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blood."1 The Passover was to continue to be a thank-offering, but connected with the remembrance of Jesus. The last supper of the Lord closed, as we know through Justin Martyr, with the Lord's Prayer, which does not refer to sacrifice.

Among the New Testament records of the words reported to have been spoken by Jesus at his last supper, the most ancient is that contained in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. This narrative Luke has almost literally repeated, as if Paul had been the only authority for it. According to these statements of Paul and of Luke, Jesus has instituted a new sacrament, a Passover of the Christians, distinct from the Passover of the Jews. Yet the narratives in the gospels after Matthew and Mark contain no trace of this peculiarity. Here also are found references to the Paulinic source, though not to Paul's distinction between the prophesying type and the fulfilling antitype.

It can be rendered probable that the source of Paul's knowledge on this subject was Essenic tradition. The writings of Philo on the allegorical interpretation of Jewish festivals by the Essenic Therapeuts have enabled us to point out that the day of the slaying of the Paschal lamb was celebrated by prayers for "the purification of the soul." It cannot be asserted, but it is possible, that the Essenes, who turned "plain stories into

1 These are the words cited by Justin Martyr from "the memorials of the apostles."

21 Cor. xi. 23-26; Luke xxii. 14-20; 1 Cor. v. 7.

allegories," had dedicated the 14th Nisan to the purification of the soul because they expected the same to be effected by the Angel-Messiah, whom they seem to have identified with the sin-forgiving angel in the wilderness. The direct connection of that angel with the first Passover, with the blood of the Paschal lamb, was certain to be interpreted by the Essenes as a type of the Angel-Messiah. Thus the purification of the soul, that is, the forgiveness of sins, would be mystically connected with the blood of the incarnate sin-forgiving angel as antitype of the Paschal lamb. The Essenes would be led to the conclusion that the incarnate AngelMessiah would be slain on the 14th Nisan, and that his blood would typify the atonement.

Forbidden to slay the Paschal lamb, by their doctrines against bloody sacrifices, the Essenes would give a figurative importance to the bread and the wine of the Paschal meal, and their habitual abstention from wine would lead them to the substitution of water when they met in the refectory on the 14th Nisan. On that occasion they would regard the bread as the symbol of the bread from heaven, of the manna on which the Israelites had subsisted for forty years according to the Scriptures. The typical character of the manna was indicated by the twelve shewbread, or "perpetual bread," the "holy bread," before the candlestick, which symbolized the tree of life. The shewbread were also called "the bread of the table of the Lord," that is, of the table of shewbread. It is therefore conceivable that after the death of

Jesus, at the time of the Passover, those Essenes who, like Stephen, regarded Jesus as the AngelMessiah referred the bread of the Paschal meal to that which was distributed by Jesus in the guest chamber. Whether the cup at the Paschal meal of the Jews contained wine or a mixture of wine and water, the Essenes would explain the water which they drank on the 14th Nisan as a "spiritual drink," typified by the water from the rock.

It may therefore be assumed that ever since the time when Stephen identified Jesus with the angel in the wilderness, a tradition had originated respecting the words which the Christian Essenes believed Jesus to have spoken at his last Passover. As Stephen was the precursor of Paul, the latter, on the above supposition, could have received through that tradition the information respecting the last supper which is recorded in his epistle. At all events Paul has not received it from ear-witnesses.

With regard to the atonement, we come to the conclusion that, whether or not this doctrine originated with Jewish and Christian dissenters, with the Essenes, Paul has developed it from the assumed, but unhistorical, fact that the crucifixion of Jesus took place contemporaneously with the slaying of the Paschal lamb. On this ideal theory Paul has erected his fabric of the third day according to the Scripture. With it falls to the ground the highly poetical but not historically true doctrine of Jesus Christ's crucifixion as the Lamb of God, of the atonement by his blood, and his resurrection as the firstfruit of them that sleep.

APPARITIONS OF JESUS AFTER DEATH.

We have no reason to assume that on the 16th Nisan, when it "began to dawn," and when the Jews presented the first-fruit in the Temple, the apostles looked forward to any extraordinary event at the grave of Jesus. The Gospel narratives agree in asserting the absence of the apostles from the grave on that day. These regarded as "idle tales" what women declared to have seen, that is, apparitions of the risen Jesus at the grave. Of these, even eight years later, Paul knew nothing, for he does not report any apparition to women whilst giving a list of the apparitions in which he believed. Even if we assume that on the 16th Nisan the empty grave could have sufficiently testified the bodily resurrection of Jesus, this would not confirm the theory of Paul, for that day was not the third, but the second, after the death of Jesus. Yet statements have been inserted in the gospels according to which Jesus had himself referred to his resurrection on the third day after his death. The touching story in Luke's Gospel about the disciples of Emmaus refers to the actual apparition of Jesus on the third day as the fulfilment of prophecy. All these references to the third day may now be asserted to have been inserted in the gospels, probably during the Paschal dispute in the second century, in order to remove the dangers which had arisen from the two crucifixion-dates, the 15th Nisan according to the Gospel tradition of the twelve apostles, the 14th Nisan as Paul's unhistorical foundation for his theory of "the third day."

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The fact that the text of the first three gospels has been revised in the after-apostolic age is confirmed by the astounding discrepancies in the transmitted accounts of apparitions of Jesus after his death. According to the Gospel after Mark, the end of which from the 8th verse has been added later, no apparitions of the risen Jesus at the grave have originally been recorded. This is confirmed by Paul's not referring to such. In the added account of this gospel it is asserted that three women found an open and empty grave in which Jesus had been buried. They saw on the right side a young man clothed in white garment, who announced to them the resurrection of the crucified Jesus. He commissioned them to tell the disciples and Peter that they should go to Galilee, where they would see him, as he had told them. Trembling and amazement had possession of them, and they said nothing to any man.'

According to the account in Matthew, instead of a young man it was an angel of the Lord who made the same announcement to two women, and gave them the same command, after that he had descended from heaven, preceded by an earthquake, when he rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. The women departed quickly to bring the disciples word, and on the way Jesus met them, whom they held by the feet and worshipped.

This

1 Till Jesus himself had appeared to them (?). Mark xvi. 8; Matt. xxviii. 8; Luke xxiv. 9. It is implied that also Mark had recorded as part of the message the command to go to Galilee, for the Gospel after Mark mentions it twice (xiv. 28, xvi. 7).

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