Chapter XLII.—Other Incidents of the Passion Minutely Compared with Prophecy. Pilate and Herod. Barabbas Preferred to Jesus. Details of the Crucifixion. The Earthquake and the Mid-Day Darkness. All Wonderfully Foretold in the Scriptures of the Creator. Christ’s Giving Up the Ghost No Evidence of Marcion’s Docetic Opinions. In His Sepulture There is a Refutation Thereof.

For when He was brought before Pilate, they proceeded to urge Him with the serious charge2800    Onerare cœperunt., of declaring Himself to be Christ the King;2801    “King Messiah;” λέγοντα ἑαυτὸν Χριστὸν βασιλέα εἶναι, Luke xxiii. 1, 2. that is, undoubtedly, as the Son of God, who was to sit at God’s right hand. They would, however, have burdened Him2802    Gravassent. with some other title, if they had been uncertain whether He had called Himself the Son of God—if He had not pronounced the words, “Ye say that I am,” so as (to admit) that He was that which they said He was. Likewise, when Pirate asked Him, “Art thou Christ (the King)?” He answered, as He had before (to the Jewish council)2803    Proinde. “Thou sayest that I am”2804    Luke xxiii. 3. in order that He might not seem to have been driven by a fear of his power to give him a fuller answer. “And so the Lord hath stood on His trial.”2805    Constitutus est in judicio. The Septuagint is καταστήσεται εἰς κρίσιν, “shall stand on His trial.” And he placed His people on their trial. The Lord Himself comes to a trial with “the elders and rulers of the people,” as Isaiah predicted.2806    Isa. iii. 13, 14 (Septuagint). And then He fulfilled all that had been written of His passion. At that time “the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain things; the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ.”2807    Ps. ii. 1, 2. The heathen were Pilate and the Romans; the people were the tribes of Israel; the kings were represented in Herod, and the rulers in the chief priests. When, indeed, He was sent to Herod gratuitously2808    Velut munus. This is a definition, in fact, of the xenium in the verse from Hosea. This ξένιον was the Roman lautia, “a state entertainment to distinguished foreigners in the city.” by Pilate,2809    Luke xxiii. 7. the words of Hosea were accomplished, for he had prophesied of Christ: “And they shall carry Him bound as a present to the king.”2810    Hos. x. 6 (Sept. ξένια τῷ βασιλεῖ). Herod was “exceeding glad” when he saw Jesus, but he heard not a word from Him.2811    Luke xxiii. 8, 9. For, “as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth,”2812    Isa. liii. 7. because “the Lord had given to Him a disciplined tongue, that he might know how and when it behoved Him to speak”2813    Isa. l. 4 (Sept.).—even that “tongue which clove to His jaws,” as the Psalm2814    Ps. xxii. 15. said it should, through His not speaking.  Then Barabbas, the most abandoned criminal, is released, as if he were the innocent man; while the most righteous Christ is delivered to be put to death, as if he were the murderer.2815    Luke xxiii. 25. Moreover two malefactors are crucified around Him, in order that He might be reckoned amongst the transgressors.2816    Comp. Luke xxiii. 33 with Isa. liii. 12. Although His raiment was, without doubt, parted among the soldiers, and partly distributed by lot, yet Marcion has erased it all (from his Gospel),2817    This remarkable suppression was made to escape the wonderful minuteness of the prophetic evidence to the details of Christ’s death. for he had his eye upon the Psalm: “They parted my garments amongst them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”2818    Ps. xxii. 18. You may as well take away the cross itself! But even then the Psalm is not silent concerning it: “They pierced my hands and my feet.”2819    Ps. xxii. 16. Indeed, the details of the whole event are therein read: “Dogs compassed me about; the assembly of the wicked enclosed me around. All that looked upon me laughed me to scorn; they did shoot out their lips and shake their heads, (saying,) He hoped in God, let Him deliver Him.”2820    Ps. xxii. 16, 7, 8. Of what use now is (your tampering with) the testimony of His garments? If you take it as a booty for your false Christ, still all the Psalm (compensates) the vesture of Christ.2821    We append