210.  It can but seem strange to us that after Jesus had so often foretold his death and the resurrection which should follow it, his disciples were thrown into despair by the cross.  Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus when they embalmed his body may not have known of these teachings which Jesus gave to the nearer circle of his followers, but it is difficult to believe that the women who prepared their spices to anoint his body (Mark xvi. 1) had heard nothing of these predictions, and it is certain that the apostles who received with incredulity the first news of the resurrection were the men whom Jesus had sought to prepare for this glorious victory.  The disciples do not seem to have finished “questioning among themselves what the rising again from the dead should mean” (Mark ix. 10, compare Luke xviii. 34) until Jesus himself explained it by his return to them after his crucifixion.  It was formerly common to conclude from the scepticism of the disciples that Jesus could not have told them, as he is reported to have done, that he would rise again the third day.  It is now widely conceded, however, that if he foresaw and foretold his death, he surely coupled with it a promise of resurrection, otherwise he must have surrendered his own conviction that he was Messiah; for a Messiah taken and held captive by death was apparently as foreign to Jesus’ thought as it was unthinkable for the men of his generation.  The inability of the disciples to adjust their Messianic ideas to the death of their Master was not removed by the rebuke Jesus administered to Peter at Caesarea Philippi; their objections were only silenced.  It would seem that even when they saw his death to be inevitable, they were simply dumb with hope that in some way he would come off victor; the cross and the tomb crushed out that hope—­at least from most of them.  If one disciple, his closest friend, recalled and believed his words when he saw the empty tomb (John xx. 8), others were cast into still deeper sorrow by the report, and could only say, “But we hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel” (Luke xxiv. 21).

211.  The light which banished the gloom from the hearts of Jesus’ followers dawned suddenly.  There was no time for gradual readjustment of ideas and the springing of hope from a faith which would not die.  The uniform early tradition is that Jesus showed himself alive to his disciples “on the third day,” that is, a little over thirty-six hours from the time of his death.  Not only the gospels, but Paul, who wrote many years before our evangelists, testify to this (I.  Cor. xv. 4), as does the very early observance of the first day of the week as “the Lord’s day,” and the substitution of “the third day” for “after three days” in the gospels which made use of our Gospel of Mark (compare parallels with Mark viii. 81; ix. 31; x. 34, and see Holtzmann, NtTh I. 309).  Of the events which occurred on that third day and after, our earliest account is that of Paul.  He gives a simple catalogue of the appearances