n. 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 of the risen Lord,
referring to them as well known, in fact as the familiar subject matter of
his earliest teaching (I. Cor. xv. 4-8). He gives definite date to none of
these appearances, indicating only their sequence. He tells of six
different manifestations, beginning with an appearance to Cephas on the
third day, then to the t