the original of these obscure sentences: “Quo jam testimonium vestimentorum? Habe falsi tui prædam; totus psalmus vestimenta sunt Christi.” The general sense is apparent. If Marcion does suppress the details about Christ’s garments at the cross, to escape the inconvenient proof they afford that Christ is the object of prophecies, yet there are so many other points of agreement between this wonderful Psalm and St. Luke’s history of the crucifixion (not expunged, as it would seem, by the heretic), that they quite compensate for the loss of this passage about the garments (Oehler). But, behold, the very elements are shaken. For their Lord was suffering. If, however, it was their enemy to whom all this injury was done, the heaven would have gleamed with light, the sun would have been even more radiant, and the day would have prolonged its course2822    Comp. Josh. x. 13.—gladly gazing at Marcion’s Christ suspended on his gibbet! These proofs2823    Argumenta. would still have been suitable for me, even if they had not been the subject of prophecy. Isaiah says: “I will clothe the heavens with blackness.”2824    Isa. l. 3. This will be the day, concerning which Amos also writes: And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that the sun shall go down at noon and the earth shall be dark in the clear day.”2825    Amos viii. 9. (At noon)2826    Here you have the meaning of the sixth hour. the veil of the temple was rent”2827    Luke xxiii. 45. by the escape of the cherubim,2828    Ezek. xi. 22, 23. which “left the daughter of Sion as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.”2829    Isa. i. 8. With what constancy has He also, in Psalm xxx., laboured to present to us the very Christ! He calls with a loud voice to the Father, “Into Thine hands I commend my spirit,”2830    Comp. Luke xxiii. 46 with Ps. xxxi. 5. that even when dying He might expend His last breath in fulfilling the prophets. Having said this, He gave up the ghost.”2831    Luke xxiii. 46. Who?  Did the spirit2832    Spiritus: or “breath.” give itself up; or the flesh the spirit?  But the spirit could not have breathed itself out. That which breathes is one thing, that which is breathed is another. If the spirit is breathed it must needs be breathed by another.  If, however, there had been nothing there but spirit, it would be said to have departed rather than expired.2833    Expirasse: considered actively, “breathed out,” in reference to the “expiravit” of the verse 46 above. What, however, breathes out spirit but the flesh, which both breathes the spirit whilst it has it, and breathes it out when it loses it? Indeed, if it was not flesh (upon the cross), but a phantom2834    A sharp rebuke of Marcion’s Docetism here follows. of flesh (and2835    Autem. a phantom is but spirit, and2836    Autem. so the spirit breathed its own self out, and departed as it did so), no doubt the phantom departed, when the spirit which was the phantom departed: and so the phantom and the spirit disappeared together, and were nowhere to be seen.2837    Nusquam comparuit phantasma cum spiritu. Nothing therefore remained upon the cross, nothing hung there, after “the giving up of the ghost;”2838    Post expirationem. there was nothing to beg of Pilate, nothing to take down from the cross, nothing to wrap in the linen, nothing to lay in the new sepulchre.2839    See these stages in Luke xxiii. 47–55. Still it was not nothing2840    Non nihil: “a something.” that was there. What was there, then? If a phantom Christ was yet there. If Christ had departed, He had taken away the phantom also. The only shift left to the impudence of the heretics, is to admit that what remained there was the phantom of a phantom! But what if Joseph knew that it was a body which he treated with so much piety?2841    This argument is also used by Epiphanius to prove the reality of Christ’s body, Hæres. xl. Confut. 74. The same writer also employs for the same purpose the incident of the women returning from the sepulchre, which Tertullian is going to adduce in his next chapter, Confut. 75 (Oehler). That same Joseph “who had not consented” with the Jews in their crime?2842    Luke xxiii. 51. The “happy man who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.”2843    Ps. i. 1.

CAPUT XLII.

