a story created by Luke on the barest minimum of traditional evidence. He knew that the tomb was visited by women and found to be empty, and he has created a remarkably vivid scene on this basis, making use of biblical and secular motifs. Vocabulary and style are Lucan, as are the theological and other motifs. Is there any reason to suppose that he had any written source—or even any detailed tradition —at his disposal? We can surely give a negative answer with some confidence, since everything can be explained otherwise. Everything—except of course the existence of the corresponding passages in the other Gospels. But who would have guessed that they existed if he had only had Luke and a resolute belief in the creativity of Luke? The fact, however, that these parallels do exist is sufficient to demonstrate the entire fallaciousness of the arguments which have been advanced—with tongue in cheek—in this section.

It is perhaps a tour de force, but I think that there is enough of force in it to make us very wary of attributing the following parts of the narrative simply to the pen of Luke.[87]

V.

When we come to the next part of Luke’s account, the story of the disciples walking to Emmaus, we are at once confronted by the question of historicity in an acute form. The following difficulties arise:

1. The story is not found in any other source, except in the manifestly secondary addition to the Gospel of Mark. Hence there is no direct way of telling how far Luke has made use of an existing source, and how far he may have spun it out of his own head. Four features could be regarded as pointing in the latter direction. (a) The diction is to a considerable degree Lucan. This is at once obvious from Taylor’s analysis of the passage. He quotes the verdict of Stanton that the ‘literary form should in all probability be attributed solely to the author himself of the third Gospel and Acts’.[88]

(b) It may be argue that Luke is capable of considerable freedom in constructing scenes and stories. One has only to think of the verdict of E. Haenchen on some of the most lively narratives in Acts[89] or of the degree of symbolism discovered in apparently historical narratives by M. D. Goulder,[90] or of the attribution by L. Schottroff of the parable of the prodigal son to Luke rather than to Jesus.[91]

(c) The structure of the story has been seen to resemble that of the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, and the implication is that the latter has provided the model for the former.[92]

(d) Several of the motifs in the story are Lucan. One may rapidly cite the closing of the disciples’ eyes;[93] the location of the story in the vicinity of Jerusalem;[94] the exposition of the Old Testament by Jesus,[95] and the stress on testimony to Him being found in all the Scriptures;[96] the use of the concept of redemption;[97] the meal setting;[98] the breaking of bread as the occasion of fellowship with the risen Jesus;[99] the mention of bread without wine;[100] the sudden disappearance of Jesus.[101]

It could be argued that with a little ingenuity these motifs could be put together to give us our story.

2. The story is said to be clearly legendary in form. Specifically the feature of the appearance of a divine being in human form,[102] or rather, in the present case, the appearance of a person who is dead to those still living is found in secular legends;[103] the motifs of the divine being appearing in the form of a wanderer and/or appearing to wanderers and his sudden disappearance are also paralleled in legend.[104] The opening of the eyes of the travellers to recognize the strange and the general air of dramatic irony which pervades the story may also be regarded as legendary in character.[105]

3. Finally, there are objections to taking it as a piece of history. The geography is uncertain.[106] The appearance of Jesus to disciples near Jerusalem may be regarded as inconsistent with the view that He appeared, or perhaps appeared first, in Galilee. Moreover, if this is the first appearance, it does not square with the tradition that Jesus appeared first to Peter. One may also question whether the character of the risen Jesus as an ordinary man squares with the Pauline tradition of His spiritual nature.

So there are formidable reasons for regarding this narrative as sheer legend. It may have some basis in tradition, but if so, it has been heavily worked over by Luke,[107] and its historical value is negligible.[108] Indeed, after presenting such a case, any effort to try to say something on the other side may seem very unconvincing. In fact, however, some of these points are patently weak, and the others are much less forceful than appears at first sight.

1. Our starting-point must be to see what the point of the story is as told by Luke. H. -D. Betz has tried to show that for Luke the significance of the story is that the risen Jesus is now revealed to His church through the exposition of the Scriptures and the common meal of fellowship. This basic point is then developed in existential terms: the disciples come to know Jesus through a new self-understanding and through forming a community. The resurrected Jesus thus appears to the disciples only so that in future they may be able to dispense with His visible presence, and indeed, so far as I can see, so that they can dispense with anything so historical as a resurrection. For Betz the story is undeniably legend. It depicts the origin and character of Christian faith.[109]

There can be no doubt that this interpretation of the story demands that a considerable amount be read into it—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a considerable amount must be subtracted from it. Thus Betz argues that the possibility of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ— a phrase that is current coin in evangelical circles—is excluded after His death. The presence of the risen Jesus is limited to His ‘presence’ in the ‘word-event’ and in the common meal. For the category of ‘resurrection’ is a piece of mythology, and belief in the resurrection means for modern men ‘to lay oneself open to the presence of Jesus, to allow oneself to be placed in a new existence which is characterised on the one hand by a new self-understanding and on the other hand by participation in the corporate event in the group’.[110] One may suspect that Luke would not have recognized this interpretation of the story. What is correct is surely that the presence of the risen Lord is mediated to the church by the interpretation of the Scriptures and the breaking of bread. To say, as Betz seems to say, that His presence is nothing more than these things is to identify the means of manifestation with the One who is manifested; Betz’s difficulty plainly stems from his inability to believe in the possibility of a real resurrection, and once this premiss is questioned, the whole existentialist enterprise likewise falls to the ground.

What, then, did Luke intend the story to teach? It has been thought to show that the Lord’s presence was realized by the disciples through the veil when He expounded the Scriptures to them. But this is not sufficiently precise a statement. What made their hearts burn at the time was not the realization of the presence of Jesus, but the fact that the exposition of the Scriptures which they received confirmed their previous belief that the Jesus who was crucified was in fact the one who should redeem Israel; the Stranger showed them that the crucifixion was no fatal objection to belief in Jesus as the prophet and redeemer: the Christ had to suffer and enter into glory. It was this confirmation of their estimate of Jesus prior to His crucifixion that made their hearts burn. It was not, therefore, consciousness of the presence of Jesus that fired their hearts, but the realization that the earthly Jesus was in fact the Messiah. The Jewish use of the metaphor implies an ardent longing to express the feelings of the heart in speech,[111] and so it is not surprising that the two travellers, having realized their feelings, hastened back to Jerusalem to tell the story.

Moreover, the significance of the meal is not that this is the means of the presence of Jesus, but rather that when Jesus had served them, they realized who He was: the meal was the occasion of recognizing their Companion, although it was not in itself the means of His presence. Hence the spiritual presence of Jesus is not tied to the exposition of Scripture or the breaking of bread, but these two acts are the means whereby the church realizes that Jesus, risen from the dead, is present with it.

It follows from these considerations that while Luke may intend us to see the significance of the exposition of Scripture and the breaking of bread in the church as means whereby the risen Lord manifests Himself, the story serves the main purpose of guaranteeing the fact of the resurrection by emphasizing (a) that it is the expected fulfilment of the Old Testament (as it was of the word of Jesus, 24:6f.) and (b) that the risen Lord appeared to witnesses and was recognized to be Jesus. Thus the basic motif of the story is that of providing a guarantee of the reality of the resurrection and of the identity of the risen One with Jesus, and the application to the means of grace in the church is secondary. This means that the existential interpretation of the story does not do justice to its contents. It also means that we have to do with a story which has the same essential motifs as the other stories of the appearances; it therefore probably is based on tradition, and it is not a story created ad hoc by Luke in order to illustrate one particular point.

