Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

Unbelievers contend that faith in the risen Jesus was not born of the resurrection, but that, apart from the miracle of the resurrection, it can be explained either from the oriental myths, or from the prophecies of the Old Testament, or from the image of Jesus impressed upon the minds of the disciples. The contrary is easily proved.¹

1. Oriental myths, which they wrongly call myths of the "resurrection," are found among almost all the more ancient peoples, namely among the Babylonians (the god Tammuz), the Phoenicians (Adonis), the Phrygians (Attis), the Egyptians (Osiris), the Greeks (Dionysus). Nevertheless, there is lacking both a parallelism between the oriental myths and the resurrection of Jesus, and an influence of the oriental myths upon the resurrection of Jesus.

There is no parallelism between the oriental myths and the resurrection of Jesus. Those myths simply lament the death of natural vegetation as winter draws near and celebrate the regeneration of natural vegetation in the springtime. The god of vegetation descends to the underworld in winter and returns to the earth in spring. It is therefore a matter of a mere fable, by which the changes of the seasons are deified. The Christian resurrection, on the contrary, concerns the concrete, individual, historical person of Jesus, whom the believing disciples had known and loved, and whose bodily death and return to bodily life they narrate. Hence there is absolutely no similarity between the oriental myths and the resurrection of Jesus.

There is no influence of the oriental myths upon the resurrection of Jesus. The mythological cults by which the changes of the seasons were celebrated were wholly unknown to the Jews contemporary with Jesus. For no traces of these cults are found in the Jewish monuments. A fortiori, those Galilean fishermen, who believed in, preached, described, and at last sealed with their martyrdom the resurrection of their Master, did not turn to the vegetation gods of the pagans. Hence it is absurd to explain the disciples' faith in the resurrection from the oriental myths.

2. The prophecies of the Old Testament do indeed foretell the resurrection of the Messiah, without, however, mentioning the circumstance of the third day.² Hence this circumstance at least the disciples did not draw from the Old Testament. But even the prophecy of the resurrection itself they understood only after experiencing the resurrection of Jesus. Steeped in the messianic conception of the rabbis, they had never been able to grasp the idea of a dying and rising Messiah. When Jesus spoke of his future death and resurrection, Peter sharply rebuked him: "God forbid, Lord: this shall never happen to you!"³ When Jesus was already dead, and they found his tomb empty and heard from the mouth of the angel that he had been raised, "they did not yet know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead."⁴

Nay more, although the risen Jesus, as the disciples were going to the village of Emmaus, interpreted "in all the Scriptures" the things that concerned the death and glorification of the Messiah,⁵ they themselves, convinced by experience alone, recognized the risen Master in the breaking of the bread.⁶ Hence, thereafter preaching to the Jews, they declare that Christ died and rose again "according to the Scriptures,"⁷ not contrary to the Scriptures. Therefore they did not draw their faith in the resurrection from the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, but rather learned the prophecies of the Old Testament about a dying and reviving Messiah from the fact of the resurrection of Jesus.

3. The image of Jesus did indeed remain deeply and profoundly impressed upon the minds of the disciples. Yet however much they recalled Jesus, once living and now already dead, they by no means conceived the image of a rising and risen Master. This is evident from the psychological state which the disciples exhibited after the death of Jesus. With Jesus dead on the cross, the disciples mourned and wept between the Parasceve and the Pasch,⁸ with every hope of the resurrection excluded. At dawn of the Pasch the women went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, expecting nothing but his corruption.⁹ Finding the stone rolled back and the tomb open, they did not suspect that Jesus had risen, but that the body had been stolen away.¹⁰ The angel bringing the news of the resurrection does not instill faith in them, but strikes them with great terror.¹¹ The apostles thought this same news to be "an idle tale, and they did not believe."¹² Shortly afterward Peter found the tomb empty; he did not, however, believe, but "went away wondering to himself at what had come to pass."¹³ In the afternoon of the Pasch two of them were going to the village of Emmaus, "sad." And when Jesus inquired about their despair, one of them, named Cleophas, answered and said to him: "You alone are a stranger in Jerusalem and have not known the things that have been done in it in these days? ... Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a man, a prophet mighty in work and word before God and all the people. And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to the condemnation of death, and crucified him. But we hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel: and now besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done. But certain women also of our company terrified us, who before it was light were at the sepulchre, and not finding his body, came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels, who say that he lives. And some of our people went to the sepulchre, and found it so, as the women had said, but him they found not."¹⁴ From all these things it is clear that the disciples by no means cherished an image of the risen Jesus, and that they acquired their faith in the risen Jesus solely from the fact of the resurrection. The paschal faith can in no way be explained without the paschal fact.