Perductum (Luc., XXIII) enim illum ad Pilatum onerare coeperunt, quod se regem diceret; Christum sine dubio Dei Filium, sessurum ad Dei dexteram. Caeterum, alio eum titulo gravassent, incerti an Filium Dei se dixisset, nisi Vos dicitis sic pronuntiasset, hoc se esse quod dicerent. Pilato 0464A quoque interroganti, Tu es Christus? proinde, Tu dicis; ne metu potestatis viderentur amplius respondisse. Constitutus est igitur Dominus in judicio. Et statuit in judicio populum suum. Ipse Dominus in judicium venit cum presbyteris et archontibus populi, secundum Esaiam (Is., III, 13). Atque exinde omne scriptum passionis suae implevit. Tumultuatae sunt ibidem nationes, et populi meditati sunt inania (Ps. II, 1). Astiterunt reges terrae, et archontes congregati sunt in unum adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum ejus: nationes, Romani qui cum Pilato fuerant; populi, tribus Israelis; reges, in Herode; archontes, in summis sacerdotibus. Nam et Herodi velut munus a Pilato missus, Osee vocibus fidem reddidit; de Christo enim prophetaverat (Os., X, 0464B 6): Et vinctum eum ducent xenium regi. Delectatus est denique Herodes viso Jesu, nec vocem ullam ab eo audivit. Tanquam agnus enim coram tondente, sic non aperuit os suum (Is., XIII, 7); quia Dominus dederat illi linguam disciplinae, ut sciret quomodo eum oporteret proferre sermonem (Is., L, 4). Illam scilicet linguam, quam in Psalmo (Ps. XLVI) agglutinatam gutturi suo tunc probabat, non loquendo. Et Barrabas quidem nocentissimus, vita ut bonus donatur; Christus vero justissimus, ut homicida morti expostulatur. Sed et duo scelesti circumfiguntur illi, ut inter iniquos scilicet deputaretur. Vestitum plane ejus militibus divisum , partim sorte concessum, Marcion abstulit, respiciens Psalmi prophetiam (Ps. XXI, 19), Dispertiti sibi sunt vestimenta 0464C mea, et in vestitum meum sortem miserunt. Aufer igitur et crucem ipsam. Idem tamen psalmus de eo non tacet: Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos . Totus in illo exitus legitur: Circumdederunt me canes, synagoga maleficorum circumvallavit me. Omnes qui spectabant me, naso irridebant me. Locuti sunt labiis, et capita moverunt. Speravit in Deum, liberet eum. Quo jam testimonium vestimentorum habe falsi tui praedam, totus psalmus vestimenta sunt Christi. Ecce autem et elementa concutiuntur. Dominus enim patiebatur ipsorum. Caeterum, adversario laeso, coelum luminibus floruisset, magis sol radiis insultasset, magis dies stetisset, libenter spectans pendentem in patibulo Christum Marcionis. Haec argumenta quoque mihi competissent, etsi non fuissent 0465A praedicata. Coelum, inquit (Is., L, 3) Esaias, vestiam tenebris. Hic erit dies, de quo et Amos (Am., VIII, 9): Et erit illa die, dicit Dominus, occidet sol meridie (habes et horae sextae significationem), et contenebrabit super terram. Scissum est et templi velum, angeli eruptione, derelinquentis filiam Sionis (Is., I, 8) tanquam in vinea speculam, et in cucumerario casulam. O quantum perseveravit etiam trigesimo psalmo Christum ipsum reddere! Vociferatur ad Patrem, ut et moriens ultima voce prophetas adimpleret. Hoc dicto exspiravit. Quis? spiritus semetipsum, an caro spiritum? Sed spiritus semetipsum exspirare non potuit. Alius est qui exspirat, alius qui exspiratus. Si spiritus exspiratur, ab alio exspiretur necesse est. Quod si solus spiritus fuisset, discessisse 0465B potius diceretur, quam exspirasse. Quis igitur exspirat spiritum, nisi caro? quae et spirat, quando illum habet; et ita eum, cum amittit, exspirat. Denique, si caro non fuit , sed phantasma carnis, phantasma autem spiritus fuit, spiritus autem semetipsum exspiravit, et exspirando discessit, sine dubio phantasma discessit, cum spiritus, qui erat phantasma, discessit, et nusquam comparuit phantasma cum spiritu. Nihil ergo remansit in ligno? nihil pependit etiam post exspirationem? nihil de Pilato postulatum? nihil de patibulo detractum? nihil sindone involutum? nihil sepulcro novo conditum? Atquin non nihil. Quid igitur illud fuit? Si phantasma, adhuc ergo inerat et Christus. Si discesserat Christus, ergo abstulerat phantasma. Superest impudentiae 0465C haereticae dicere, phantasma illic phantasmatis remansisse. Sed sic et Joseph corpus fuisse noverat, quod tota pietate tractavit, ille Joseph, qui non consenserat in scelere Judaeis: Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, et in via peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra pestium non sedit; oportuerat etiam sepultorem Domini prophetari, ac jam tunc merito benedici.