One major motif in the story may be discussed at this point, namely the recognition of Jesus by the disciples. Why was He not recognized at the beginning? This motif runs through the resurrection narratives in various forms. Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener. Several disciples on seeing Jesus doubt whether it is really He. In the immediately following story in Luke we shall see that doubt is overcome by the provision of appropriate proofs. Here, however, the motif is a theological one. The disciples are unable to recognize Jesus because their eyes are veiled by God, and it is not until they are opened—again, we may presume, by God—that they recognize Jesus; Luke clearly sees a link with the similar blinding of the disciples with respect to the prophecies of the passion in 9:45 and 18:34 where it is clearly God who produces the blindness (cf. also 19:42). It is a puzzle why in this case recognition is delayed: could not the teaching about the Scriptures be given after the Lord had been recognized, and could not a meal have taken place in His known presence as in the following scene in Jerusalem? Although, therefore, the theme of spiritual blindness may appear to be a Lucan motif, it is hard to believe that he invented it; it must belong to the traditional form of the story, for without it, there would be no story left.

The motif, then, is theological here, but was it originally legendary? Surely not, for it is not Jesus who is different (as in Mark 16:12), but the ‘eyes’ which are different, and this is not legend but theology. But is it a theological reshaping of a legendary element? It is possible to imagine a story in which the disciples doubt whether it is Jesus, or do not know that it is Jesus until He acts in a familiar way at table, but this proves nothing. There is no reason to accept such a view of the motif.[112] However, consideration of this point has already brought us into the next area of discussion.

2. Betz’s starting-point is that the story is from a form- critical point of view a ‘legend’. ‘Consequently, it cannot be the purpose of the story to give us knowledge of historical facts as objectively as possible.’[113] This conclusion is surely a classical example of failure to note the significance of T. W. Manson’s famous statement that ‘a paragraph of Mark is not a penny the better or the worse for being labelled, “Apothegm”. or “Pronouncement Story” or “Paradigm”‘.[114] The classification of a story in this kind of way is not a verdict on its historicity.

But the premiss must also be questioned. What is the evidence that the form of this story is a legend? H. Grass is forced state that our verdict concerning the historicity of the story depends ultimately on how we are to conceive the way which the Risen One exists and meets people.[115] But a dogmatic verdict of this kind will not do, and we must press for evidence. And the answer is that there is no such evidence, so far as the form of the story is concerned. A legend looks just the same as a historical narrative, so far as form is concerned. What matters is the content, whether the story contains features which appear to be unhistorical and/or known from folk-lore. It is here that the matter must be decided.

The elements that may be legendary were listed above; they are: (i) the appearance of a person after his death; (ii) the appearance to people out for a walk in the country; (iii) the sudden disappearance of the supernatural being; (iv) the opening of the eyes of the two men to recognize the stranger; (v) the way in which the stranger arrives at the right time to answer their questions. Now one thing is clear at the outset. It is not possible to subtract these features from the story and be left with an original, possibly historical nucleus, for there would in fact be nothing left. The features are certainly miraculous. We have already discussed (iv) in these terms. As for no. (v), there is a close parallel in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, to whom Philip providentially appears just when he is reading Isaiah 53, and this of course is enough to condemn that story in the eyes of the rationalists. But in the present case at least, the raising of the questions is entirely natural in the circumstances; it would have been more miraculous if the two travellers had not been talking about what had just happened in Jerusalem. The detail may perhaps be literary;[116] it is certainly not legendary. As for the general question of the appearance of Jesus in human form after His death (i), to dismiss this at the outset of the investigation is surely to beg the entire question. The New Testament evidence testifies quite emphatically that Jesus did appear to various people after His death. Moreover, if He appeared, then there must also have been a point at which He disappeared (iii). Either He simply disappeared, not even leaving a Cheshire cat’s grin behind Him, or else He walked out of the front door, like the character in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and was never seen again. It is undeniable that some characters in folklore and legend have behaved similarly, and Luke knows of such beliefs (Acts 14:11). The suggestion then would be that the resurrection narratives have been cast in such a form on the analogy of these stories by the early church. That is to say, the entire language of resurrection and appearances is the early church’s attempt to explain what happened in terms of an existing set of concepts, and a modern man might have used different concepts. Now the only reasons why such an explanation should be accepted are: (i) disbelief in the possibility of the supernatural; (ii) the existence of the mythical parallels;[117] (iii) the possibility of offering another explanation of what actually happened. But we cannot offer another explanation of what actually happened, since there is no evidence for anything else happening than a resurrection.[118] And, as has been sufficiently insisted, one cannot rule out the supernatural. So once again we are brought to ask whether the mythical parallels in themselves are a sufficient argument in favour of the mythical character of the story. And the answer is clearly that they are insufficient. So far as the resurrection itself is concerned, the important parallels are the biblical and Jewish ones. They may have provided the terminology and ideas, but this does not mean that the terminology was inappropriate. Something happened, which this was the most appropriate way to describe. The detail about the travellers (ii) is unimportant,[119] and cannot be used as evidence against the historicity of the story.

The case that the story is a legend is thus unconvincing.

3. We now turn to other questions regarding the historicity. The story is related to the place named as Emmaus. Let it be granted that the location is not certain; nevertheless, there is certainly no argument against historicity here, since more than one plausible site is possible. There is modern Amwas, on the road to Joppa, some 20 miles from Jerusalem.[120] The difficulty here is the distance. It is perfectly conceivable that the two travellers could have walked there and back in the time at their disposal,[121] but Luke gives the distance as only 7 miles.[122] Second, there is the village of Kaloniye, or its near neighbour Mozah, which is plausibly identified with the military colony of Emmaus mentioned by Josephus (B 7:217);[123] the only difficulty here is that the distance is about half that given by Luke, and it would be necessary to assume that Luke has given the length of the return journey rather than the single journey. The identification of Emmaus with El Kubebe, 7 miles N.W. of Jerusalem, gives the right length of journey, but there is no proof of the use of the name for this village before the eleventh century.[124] But this minor uncertainty need not disturb us. Rather, the linking of the story with a specific place should speak in its favour, by contrast with the unnamed and possibly symbolic mountain in Matthew 28.

Again, one of the characters in the story is named as Cleopas. There is no need to argue that this is a case of giving names to the nameless, since in that case the name of his companion must surely also have been given, and it is one of Bultmann’s many myths that names are a sign of lateness.[125] This suggests that Cleopas was a well-known person, and, if so, we may be tempted to some of the familiar identifications of him. The failure to name his companion is a sign of restraint. No convincing identification of the companion has been given, and presumably Luke did not know.[126]

Finally, if a motive for the return of the two people to their home is needed, this is perfectly feasible in terms of the movements of pilgrims after the festival was over.[127]

4. What now of the other problems which arise from a comparison of this story with the other resurrection stories ? No weight need be attached to the claim that this was originally told as the story of the first appearance of the risen Jesus.[128] The story nowhere says so. Moreover, it explicitly carries the postscript that Jesus had already appeared to Simon. One may wonder why Luke has chosen to make this story central in his account rather than the story of the appearance to Peter, and the answer must certainly include the fact that the story of the appearance to Peter was unknown in the church; the fact was known, but nothing more. There is some evidence for a scheme of narration in which an appearance to an individual is followed by one to the group of disciples as a whole, and Luke preserves this pattern.[129] If he were creating freely, there is nothing in this story that could not have been included in the following scene where the features of a meal and the exposition of the Old Testament are again found.[130]

5. I doubt whether there is any real inconsistency with Paul’s teaching on the nature of the risen body. It is true that for Paul ‘flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God’, and that for Luke ‘a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have’, but they are writing from different perspectives, Paul considering the existence appropriate to heavenly life, and Luke that appropriate to a heavenly being appearing on earth and confirming the reality of His identity.[131]

