Mythology

terms closely resembling the description of the sufferings of Jesus during his passion. It is one of the generally accepted results of New Testament studies that Jesus regarded the figure of the suffering Servant of Yahweh depicted in the Servant passages of Deutero-Isaiah as the pattern and prefiguration of his own destiny. The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in the eighth chapter of Acts shows how early this passage was understood by the Church as referring to Jesus. Hence, in the resemblances between the passion narratives and these Old Testament passages, we find, not mythological elaboration, nor the borrowing of a Tammuz myth, but the working of that tendency, to which we have already referred, to find fulfilments of prophecy in the events of the life of Jesus. Secondly, it may be said that, on a long view, the existence of these ancient myths of a suffering, dying, and rising god, is evidence of a deep-rooted element in religious experience, a sense that something is wrong with the moral order of the universe, and that only the expiatory death of a divine being can meet the situation; and, finally, that in the passion and resurrection of the Son of God the myth finds its realization and justification. It is mainly in the gospel of Matthew that the mythical elements with which we are concerned appear. There is one detail common to all the synoptic gospels which it is difficult to regard as historical, namely, the statement that at the moment of Jesus’s death the veil of the Temple was rent from top to bottom by supernatural agency. Of this incident so eminent a New Testament scholar as Dr C. H. Dodd has said, ‘The rending of the veil I take to be purely symbolical.’ [3] The three Synoptic gospels also relate that immediately before the death of Jesus there was darkness over the whole land for three hours; Luke adds, according to the best MS. evidence, that the darkness was due to an eclipse of the sun, but, as Origen pointed out long ago, an eclipse of the sun is not possible at full moon. The darkness, like the rending of the veil, is symbolical. In Matthew the mythical element is intensified. In addition to the two incidents already mentioned, he relates that the rocks were rent by an earthquake, the graves were opened, and many bodies of sleeping saints arose and came into ‘the holy city’ (Jerusalem), and appeared to many ‘after his resurrection’. This statement seems to imply that Matthew, or his source, regarded the resurrection of Jesus as taking place immediately after his death, although this is inconsistent with his subsequent narrative. The next mythical element included by Matthew is the story that the priests induced Pilate to place a guard of soldiers at the grave and to seal the stone which closed the mouth of the grave. When the grave was discovered to be empty the Jewish authorities are said to have bribed the soldiers to say that the disciples of Jesus had come and stolen his body while they slept. This curious episode ends with the statement that the soldiers did as they were instructed, and that this belief was current among the Jews at the time when the gospel was written. The story would seem to reflect current controversies at an early period between Jews and Christians concerning the body of Jesus. We have an echo of this in the words attributed to Mary Magdalene in John 20:13, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him: As is well known, the original form of the gospel of Mark ends abruptly, either intentionally, according to some scholars, or accidentally, according to others, at the eighth verse of Chapter 16 with the words, ‘For they were afraid.’ The last twelve verses of Chapter 16 are a later addition. All that Mark relates concerning the resurrection of Jesus is that the women came early on the morning of the first day of the week to the grave, and found the stone rolled away

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