THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 



149 



tion of Jesus His Body was changed from one of flesh and blood 

 to one which was spiritual, incorruptible, and immortal, in such 

 a way that there was no trace leii of the corruptible body of 

 flesh and blood which had been laid in the grave. " 



This is, I think, sound and illuminating exegesis, and the con- 

 ception itself is as remarkable as it is definite. By what steps 

 are we to suppose that St. Paul arrived at it? Unfortunately, 

 Professor Lake is quite certain that St. Paul's view is mistaken. 

 So he goes on to point out an interesting, though not complete, 

 parallel to his thought from what may be a contemporary Jewish 

 writing. His object is to suggest that the doctrine of resurrec- 

 tion, which St. Paul had been taught as a Jew, would have 

 implied the disappearance of the crucified body from the tomb in 

 the event of a real resurrection. 



We may readily grant that, if St. Paul held such a doctrine, 

 and it is possible that he did, it would have helped him, after he 

 became convinced of the fact that the Lord was risen, to under- 

 stand the Christian tradition, with which I rof essor Lake believes 

 him to have been familiar, that the women found, or thought 

 that they had found, the tomb empty on the Third Day. But 

 surely it is strange that it does not occur to Professor Lake to 

 state that the phenomena of the empty tomb, especially in the 

 form in which St. John records them, of which more anon, would 

 of themselves supply a complete foundation for the very remark- 

 able form that the doctrine of the resurrection body takes in 

 St. Paul. Indeed, it fulfils exactly the conditions of " the speci- 

 fic fact," implied but not stated in 1 Cor. xv., to which Professor 

 Lake refers. It would supply a basis for his doctrine of the resur- 

 rection body of Christians, and a date for the Eesurrection of the 

 Lord. Eoom must be found for a word on this second point. The 

 origin of the conviction that the Eesurrection took place on " the 

 Third Day " cannot, as Professor Lake admits, be traced to the 

 Old Testament. Nor would it be a necessary inference from the 

 date of the first appearance of the Eisen Lord to scattered and 

 fugitive disciples in Galilee. Yet the date wtiS fixed in the tradi- 

 tion which St. Paul received (1 Cor. xv. 2) : and it, and it alone, 

 accounts for the peculiar veneration of the first day of the week 

 in Christian circles. I believe, therefore, that though St. Paul 

 does not refer in so many words to the fact of the empty tomb, 

 his argument shows that he believed in it. When we consider 

 the significance of the fact for him both before and after his 

 conversion, it is difficult in the twentieth century to challenge 

 evidence which brought conviction to Saul of Tarsus. 



When we pass from St. Paul to the canonical Gospels we come 

 into touch with at least four distinct sources of evidence. St. Mark 

 indeed was probably in the hands of each of the other three. Yet 

 each of them clearly had access to independent sources of informa- 