6. Finally, there is the question of creation by Luke himself. The preceding discussion should have gone far to exclude this possibility. It does not seem to me that the points which remain are sufficient to alter this verdict. In particular, the parallelism with the story of the Ethiopian eunuch proves nothing more than that the same narrator has been responsible for the final form of each.[132] So far as we can tell, the Emmaus story was put into writing before the story of the eunuch, and hence dependence may be rather on the side of the latter. We must, nevertheless, ask to what extent Luke may have altered the form and content of the story as he received it. Schubert’s reconstruction of the original story runs roughly as follows: ‘That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognising him. They drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished out of their sight.’[133] Now it is dangerous to use an argument from ‘logical conclusion’ since it may prove the opposite of what is desired, but the fact is that several features in this brief story are suspect of being Lucan motifs: verse 13, the location of the appearance near Jerusalem; verse 16, the failure to recognize Jesus; verse 30, the meal setting; verse 31, the disappearance of Jesus. In short, nothing is left at all by this method of criticism. Perhaps this is the conclusion that we ought to draw: Luke has made up the whole account himself. Such a conclusion, however, runs counter to the preceding arguments, and therefore it may serve to show that something is wrong with a method which produces such a conclusion. Let us then go back over the story. (a) Dibelius excludes verses 21b(22)-24 on the grounds that they were inserted when the story was linked to other resurrection material in the Gospel and that the story originally told of the first resurrection appearance. The second reason is pure supposition, and there is nothing to be said in its favour.[134] The first is stronger. Betz speaks of a secondary pre- Lucan addition,[135] but does not make it clear why it should be pre-Lucan, except perhaps because of the tension between verse 24 and verses 1–11; he argues that the answer of Jesus in verses 25–27 is concerned purely with the death of Jesus and not with the report of the empty tomb. But the answer to the question of the empty tomb surely lies in the actual manifestation of Jesus which follows. The inconcinnity with verse 12 is a sign that the latter is based on tradition. What the ‘insertion’ suggests is that the travellers already knew the prophecies of resurrection on the third day and were puzzled that despite the empty tomb there was no risen Jesus to behold. This is quite feasible, since there is a good tradition that Jesus did prophesy His resurrection on the third day.[136] On the other hand, it is odd that the travellers were sad if they knew of a vision of angels who said that he was alive: why did they not believe the heavenly message? Did they feel that so joyful a message could not be true and was simply mocking their sorrow? Or is verse 23b the cause of the difficulties?[137]

(b) Verses 33–35 are omitted by various scholars. But the story is incomplete without the hasty return to Jerusalem. Wilckens retains verses 33a and 35, and there is no case in fact against these verses. But verse 34 is surely a piece of tradition also, but possibly from a different source. Verse 32b hangs together with verses 14–15a, 17–27 which all describe the conversation on the way. In verse 32b is the second clause a Lucan addition?[138] If so, this would confirm that the tradition did record a conversation with Jesus; then Luke has added the element of opening up the Scriptures, verses 27, 32b .

(c) There remains the question how much of the conversation must be regarded as Lucan. The greatest proportion of this is the speech of the travellers in verses 19–24 which contains a description of Jesus not unlike that in the kerygma in the speeches in Acts. The style is undoubtedly Lucan, but this does not foreclose the issue of whether Luke is working on existing material. Some of the ideas present are pre-Lucan; Jesus as the Nazarene (Ναζαρηνός);[139] Jesus as a prophet;[140] His being ‘handed over’;[141] His association with the redemption of Israel;[142] the third day. Likewise, the reply of Jesus contains traditional elements: the necessity of the Messiah’s suffering and the conformity of this suffering with prophecies in the Old Testament. A case can therefore be made out that here we are not dealing purely with creation by Luke. At least some elements of the conversation are pre-Lucan.[143]

We have now tackled the various problems raised by the story of the travellers to Emmaus, and as a result of this study we are able to claim that dismissal of the story as a legend or a Lucan creation is unjustified. The various arguments against its historicity in broad outline have been shown to fall short of proof. In the nature of things it is not possible to provide positive proof of its historicity, but when it has been possible to demonstrate the weakness of the case against it, then this must surely be taken as tantamount to positive proof of the historicity of the story.

VI.

The following scene runs from verse 36 to verse 49, with a fairly clear break at verse 43. The outstanding feature of this narrative of the appearance of Jesus to a group of His disciples is that it has some close affinities with the narrative in John 20:19–23. These affinities are so close that it cannot be doubted that the same tradition is reflected in the two Gospels.[144] To a much lesser extent there are also some links with the final scene in Matthew 28, where Jesus appears to His disciples, some of whom doubt that it is He, and commands them to go into all the world.

The evidence for distinctive Lucan style is less than in the preceding narrative. Taylor has argued that various elements are apologetic additions to the original story; he notes the apologetic stress on the bodily character of Jesus, the reference to the Messiah suffering and rising on the third day, and the allusion to the coming gift of the Spirit.[145] Two of these elements, however, are obviously shared with John, and so belong to the pre-Lucan form of the story. The main feature which may be suspected of being a Lucan formulation is the kerygmatic element in verses 44–49.[146] There may be a combination of traditions here, distinguished by the break in verse 45 and the change to the third person style in verses 46f., which is more characteristic of the Son of man sayings. The earlier part of the narrative shows signs of Lucan formulation, but sounds probable enough. Luke piles on the evidence for the resurrection. In the space of three verses (verses 34–36) three separate appearances of Jesus are mentioned. On the third occasion He appears quite suddenly, as in John. The disciples are frightened and think that they are seeing a ghost. If psychological considerations may be taken into account—and H. Grass certainly uses them to support his point of view[147] —then it can be argued that it is highly probable that men are going to be fearful and disbelieving in the presence of the supernatural.[148] It is also probable that the reaction of the visitor will be to reassure the audience. Jesus therefore gives them, first, proof that it is indeed Himself and not somebody else: His hands and feet still bear the marks of the nails. Second, He shows that He is not a ghost by having a body which can be touched. The disciples find it too good to be true, a psychological detail which rings true, despite H. Grass’s criticism.[149] He is right in rejecting Acts 12:14 as a parallel, but overlooks Livy 39:49:5.[150]

Nor is there any reason why Jesus should not have appeared in this manner. The detail is one that may have been remembered in the fight against docetism,[151] but that does not mean that it was invented for this purpose.[152] It was already in the tradition when it came to Luke, since it is confirmed in John 20. Luke stresses the point in Acts 1:4 and 10:41, but there the point is concerned with table fellowship between the risen Lord and His disciples. Here the motif is one of the reality of the risen Lord. The story may perhaps originally have had a eucharistic sense; the fish, which was a food certainly available in Jerusalem,[153] could be a symbol, as it may also be in John 21.

It is the following section which raises historical problems. The distinction that is drawn in verse 44 between the time when Jesus was with them and the present time when He is presumably no longer with them seems rather artificial. Several features in what Jesus says are not present in John’s account and look like Lucan motifs. Common to both accounts are the mission charge and the promise of the Spirit; these two features recur in Matthew 28:16–20 and are patently traditional. The rest may well be Lucan elaboration.

The general content of the narrative is, then, plausible historically. Once again the real difficulties arise in connection with the details of time and place. Luke places the incident in close connection with the preceding story of the travellers to Emmaus and also with the following narrative of the ascension and gives the impression that all of these events took place on Easter day in Jerusalem and its environs. I. It is clear from the account of the ascension in Acts that Luke knew that the appearances of Jesus took place over a period of time, which he fixes at forty days. This means that the ascension at least cannot be dated on Easter day. But before we can decide whether this means that in principle the present narrative can also be dated differently, it is necessary to establish the relationship between the two datings of the ascension. Did Luke believe all along that the ascension took place after an interval of time, and therefore give it its apparent dating in the Gospel in terms of a desire to give a unity of time and place to his narrative? Or did fresh knowledge come to him in between the writing of the Gospel and Acts, so that the account in Acts represents a revision of the earlier account? Or, again, are both datings symbolical and not to be taken literally? Most scholars appear to think that the former dating is not to be taken literally, and recently Lohfink has assembled the evidence that the forty day period is symbolical, and in fact is due to Luke himself.[154] The tradition that Jesus did appear over a period of some days is attested by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, since it is unlikely that the various appearances reported there are to be crushed into a period of one day. Hence, it seems likely that we should not press Luke 24 to mean that all the appearances recorded there took place on one day. But while one may easily allow that there is a time gap between verses 49 and 50, there is the fact that the Emmaus story is expressly dated on ‘the same day’, and the appearance to the Eleven takes place in the evening. Is this dating defensible? In its favour is the fact that John’s account has the same date. Against it is 2. the place. The corresponding scene in Matthew is placed in Galilee, and therefore cannot be on Easter day. While Matthew’s scene is more reminiscent of the ascension, the detail of the disbelief of some of those present seems unlikely if there had been a previous revelation to them in Jerusalem or anywhere else; on the other hand, John parallels this point with the doubts of Thomas which are overcome only at a second appearance of Jesus, but in Jerusalem. In order to defend Luke one would have to assume that the element of doubt in Matthew’s story is a motif that has found its way into his story, whether or not it originally belonged to it, and that the appearance to the Eleven was in Jerusalem.[155]

There can be no doubt that Luke’s and John’s accounts possess the most historical detail. On the other hand, if we ascribe this scene to Jerusalem we are left with no clear content for any scene in Galilee, other than the appearance by the lake. On the whole I am inclined to favour the Jerusalem setting, but the question is a very open one.

