Chapter Fourteen
Objection based on the Resurrection of Christ and His manifestation of Himself (Matt. xxviii. 6, etc.).
There is also another argument whereby this corrupt opinion can be refuted. I mean the argument about that Resurrection of His which is such common talk everywhere, as to why Jesus, after His suffering and rising again (according to your story), did not appear to Pilate who punished Him and said He had done nothing worthy of death, or to Herod King of the Jews, or to the High-priest of the Jewish race, or to many men at the same time and to such as were worthy of credit, and more particularly among Romans both in the Senate and among the people. The purpose would be that, by their wonder at "the things concerning Him, they might not pass a vote of death against Him by common consent, which implied the impiety of those who were obedient to Him. But He appeared to Mary Magdalene, a coarse woman who came from some wretched little village, and had once been possessed by seven demons, and with her another utterly obscure Mary, who was herself a peasant woman, and a few other people who were not at all well known. And that, although He said: "Henceforth shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds." For if He had shown Himself to men of note, all would believe through them, and no judge would punish them as fabricating monstrous stories.1 For surely it is neither pleasing to God nor to any sensible man that many should be subjected on His account to punishments of the gravest kind.
Chapter Nineteen
Answer to the objection based on the Resurrection of Christ and His manifestation of Himself (Matt. xxviii. 6, etc.).
Come now, and let us examine carefully that other action also which does not seem to you to have been rightly done. I mean why the Saviour, after having conquered the power of death and returned on the third day after His Passion from the depths of the earth, did not appear to Pilate. It was in order that those who have learnt how to do away with what is good, should not do away with the true fact. It was to prevent any base suspicion from base men from creeping in and stealing away the truth of the Lord's Passion. It was to prevent the unscrupulous from thinking that what took place was untrue, that the tongues of the Jews might not again hiss out the poison of the dragon, and that the fact might not become the universal scandal of the world.
For at once, if He had shown Himself to Pilate and the men of note who were about him, at once, I say, they would have spread abroad a statement, through the device of cheating, namely, that Pilate had nailed one man to the cross in place of another, through some plan of screening him; that he had done this as either himself deceived, or as being altogether put out of countenance with regard to Him, as is often wont to happen in such matters face to face.2 Whence they would say that He had appeared to him after rising as the result of an intrigue, desiring to proclaim on authority the resurrection which had not taken place as if it had done so, and to strengthen by the Roman power a lying statement. Thus the matter was contrived as a mockery; the earnestness shown was mere play-acting. He who had had no passion was solemnly parading within the Praetorium as if He had had it and conquered it; some criminal had been delivered over to the cross in His stead ; a trick had taken place in a court of law. He whom they had seized had got His freedom by a cunning device, and a form of jugglery; some other condemned man had been bound without exciting suspicion. And now Pilate, who had just judged Him according to appearance, had no more appearance of so doing, but was embracing Him who was still answerable, as if He were a friend. This action was a new one added to the evils already done against Judaea. Great is the resulting ridicule in the East. We Jews have an indelible shame in having fought against one man and not got the better of Him. See how much knavery the deceiver wrought, both while He lived and when He died in pretence.
[Macarius continues this lament of the Jews at some length, picturing Pilate as telling the Emperor, and orders being issued to believe what they knew to be a fraud, while they themselves were held up to odium for murdering the Saviour of the race, and felt most acutely of all the extreme publicity and officialism of the whole thing.]
Because of the likelihood of such happenings, and of such foolish talking on the part of the Jews, He did not appear to Pilate when He rose from the dead, lest that which had been done rightly should be judged as a trick of rascality and deceit. Nor did He approach men of repute of the company of the Romans, that there might not seem to be need of human support and co-operation for the confirmation of the story of the Resurrection. But He made Himself manifest to women who were not able to give help, nor to persuade any one about the Resurrection. Then He appeared to the disciples who were also themselves without power, and largely obscure because of their poverty. This He did fittingly and well, that the story of the Resurrection might not be heralded by the help of the power of the world's rulers, but that it might be strengthened and confirmed through men who were inferior and made no show in their life according to the flesh, so that the proclamation might not be a human thing, but a divine.
Footnotes:
1These words seem to suggest a time of persecution as then present. See Introct., p. xvii.
2This is a literal translation of the puzzling words υσωπηθεὶς λιπαρῶς πρὸς αὐτὸν ἅπερ φιλο=ι πολλάκις γίνεσθαι παρ' ὀφθαλμόν τοιαῦτα.