the crosses Joseph permission to take away the dead body of Jesus. Now this explains what the critics consider such a powerful objection against the narration in John's Gospel, that the soldiers came to the first robber and broke his legs and then passed over Jesus who would have been the next in order and went on to the second robber. Jesus was already dead and it would have been absurd to break His legs, seeing that the only object of that was the infliction of torture. Moreover, there is another Position of consideration which is fatal to the objection. The three crosses were not arranged in a straight line, but in the form of a triangle, at the apex of which stood that of Jesus. Thus in any case the legs of the two robbers would have been broken first, bePiercing of fore the soldiers had passed on to Jesus. Then comes the difficulty of the piercing of the side of Jesus. Does this not show that there was doubt as to His death? Not at all. There was a howling mob of infuriated Jews standing around. They Iwould have liked to see Jesus submitted to the crurifragium. They were disappointed-they saw the coup de grace given probably by a lance thrust into the two robbers-they wished to wreak their last vengeance upon the lifeless form of their victim, or indeed some of them may have doubted whether He was quite dead, and so an uproar was raised, and the soldiers were upbraided, and to satisfy the the side mob one of them thrust his lance into the heart of Objection: Only skinChrist to prove that death had really taken place. deep "But the wound was only skin deep," says one critic, "and Jesus might have been in a swoon after all. Joseph and Nicodemus being rich men had bribed, perhaps Pilate, and most probably the centurion, and so the soldier merely grazed the side of Christ." There is no end to the ingenious contentions of some minds, and to their fertility in manufacturing objections. The flowing of "blood and water" would however leave no room for their theory. Physiology and anatomy were unknown sciences in those days, and the circulation of blood had not then been discovered. If Christ were alive and the lance thrust had been merely superficial, blood alone would have flowed, or possibly if the swoon were deep, no blood at all. If however the thrust were deep, through pleura and pericardium, blood and blood-stained serum would gush out, and this may have been described as the flowing of blood and water. And thus John in his ignorance of physiology and pathology has given us one of the best proofs possible that Christ was really dead, for he could not have known this pathology of the fact he recorded. And once again we must insist upon it that the Jews who had come there for the express purpose of crucifying Jesus would be certain to assure themselves of His death Objection: Position of the women cross Objection: when the body was taken down from the cross and given to Joseph of Arimathea. There can then be no possible doubt as to the fact that it was the dead and not the half-dead body of Jesus which was given to Joseph for burial. "One Gospel says the women stood afar off and another says that the Mother of Jesus and Mary of Magdala were at the foot of the cross." Why could not some of the women or even all of them for that matter be near the cross at one moment Objection: and far off at another? But the titles on the cross Titles on as recorded by the various evangelists are slightly different! They are substantially identical, and it is quite possible that as the title was written in three languages there may have been some difference in the wording. And lastly we come to the remarkable occurrences which are alleged to have taken place at the death of Christ, namely, the earthquake, the darkness, the rending of the temple's veil and the resurrection of many bodies. Here is another field for the critic. And first of all he exclaims, that in the narration of these, as of other wonderful events, the Scriptural writers express no astonishment, but chronicle them as if they were events of every day occurrence, and so show them to be legendary, and give cause for doubt as to the rest of the story. The writers are not compiling a treatise in explanation or defence Occurrences tonishment corroborated of Christianity. The Gospels are not chronological Why asrecords but merely memoirs. They briefly record is not exsome of the events which took place, and for the pressed in Gospels benefit not of the world in general, but of people already acquainted with them. It would then have been incongruous and out of place to enter into exclamations of astonishment. It is stated by some of the writers, that darkness came over the scene when Jesus died, that there was an earthquake and that the rocks were riven asunder. This is borne out by Tacitus, Josephus and the These Talmud, as well as by early Christian tradition. occurrences Josephus speaks of the mysterious extinction of by Tacitus, Josephus one of the lights in the golden candlestick forty and Talmud years before the destruction of the Temple, that is about this very time; and the Talmud refers to a preternatural opening of the Temple gates at this period. That earthquakes were not unknown at Jerusalem, we know from the history of the earthquake which occurred whilst the Temple was being rebuilt by order of the Emperor Julian.1 "But," objects the sceptic, "how comes it that these marvellous events did not affect the bystanders, or the Jewish authorities, and convince them that they had done a great wrong?" On Why these hardened hearts such wonders have little effect. wonders had When volcanic fire and lava have swept down effect 1 Socrates, H.E., iii. 30. so little on a doomed city, we read that such a moment was chosen for the commission of the most awful crimes. The well-disposed may be impressed and converted, the hard-hearted are but plunged deeper into their evil doings. They did affect the centurion and some of the bystanders, if we believe the Gospel narrative. It is not to be wondered at that the priests and scribes and Pharisees were not moved, for people whose minds are made up on a certain point, and who are thoroughly possessed by one dominant idea, are rarely moved from their opinion by anything that may occur. They always have a natural explanation ready at hand. The earthquake, with the darkness which so often precedes and accompanies it, was to these people a natural event which happened to take place at that particular moment. The rending open of the rock caves, wherein the dead were resting, was but a natural sequence of the shaking of the earth; and if a light was extinguished in the Temple at that moment, under the circumstances there was nought to wonder at. If the Temple gates were thus loosened and thrown open, or if the big veil was torn so that the Holy of Holies was exposed, it was the earthquake that did it. And so no effect is produced on these people. As they would have said, "It is only the vulgar masses who read into all such things the hand of God". "But at all |