VII.

The final section of Luke’s story is concerned with the ascension. The differences between the two forms of the story in Luke 24 and Acts 1 are to be explained in terms of the different purposes of the two narratives, the former providing a climax to the Gospel and ending it on the note of praise to God, the latter forming a transition to the account of the church and emphasizing the element of continuity between the past and the future. The story has been submitted to a minute and devastating analysis by G. Lohfink who claims that it is entirely the invention of Luke who has put together various of his favourite ideas and produced the narrative without any basis in tradition. The concept of an ascension by Jesus is clearly enough attested in the New Testament, e.g. in I Timothy 3:16 and I Peter 3:21f. Lohfink argues that here, however, the allusion is to an invisible act in heaven. It is Luke who has transformed this into the story of a visible act before the eyes of the disciples, using the motif of being caught up into heaven in order to express what happened. He has separated between the resurrection and the exaltation of Jesus and made them into two acts. Nowhere else is there evidence for a visible ascension of Jesus to heaven at the end of the resurrection appearances, and from a theological point of view this presentation is out of harmony with the general New Testament identification of the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.[156]

The issues raised here cannot be discussed in the present context. Our problem is the historicity of the particular resurrection appearance involved.

(a) The location of the final appearance in Jerusalem is plausible enough, despite the location of some of the appearances in Galilee. For the disciples certainly did return to Jerusalem from Galilee.

(b) The content of the conversation between Jesus and the disciples and the angels and the disciples is marked by Lucan characteristics; like the earlier post-resurrection conversations it may owe something to Luke’s own pen.

(c) If, however, the idea of a visible ascension is, as Lohfink claims, a Lucan interpretation of the tradition, then there is really nothing left of the original scene.

Suppose that for the sake of the argument we abandon the historicity of the scene as it stands,[157] what would follow?

(a) The scene would provide evidence that Luke has creative powers and is capable of writing into his word scenes that never happened.

(b) In particular, the story of the end of the earthly life of Jesus is then seen to have a symbolical character. Events are being narrated which cannot be told simply by means of historical narrative. Luke is striving to express the relation of earthly history to heavenly reality by means of historical scenes which contain much symbolism, and even midrash. If this is true of the resurrection and ascension, one is bound to ask whether similar features do not characterize the stories of the birth of Jesus. But one is also bound to ask whether other scenes in the life of Jesus and the early church are not meant to be taken literally.

(c) This then raises the question how one is to decide between what is historical and what is symbolical. Where is the line between the two to be drawn? The modern temptation is to define this line in terms of what the modern man can accept as ordinary history and what is miraculous or legendary. We must resist the temptation to proceed in this way. The rules that have guided us in our present enquiry have been concerned with the literary character of the narrative and the use by Luke of sources. It is thus ultimately a question of whether the material can be shown to be historical in form.

(d) It is inevitable that these considerations should now be applied to the preceding resurrection stories in Luke. If the last scene is symbol rather than history, does this mean that much symbol is also be found in these stories? In the present case, we have suggested that a good deal of the speech material in the narratives is Lucan and brings out the significance of the situation. We have also seen that the dating of the appearances may be somewhat artificial, and that the placing of the appearances in Jerusalem may be open to question. When, however, these elements are discounted, we are still left with traditional material in which the risen Jesus appears to the disciples in human form and speaks with them. How far is this core historical? I can only offer my opinion that the essence of the tradition is historical as far back as it can be traced. In other words, even if there may be some non-historical elements in the narratives, this does not mean that they are entirely or even mainly unhistorical.

(e) If these contentions are correct, it must be possible within the concept of an infallible Scripture to maintain the fact of symbolical, non-historical narrative. To many readers it has appeared as simple history; to others as history overlaid with symbolism. It may be urged that to those who accept it all as simple history and to those who believe that some elements are symbolical the same basic message is being proclaimed, namely that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, was seen and heard by His disciples, and is now with God the Father in heaven. It may be in the nature of things that such a process, involving earth and heaven, cannot be told in straight history. The vital thing is to believe the scriptural message in whatever literary forms it may have been expressed.

(f) However, as we noted, Lohfink has argued that the theological separation of the ascension from the resurrection of Jesus in Luke is at odds with the identification of these two acts in the rest of the New Testament. For Luke, Jesus was not exalted until after the resurrection appearances. This particular part of Lohfink’s argument seems to me to be weakly based; he tries to force Luke’s statements into too rigid a scheme.[158] One cannot, therefore, build anything on this alleged difference of outlook. Nevertheless, it does raise the question of principle as to how far theological differences within the New Testament are compatible with its infallibility. In the present case (assuming for the moment that Lohfink is right) it can be argued that what Luke has done is to bring out clearly the two distinct aspects of the resurrection, namely as a return to life and as exaltation, and this pedagogical distinction is of value, provided it is understood within the context of the New Testament stress on the unity of these events. To discuss other possible examples of theological conflict would clearly be to transgress outside the range of our subject-matter.

Thus, to conclude this section, we have claimed that, if the report of the ascension is not to be accepted as historical—and I cannot underline that word ‘if’ too emphatically—then this is not to pass beyond the view of the authority of Scripture upheld in the Tyndale Fellowship. It is rather to show the existence of varied literary phenomena within Scripture and to assert that in this multiplicity of literary and theological styles the truth of God is plainly contained.

In accordance with the aim of this study group I have said much less than is fashionable about the theology of Luke and concentrated on the history behind his presentation. I submit that we have found evidence for the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Jesus which is historical in character and must be considered alongside other similar evidence in the attempt to furnish a comprehensive account of what actually happened. To provide such a comprehensive account is beyond our present scope: it must suffice to have carried out some of the preliminary investigations.

Notes

1. The paper was originally read at a meeting of the New Testament Study Group of the Tyndale Fellowship in July 1972, at which the general theme was the resurrection narratives.
2. J. M. Creed, The Gospel according to St Luke, London (1930) 289-291; P. Schubert, ‘The Structure and Significance of Luke 24’, in W. Eltester (ed.), Neutestamentliche Studien für Rudol Bultmann, Berlin 1954) 165-186; C. F. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament, London (1970) 95f.
3. It is assumed (pace E. E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke (London) 1966, 279) that this is an account of the ascension and not of some other event.
4. For a summary of scholarly opinion and a defence of the position adopted above see U. Wilckens, Die Missionsreden der Apostelgeschichte, Neukirchen (19632) 57 n.
5. J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, London (1966) 145-152; K. Aland, ‘Neue Neutestamentliche Papyri II’, NTS 12 (1965–66) 193–210. B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, London (1971) 191-193.
6. I exclude Luke from consideration since it is in no sense part of Luke’s resurrection narrative. Opinions differ whether it is based on a resurrection narrative. (For: R. E. Brown, The Gospel according to John, II, London (1971) 1066-1100. Against: H. Schurmann, Das Lukasevangelium, I, Freiburg (1969) 272-274; R. Pesch, Der reiche Fischfang, Düsseldorf (1969) , 111–113; R. H. Fuller The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, London (1972) 160f.
7. For harmonizations of the accounts see G. R. King, The Forty Days, London (1948); N. Geldenhuys, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, London (1950) 626-628.
8. H. Grass, Easter Events and Easter Reports , Göttingen (1964 3 ) 114f.
9. H. Grass, op. cit., I 13–127; that the Galilean appearances were primary is also argued by K. Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, London (1907) 209-219; P. Gardner-Smith, The Narratives of the Resurrection, London (1926) 168-170; L. Goppelt, Die apostolische und nachapostolische Zeit, Göttingen (1962) 11f.
10. H. F. von Campenhausen, Tradition and Life in the Church, London (1968) 42-89.
11. J. Weiss, The History of Primitive Christianity, I, New York (1937) 14-18; F. C. Burkitt, Christian Beginnings, London (1924). Critical assessment by J. M. Creed, op. cit., 314–318. The view has been recently defended by H. Conzelmann, RGG3 I, 699f., who would place all the appearances in Jerusalem.
12. E. E. Ellis, op. cit., 272.
13. The latest attempt (G. W. Trompf, ‘The First Resurrection Appearance and the Ending of Mark’s Gospel’, NTS 18, 1971–72, 308–330) is unconvincing.
14. K. Lake, op. cit., 211f.
15. P. Gardner-Smith, op. cit., 160–166, especially 164.
16. The same comment has also been made on the Emmaus story (M. Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, Tübingen (19716) 199 n. 2). It is clear that neither John nor Matthew regard their Galilean stories as accounts of the first appearance of Jesus, and hence the problem is that of the original form and function of the stories. In Matthew 28:16–20 it is the doubt of some of the Eleven which suggests that they are seeing the risen Jesus for the first time. But doubt is a recurring feature in the resurrection stories, and this motif may easily have found its way into what is the only account of the appearance of Jesus to the disciples in Matthew. R. E. Brown (op. cit., 1087) suggests that John 21:1–14 records a first appearance of Jesus to the disciples: Peter has returned to fishing, as if unaware of a previous apostolic commission, the disciples fail to recognize Jesus on the shore, and the subsequent rehabilitation of Peter (21:15–17) fits a first rather than a later appearance of Jesus. The most important of these points is the first, since it is essential to the story. But if the disciples had returned to Galilee, is there really anything odd in a fishing excursion? See J. N. Sanders and B. A. Mastin, The Gospel according to St John, London (1968) 442-444.
17. J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology I, London (1971) 306; see the paper by D. J. Wenham in this journal.
18. E. L. Bode, The First Easter Morning, Rome (197o).
19. M. Dibelius, op. cit ., 190 192; WG Kümmel, The Theology of the New Testament , Göttingen (1969) 9of. R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition , Göttingen (1958 3 ) 308, held that Mark originally closed with an appearance in Galilee in the 'lost ending'.
20. R. Bultmann, ibid.
21. Dibelius’s argument is that a story of the appearance to Peter must have been current, but the story of the empty tomb came to take first place among the resurrection stories and hence replaced the appearance story; Mark 14:28 contains a prophecy of this appearance and shows that it was known to Mark. But this argument is unconvincing. Why, if Mark knew of the appearance, did he not record it after the story of the empty tomb instead of replacing it with the prophecy in 16:7? The effect of 26:7 is rather to suggest that Bultmann is right in holding that originally Mark went on to record this appearance after the story of the empty tomb.
22. P. Gardner-Smith, op. cit., 14.4f.; H. F. von Campenhausen, op. cit., 78–84. H. Grass, op. cit., I 15–119, objects that there is no sign of the disciples in Jerusalem during the crucifixion and burial, and that their return to Galilee after the discovery of the empty tomb would be inexplicable. It is, however, more probable that they would not desert Jesus until they had seen what had happened to Him, but at the same time would lie low to avoid arrest themselves. E. Schweizer, Das Evangelium nach Markus, Göttingen (1968) 208f., 213, also assumes that the disciples fled before Easter, but admits that Mark did not share this view.
23. It is improbable that they went to a ‘Galilee’ somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem (A Resch, cited by K. Lake, op. cit., 208f.; K. Bornhäuser, The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Bangalore (1958) 205f.).
24. The angelic commands regarding an appearance in Galilee do not limit its scope to the Eleven. It is surely psychologically probable that once the resurrection was an established fact the disciples in Jerusalem would have wanted to acquaint those at home with the news. The appearance to five hundred brethren is perhaps to be associated with Galilee (For: H. F. von Campenhausen, op. cit., 48f. Against: H. Grass, op. cit. 122–126). The suggestion that the disciples returned to Galilee in order to await the parousia there seems quite unlikely.
25. C. F. D. Moule, ‘The Post-Resurrection Appearances in the Light of Festival Pilgrimages’, NTS 4 (1957–5 ) 58–61. Objections have been raised by C. F. Evans, op. cit., it 12f., who thinks that on this view the disciples would have returned from Galilee to Jerusalem nearly six weeks before Pentecost in order to accommodate the forty days of Acts 1:3. Bu this is necessary only if the appearances during that round number of days all occurred in Jerusalem. Evans is sceptical of the whole idea of a lengthy period of appearances, but 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 surely suggests appearances over some length of time.
26. J. Carmignac, 'The Apparitions of the Risen Jesus and the Biblical- Qumranian Calendar', RQ 7:4 (28) (1971) 483-504; a brief summary of his conclusions is given in JH Charlesworth, John and Qumran, London (1972) xiii-xiv.
27. V. Taylor, The Passion Narrative of Luke, Cambridge (1972); see also Behind the Third Gospel, Oxford (1962).
28. V. Taylor, The Passion Narrative of Luke, 99–103.
29. W. Grundmann, The Gospel according to Luke , Berlin (1966 4 ) 436f.
30. J. Finegan, The Tradition of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, Giessen (1934) 34f.; H. Grass, op.cit . 32-35.
31. In both Mark and Luke the time is ‘the day of preparation’, i.e. Friday, before the sabbath began. Mark states that it was late, Luke that the sabbath was dawning. This phrase (σάββατονἐπέφωσκεν) need not refer to literal dawn, but may be used: (a) metaphorically, of the Jewish day ‘breaking’ at sunset (M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, Oxford (19673) 136-138) ; (b) of the lighting of lamps at sunset (Zürcher Bibel, Stuttgart, Anhang 33; Jerusalem Bible); (c) of the appearance of the evening star (K. H. Rengstorf, Das Evangelium nach Lukas, Göttingen (19495) 266; W. Grundmann, op. cit., 437; E. Lohse, TDNT VII, 20 n. 159). It is unnecessary, therefore, to assume that dawn is meant (G. R. Driver, ‘Two Problems in the New Testament’, JTS n.s. 16 (1965) 327-337).
32. The word εὐσχήμων means ‘prominent, of high standing or repute, noble’ (Arndt s.v.); RSV, NEB and TEV have ‘respected’, which may reflect the ethical sense ascribed to the word by Phrynichus 309 (cited in J. M. Creed, op. cit., 291. Luke’s ethical paraphrase is thus hardly a misinterpretation (as H. Greeven suggests, TDNT II, 770–772), but is determined by Mark’s reference to Joseph’s longing for the kingdom of God. Matthew’s interpretation (‘wealthy’) is governed by Joseph’s position in the community and his possession of a tomb.
33. For this late positioning of the names cf. Acts 1:13.
34. Luke 23:49=Mark 15:40f.; Acts 13:31.
35. H. Grass, op. cit., 32.
36. It has been suggested that this is the last sabbath of the old order, which pious followers of Jesus were careful to observe (cf. F. Godet, cited by A. Plummer, The Gospel according to St Luke, Edinburgh (19084) 543; N. Geldenhuys, op. cit., 619). However, Luke’s characters continue to worship in the temple after the old order has ceased (24:53; Acts passim). It is not certain whether the disciples had already broken the ‘festival sabbath’: burial and associated actions were allowable on a feast day, despite its character as a sabbath (M. Shabbath 23:5; cf. J. Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 74–79).
37. W. Grundmann, op. cit., 43 ; R. H. Fuller, op. cit., 95, agrees but thinks that the source is trying to avoid Mark’s difficulties.
38. K. Lake, op. cit., 59f.; P. Gardner-Smith, op. cit., 37f. On this view Luke was using a midnight to midnight or sunrise to sunrise calendar, and misunderstood Mark who was using a sunset to sunset calendar.
39. The Greek New Testament, Stuttgart (1966).
40. N. Geldenhuys, op. cit., 620f. Geldenhuys also attempts to harmonize the narratives by suggesting that the women prepared spices at the time stated by Luke; when they found that they did not have sufficient, they went out to buy more on the first day of the week (i.e. Saturday evening).
41. V. Taylor, The Gospel according to St Mark, London (1953) 599; E. Schweizer, op. cit., 209f. Historical difficulties are found by D. E. Nineham, St Mark, London (1963) 432-435.
42. V. Taylor (The Passion Narrative of Luke, 103–209) argues for the use of a non-Marcan source; he ascribes verse 10a to Mark, has some hesitation about verses , and ascribes the rest to the non-Marcan source. Similar views are held by K. H. Rengstorf, op. cit., 267; W. Grundmann, op. cit., 438–440; E. E. Ellis, op. cit., 272. The view that Luke is entirely dependent on Mark is held by J. Finegan, op. cit., 86f.; H. Grass, op. cit., 32–35; cf. R. Bultmann, op. cit., 311.
43. ὄρθρος is found elsewhere only at Ps.-Jn. 8:2 and Acts 5:2t; the form ὀρθρινός occurs at Luke 24:22.
44. The statement that the women brought the spices sufficiently implies the purpose of the visit. Since the purpose was not carried out, there is little emphasis on it.
45. John 20:1 makes the same assumption.
46. Mark’s remark would come more logically at the end of 16:3.
47. Cf. K. Aland, op. cit ., 203f ; B. M. Metzger, op. cit ., 183.
48. The evidence is given by G. Lohfink, Die Himmelfahrt Jesu, München (1971) 198, who thinks that the motif is pre-Lucan here, since elsewhere in Luke (except Acts 1: 10) angels appear singly For the effects of popular story-telling see H. Grass, op. cit., 32f. The influence of the transfiguration is traced by C. Stuhlmueller, JBC II, 162. See further E. L. Bode, op. cit., 59–61.
49. ἐπέστησαν ; cf. 2: 9 ; ( 21:34 ); Acts 12: 7 ; 23:11.
50. Cf.Acts 1:3; 9:41; 25:59; Luke 24:23 takes up the idea. The word is not found in the other Gospels with reference to the risen Jesus. Cf. P. Benoit, The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, London (1969) 248, and E. L. Bode, op. cit., 65f.
51. The phrase is a ‘western non-interpolation’; its inclusion is defended by J. Jeremias, op. cit., 149; K. Aland, op. cit., 205; B. M. Metzger, op. cit., 183f.
52. The change fits in with Luke’s emphasis that it is the witnesses from Galilee who heard Jesus there who now testify to His resurrection: Acts 1:22; 10:37–41.
53. The parallels between Luke 24:7 and the other passion predictions are as follows: 
54. M. Black, ‘The “Son of man” Passion Sayings in the Gospel Tradition’, ZNW 60 (1969) He draws attention to the hyperbaton caused by the anticipatory accusative before the noun clause (cf. An Aramaic Approach, 53); but the similar construction in Acts 13:33 and Luke 9:31 (also Mark 7:2) suggests that this is not Semitic (see BD 476:3), but in this case a Lucanism. Black also draws attention to the paronomasia between ‘the Son of man’ and ‘into the hands of men’; this, however, is also found in Mark 9:31 parr., so that Luke may have been drawing on a Greek tradition.
55. C. Faults, TWNT VIII, 462.
56. U. Wilckens, op. cit., 118 n. 1, argues that the text is a literary summary of the earlier predictions by Luke; see, however, 117, for the view that kerygmatic traditions were at Luke’s disposal alongside the predictions to be found in Mark. H. E. Tödt, The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition, London (1965) 152, regards Luke 24:7 as Luke’s creation, and 22:48 as his equivalent for Mark 14:41. He also states that a combination of phrases from Mark 9:31 and 14:41 is to be found in Luke 24:7 (op. cit., 160); the term ‘crucified’ is a sign of lateness. He does not appear to have noticed the link with the use of ‘crucified’ in Mark 16:6. R. H. Fuller’s explanation of the use of σταυρόω as a good Hellenistic word in preference to the Palestinian martyrological ἀποκτείνω, (op. cit., 98) is quite unnecessary; the use of the word is due to the actual way in which Jesus died.
57. L. Brun, Die Auferstehung Jesu, Oslo (1926) 11, holds that Mark means that the women said nothing to the disciples. But is it likely that in Mark’s view the women would have disobeyed what was in effect a command of the risen Lord through the angel?
58. It is, however, a perfectly regular form: cf. Jos. B. 2:520.
59. The list of names in Luke 8:3 is no doubt based on reliable Palestinian tradition (H. Schürmann, op. cit., 444–449, especially 448 n. 41).
60. According to Greek idiom, γυνή , θυγάτρη or even μήτηρ may be supplied in such a context: BD 162; J. Blinzler, The Brothers and Schwester Jesus , Stuttgart (1967) 115f.
61. This is the usual interpretation, but the variation in the description of the woman remains peculiar.
62. If Luke was using a source at this point, it may have provided a clearer context.
63. Was this identification known to Luke? If so, it is surprising that he did not stress the Galilean origin of Salome.
64. The syntax of the verse is not clear, and it may be variously translated: (a) ‘Now (the women) were Mary . . . ; and the other women with them told . . .’ (RV; cf. Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorurum for the punctuation). (b) Now (the women) were Mary . . .; the other women with them also told . . .’ ( JB; cf. NEB, TEV). (c) With asyndeton: ‘Now (the women) were Mary . . . and the other women. with them; they told . . .’ (B. Weiss, as reported in the Synopsis; see, however, his commentary, Evangelien des Markus und Lukas, Göttingen (1885) 636). (d) With anacolouthon: ‘Now (the women) were Mary . . . and the other women with them told . . .’ (e) Omittinγἦσανδέ (ADW sin cur) to avoid the anacolouthon: ‘Mary . . . and the other women with them told . . .’ But this produces asyndeton at the beginning of the verse. (f) Inserting αἱ ( אc θ t.r.; Diglot; RSV): ‘Now (the women) were Mary . . . and the other women with them who told . . .’ (similarly, 157 inserts καὶ). The textual changes are clearly secondary simplifications. View (b) makes the best sense of the Greek, but Luke awkwardly makes the other women the principal bearers of the news to the apostles. The verse suggests that Luke was trying to reconcile his own list of names with that in Mark, but perhaps failed to revise his text finally—a feature not infrequent in Acts.
65. Cf. R. H. Fuller, op. cit., 9 . It is unlikely that Luke turned from a non- Marcan source to use Mark in this verse, as V. Taylor (n. 20 above) suggests.
66. R. H. Fuller, op. cit., 100f., holds that Luke was trying to preserve the independence of the witness of the apostles: they do not believe on third-party evidence
67. J. Jeremias, op. cit., 149–151; K. Aland, op. cit., 205f.; B. M. Metzger, op. cit., 184. The verse is rejected by WH (see note in WH II, 71), RSV, NEB; L. Brun, Die Auferstehung Jesu, 12; N. Geldenhuys, op. cit., 626; H. Grass, op. cit., 34. K. P. G. Curtis, ‘Luke xxiv. 12 and John xx. 3–10’, JTS n.s. 22 (1971) 512-515, ascribes it to a redactor imitating Lucan style.
68. Cf. _ W. Grundmann, op. cit. , 440.
69. H. Grass, op. cit., 35; cf. P. Gardner-Smith, op. cit., 60.
70. K. Lake, op. cit., 59.
71. F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles, London (3953) 372.
72. But so K. Lake, ibid.; P. Gardner-Smith, op. cit., 37f.
73. G. R. Driver (n. 33 above). Other scholars argue that Matthew meant Saturday evening (M. Black (n. 33 above); E. L. Bode, op. cit., 11–1 3).
74. K. Bornhäuser, op. cit., 205E, argued that the phrase refers to the ‘reascending’ of the sun at midnight according to Jewish reckoning; unfortunately he provides no evidence to substantiate this theory which is pronounced ‘quite unacceptable’ by F. F. Bruce in his review (EQ 31 (3959) 372). Other possibilities are listed by E. L. Bode, op. cit., 6, 11.
75. R. Bultmann ( op. cit ., 311), speaks of an 'angelus interpreter' in Mark, and L. Brun ( op. cit ., 25) of an 'angelus interpreter et commemorat'. 4. Cf. RE Brown, op. cit ., 977, 988.
76. E.g. H. Grass, op. cit., 20.
77. The appearance of an angel or angels is at the very least an early element in the resurrection tradition. Against the tendency to dismiss its historicity out of hand see C. E. B. Cranfield, St Mark, Cambridge (19632) 465f.
78. The historical problems that arise are briefly: (a) Would one anoint a body that had already been buried even for only 1½ days in Palestinian conditions? (No: E. Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium nach Markus, Göttingen (195914) 353; Yes: R. E. Brown, op. cit., 982.) (b) If the body had already been anointed by Joseph, what further need of anointing was there? (Most scholars doubt whether John’s report is to be taken historically.) (c) How could the women get into a sealed tomb—a problem that according to Mark they did ponder on the way to the tomb? (The question in Mark 16:3 is literary, indicating that no human person was present or able to perform the task.) (d) If the women did not come to anoint the body, why did they come at all? (But John 11 illustrates mourning at a tomb.) Against the historicity of the story: W. G. Kimmel, op. cit., 88f.; C. F. Evans, op. cit., 75–77. In favour: E. Schweizer, op. cit., 210–216; Jesus, London (1971) 47f.; L. Goppelt, op. cit., 11 n. 5; H. von Campenhausen, op. cit.
79. This view assumes that John has individualized the story to concentrate attention on one character. It thus admits that the stories of the visit cannot be harmonized without remainder and hence allows that they are partly symbolical in character.
80. See also M. Hengel, 'Mary Magdalene and the women as witnesses', in M. Hengel ( et al., ed. ) Abraham our father, Leiden (1963) 243-256.
81. The possibility is suggested by H. Grass, op. cit., 39.
82. The possibility of harmonization by postulating several visits is a non-starter.
83. See n. 57 above.
84. R. Bultmann, op. cit. , 338; see, however, n. 125 below.
85. J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Lucae, Berlin (1904) 136; K. Lake, op. cit., 49–51. The word, however, can equally well refer to a rock-cut tomb, cf. Dt. 4:49 LXX; J. M. Creed, op. cit., 2 9 d.
86. G. Lohfink, op. cit. , 247.
87. One might argue of course that Mark possessed the creativity which we have here ascribed (for the purpose of the argument) to Luke. But the point of our argument is precisely that one must beware of postulating creativity in the absence of known sources.
88. V. Taylor, op. cit., 109–112; cf. V. H. Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents, Cambridge (1903–20) II, 308f.
89. E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles , Göttingen, (1959-12).
90. M. D. Goulder, Type and History in Acts (1964).
91. L. Schottroff, 'The Parable of the Prodigal Son', ZTK 68 (1971) 27-52.
92. J. Dupont, ‘Les pélerins d’Emmaus’, Miscellanea Biblica, Monserrat (1953) 349-374 (not accessible to me; cf. NTA 2 (1957) No. 58); G. Bouwmann, Das Dritte Evangelium, Düsseldorf (168) 13f.; C. Stuhlmueller, JBC II, 162. Note the following parallels: 1. An ignorance of Scripture. 2. Explanation of Jesus’ sufferings from Scripture. 3. Request for ‘interpreter’ to stay longer. 4. Sacrament of baptism/ eucharist. 5. Sudden disappearance. D. J. Selby, Introduction to the New Testament, New York (1971) 193, finds resemblances between this ‘journey into faith’ and that of Paul.
93. Luke 9 : 45 ; 18:34.
94. G. Lohfink, op. cit., 207f., 64f., argues that the significance of the mention of the distance from Jerusalem in Luke 24:13 is to show that the incident took place in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem; the force of the note is that Emmaus was no more than 60 furlongs away. He finds the same motif in Acts 1:12.
95. Luke 24: 44–48.
96. Cf. Acts 3 :18, 24; 10:43.
97. Luke 1:68; 2:38; 21:28; 24:21; Acts 7:35.
98. Cf. E. E. Ellis, The Gospel of Luke, 192.
99. Acts 1:4; 10:41.
100. Acts 2:42; I. H. Marshall, Luke : Historian and Theologian, Exeter (1970) 204-206.
101. G. Lohfink, op. cit., 150f.
102. As H.-D. Betz (see n. 105 below) rightly points out, this motif (alluded to in this connection by H. Gunkel (see n. 105 below) and R. Bultmann, op. cit., 310) should be carefully distinguished from that of the appearance of a dead man alive after his death, which is the motif present here. It need not, therefore, be considered further here.
103. Examples of the appearance of a dead man after his death are: Herodotus 4:13-15, 94f.; Lucian,the stranger Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 8:11f. (30f.); Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2:63:3f. ( cf. Plutarch, Romulus 28:1-7).
104. For the ‘wanderer’ motif see the story of Romulus (as in n. 103); Genesis 18; Acts 14:11.
105. H.-D. Betz, 'Origin and nature of Christian faith according to the Emmaus legend ( Lk. 24 , 13-32 )', ZTK 66 (1969) 7-21, 11f. especially. For the mythological parallels cited above see especially ibid ., 9 n. 8; H.-D. Betz, Lucian of Samosata and the New Testament, Berlin (1961) 124-130, 162f.; AAT Ehrhardt, 'The Disciples of Emmaus', NTS 10 (1963-64) 182-201; H. Gunkel, On the religious-historical understanding of the New Testament , Göttingen (1903) 71.
106. H. Grass, op. cit., 37.
107. Literary analysis has also been practised on the narrative. The following verses are regarded as secondary additions: 21b (or 22)-24 (M. Dibelius, op. cit., 191 n. 1). 14–15a, 17–27, 32–35 (P. Schubert, op. cit., 174f.). 14–15a, 17–27, 32, 33–35 (F. Hahn, Christologische Hoheitstitel, Göttingen (19642) 387–389). 14–15a, 16-27,3213, 33b, 34 (U. Wilckens, Auferstehung, Stuttgart (1970) 78-81). From Schubert onwards, the aim has been to remove the elements of Lucan theology which are most clearly expressed in the conversational parts of the story.
108. 'heartily little', H. Grass, op. cit ., 40.
109. H.-D. Betz, as in n. 505.
110. Ibid., 20.
111. None of the commentators (including K. L. Schmidt, TDNT III, 464) gives much help. The use of the verb in the LXX (Pss. 38:4; 72:25 var. lect.; Jer. 20:9) and T. Naph. 7:4 suggests an uncontrollable inward desire to speak or pray, usually as a result of distress. Something more than mere elation (P. Grenfell I, 1:1:9) or ardour is expressed.
112. One might suggest that originally the story was about two disciples who did not know Jesus during His earthly life; they only recognized Him when He performed an action of a kind of which they had been told by other disciples. If so, one would have to postulate an intermediate stage at which this story was transformed into a legend about an unrecognizable Jesus before it was theologized by Luke. But this is too long a chain of speculation, and hence the possibility of legend is to be discarded.
113. H.-D. Betz, op. cit ., 8.
114. T. W. Manson, Studies in the Gospels and Epistles, Manchester (1962) 5.
115. H. Grass, op. cit., 35.
116. For literary provision of situations and questions in Luke see G. Lohfink, op. cit., 554–556.
117. The example in Philostratus is dependent on Luke in the opinion of A. A. T. Ehrhardt, op. cit., 195–201.
118. W. Marxsen can hardly be said to have provided a viable answer, and admits as much: ‘How Peter discovered this (sc. that Jesus still comes today) we can no longer definitely say. Later, people said that Peter discovered it by seeing Jesus. This may be the case. I do not know. But anyone who claims to know better must be able to produce his evidence.’ (The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, London (1970) 126.)
119. It boils down to the question of whether epiphanies take place indoors or out of doors, and there is no reason why either of these should be impossible.
120. See the discussion in J. Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament, Prince-ton (1969) 177-180.
121. F.-M. Abel and J. W. Crowfoot (PEFQS 1935, 43) agree that no one who is acquainted with the country and the habits of the people of Palestine will have any difficulty in believing that Cleopas and his companion could have walked from Jerusalem to ‘Amwas and back on the same day’ ( J. Finegan, (op. cit., 178); cf. P. Benoit, op. cit., 273. Thus H. Grass’s ridicule (op. cit., 37 n. 2) is unnecessary. A. A. T. Ehrhardt’s point, that by nightfall the gates of Jerusalem would have been shut, thus preventing entry to the returning travellers (op. cit., 182), is countered by K. Bornhauser’s claim that the meal would have been held in early afternoon rather than evening (on. cit ., 222f.).
122. Some MSS of Luke 24:13 have 160 stadia instead of 60, but this looks like a correction (B. M. Metzger, op. cit., 184). K. Lake, op. cit., 99, also notes that this Emmaus was a town rather than a village.
123. P. Benoit, op. cit., 271 f.; cf. SB II, 271.
124. K. H. Rengstorf, op. cit ., 271; N. Geldenhuys, op. cit ., 636.
125. R. Bultmann, op. cit., 71f., 256f., 338. E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition, Cambridge (1969) passim, shows that the evidence is not all one way. Cf. C. H. Dodd’s comments on Luke 24:18/Ps.—Mk. 16:12 (Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge (1963) 545 n. 3). See further B. M. Metzger, ‘Names for the Nameless in the New Testament; a Study in the Growth of Christian Tradition’, in P. Granfield and J. A. Jungmann, Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, Münster (1970), 89ff.
126. Cleopas has been identified with Clopas, the husband of the Mary who stood at the cross ( John 19:25) and who is said to have been a brother of Joseph and the father of Simon, the second bishop of Jerusalem (cf. W. Grundmann, op. cit., 443). His companion has been identified with his wife or with his son, Simon (Origen; K. Bornhkiser, op. cit., 221f.). But the fact that the son, more famous than the father, is not named here rather speaks against the identification. The view that Simon Peter was the companion (Luke 24:34 D; see R. Annand, ‘He was seen of Cephas’, STJ 11 (1958) 180-187) is unconvincing.
127. C. F. D. Moule, op. cit. On this view, the disciples would be returning home on the first possible day after the Passover.
128. See n. 16 above.
129. L. Brun, op. cit., 33–39. R. Bultmann, op. cit., 312, however, holds that this scheme is not a ‘thought-form which as such has formed the tradition’; rather it rests on historical probability.
130. It may, however, be significant that the apostles are absent, so that Jesus appears to two ordinary disciples.
131. See W. Marxsen, op. cit ., 66–70; EE Ellis, op. cit .,
132. A similar problem arises with the parallelism between Mark 11:1–7 and 14:12–16 (on which see V. Taylor, The Gospel according to St Mark (1953) 535f).
133. Cf. P. Schubert, op, cit., 174f.
134. Against it, see F. Hahn, op. cit., 387 n. 2.
135.  H.-D. Bet; op. cit ., 9.
136. At the very least, Jesus prophesied that something would happen ‘after three days’, even if that phrase be a vague indication of time rather than a precise one ( J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology I, 285f.).
137. This may be confirmation that the detail of the angels is secondary.
138. It is very awkwardly added, giving two do clauses in parallel with each other.
139. Luke prefers the form Ναζωραῖος. This suggests that a traditional form is being used here.
140. The motif is emphasized in Luke, but is pre-Lucan; I. H. Marshall, Luke: Historian and Theologian, 125–128.
141. See the passion predictions in Mark.
142. The phraseology is Lucan (1:68; 2:38; 21:38; Acts 7:35) but is older (Mark 10:45).
143. So even H. Grass, op. cit., 36f. It might, however, be argued that the evidence proves nothing more than that a variety of traditional motifs have here been assembled by Luke.
144. U. Wilckens, Resurrection , 71; RE Brown, op. cit. , 1028f.
145. V. Taylor, The Passion Narrative of St Luke, 112–114.
146. R. Bultmann, op. cit ., 310; J. Finegan, op. cit ., 92.
147. H. Grass, op. cit., 118.
148. This remains true, even if people have already heard rumours that a person is alive after his death or he has already appeared to them once. On the psychology involved see F. Morison, Who moved the Stone? London (1930) 119, 251f.
149. H. Grass, op. cit., 47.
150. 'The believers could scarcely claim themselves for the unexpected joy', cited by A. Plummer, op. cit ., 560.
151. K. Lake, op. cit., 221–226.
152. P. Gardner-Smith, op. cit., 74, argues that it is not docetism properly so called which is attacked here, since it was concerned with the question of Christ’s earthly body, whereas here the point is the nature of His heavenly body. But one answer to docetists could have been an argument a fortiori from the nature of the resurrection appearances.
153. Nehemiah 13:16 (cited by K. H. Rengstorf, op. cit. 275). Cf. the Fish Gate (Neh. 3:3; et al.; J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, London (1969) 20). Since fish was frequently salted (SB I; 683f.) there was no problem about its distribution. H. Grass, op. cit., 41, is forced to admit the point but says that it is irrelevant to the historicity of the story; on the contrary, it is highly relevant, for one may be quite sure that had fish been unavailable in Jerusalem he would have used this as an argument against historicity. There is no need to argue from the mention of fish that the story was originally placed in Galilee (as J. M. Creed, op. cit., 299).
154. G. Lohfink, op. cit ., 176–186.
155. It may be that after he had come to the end of his Marcan material Matthew had little to go on; on the basis of oral traditions he composed one composite scene which he has placed in Galilee. If Matthew had access to the ‘lost ending’ of Mark (E. Linnemann, ‘Der (wiedergefundene) Markusschluss’, ZTK 66 (5969) 255- 287), the same considerations might perhaps be applied to Mark instead.
156. G. Lohfink, op. cit.; R. Bultmann, op. cit., 310, likewise speaks of a ‘literary product’, but thinks that it may be pre-Lucan.
157. In order to avoid any misunderstanding I must make it absolutely clear that while I recognize the strength of Lohfink’s case, I am not persuaded that it is the final word on the subject. If it were correct, it would demand a degree of inventiveness on the part of Luke which is not in my opinion substantiated by Luke’s procedure elsewhere in his writings. Lohfink’s thesis is sufficiently recent not to have had to run the gauntlet of critical discussion, and it would be foolish to say the least if one were to accept it uncritically. Consequently, in the remaining part of this essay I am merely looking at the possible consequences of such a thesis without committing myself to the thesis.
158. Cf. L. Goppelt, op. cit., 12 and n. 16.