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Reprinted from the American JournaI of Theoj.ogy, VolJ XV, No. 3, July ,1911

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE
TRADITION AiND OBSERVANCE "<:''

BENJAMIN WJSNER BACON

PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICApO PRESS

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION
AND OBSERVANCE

BENJAMIN WISNER BACON
Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn.

It is generally recognized among critical students of the New
Testament that that form of the Resurrection narrative which,
through the preponderant influence of Mark in records of fact, has
become fundamental to the gospels must be admitted to be second
ary, and even relatively late, as compared to the form exhibited
in the brief recapitulation of the common and accepted tradition
made by Paul in I Cor. 15:3-8.
The contrast is striking. Paul expressly states in I Cor. 15:11
that the tradition which he summarizes is that not of a part, but
of the whole church. It is the common tradition, and yet in a
sense deserves to be called Petrine, because in it the foundation
of everything is the manifestation "to Cephas." Paul's visit to
"Cephas" only three years after his own conversion1 places its
authenticity beyond cavil or dispute. But in this tradition the
experiences of the women and others in the vicinity of the sepulcher
are totally ignored. In the story of Mark, variously modified in
Matthew, Luke, and John, on the other hand, the sepulcher stories
are fundamental; whereas, the manifestation "to Cephas" has
left but a few half-obliterated traces, as alien as erratic blocks
to the context wherein they stand.
To this historico-critical problem the present writer believes
it possible to apply a method which, if not altogether new in
principle, is at least new in mode and measure of application, and
may prove fruitful of important and trustworthy results. This
method is already applied to the Gospel of Mark in the volume
entitled Beginnings of Gospel Story.2 In a subsequent article
entitled "The Purpose of Mark's Gospel"3 I endeavored to set
1 Gal. 1:18. * Yale University Press, 1909.
3 Jour, of Bibl. Lit., XXIX (1910). 373

374 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
forth the principle of what I have ventured to designate the "Meth
od of Pragmatic Values," and I am glad to say that it has since
won the hearty endorsement of Professor Harnack of Berlin.4
The method proposed rests upon the principle that the evangelic
writings were compiled not so much for historical as for apologetic
and aetiological purposes, and that their contents must consequently
be studied in the light of the beliefs and practises their authors,
and the authors and expounders of the traditional material they
embody and apply, were aiming to explain and defend. We
must go to the sources which exhibit the actual usages and beliefs
of the primitive church, as it were in action — we must go primarily
to the Pauline epistles, to understand why the church preserved
just what it did preserve of primitive story, and why its present
form is what it is.
Among other illustrations of the evidences afforded in Mark,
the oldest of our gospels, of the effects of the adaptation of the
tradition to local usage, I instanced particularly the notorious
discord between synoptic and Johannine tradition regarding the
dates of the final tragedy with relation to the Passover. Mark
and its satellites determine chronologically with great care certain
crises of the story; and these are found to correspond to certain
known observances of the Roman church in its commemoration
of Jesus' death and resurrection, which we may call hebdomadal
because, however heightened at the appropriate season of the year,
it was fundamentally an observance of certain days of the week.
The Fourth Gospel, on the contrary, which is certainly oriental
in origin, is found in its dating of events with relation to the (lunar)
month, to conform to oriental practice. This practice was called
" Quartodeciman " because it commemorated the death and
resurrection of Jesus annually on a single day identical with the
Passover day of the Jews. This day was always the fourteenth
of Nisan, or the full-moon of the first month, irrespective of the
incidence of the day of the week, though regard was also paid to
certain days of the week at all seasons. Certain sects of Quarto-
decimans, it is true, notably one in Cappadocia, had so far broken
'In a private communication Professor Harnack writes regarding this article,
"Sie haben in ihr einen Gedanken zum Leitstern gemacht der gewiss richtig ist."

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 375
away from Jewish usage as to employ for their observance of the
resurrection the Roman vernal equinox (March 25), just as we
employ the Roman winter solstice (December 25) for the cele
bration of the complementary mystery of the incarnation. This
solar date was more convenient and more acceptable than a lunar
date because for the determination of the latter the church would
be dependent on the hated Synagogue. On the essential point,
however, viz., denial of the Roman hebdomadal system, which
contended that it was not proper "to terminate the fast on any
other than the Lord's day," the Cappadocians were in agreement
with other Quartodecimans,5 and with Asiatic practice generally.
They disregarded the day of the week in their annual celebration
of "the mystery of the Lord's resurrection,"6 and this practice
was stoutly maintained as an unbroken tradition since the time
of the apostles themselves. It can scarcely be doubted that the
divergence of East and West on this point dates from well within
the first century.
I shall not repeat here the arguments adduced in my volume
entitled The Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate,1 in the chapter
headed "Johannine Quartodecimanism," to prove that the datings
of the Fourth Gospel correspond with its Asiatic derivation. Not
only the three great feasts, Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles, are
all distinguished in this gospel by visits of Jesus to Jerusalem at
which both discourse and action are suited to the occasion, but Un
leavened Bread and Dedication come in as well. This gospel dates
the anointing in Bethany "six days before the Passover" (not "two
days" as in Mark), because the tenth Nisan {six days, according to
ancient reckoning, before Nisan 15, the "great day" of the feast)
was the day set in Exod. 1 2 : 3 ff . for the choosing and setting apart
of the lamb. Epiphanius explicitly informs us that Quartodeci
mans observed this day in memory of Christ's being set apart and
designated our Passover.8 Instances need not be multiplied, as
s A sub-group referred to by Preuschen in the article hereinafter cited kept April
7. The equation followed is easily perceived. March 25 (Julian equinox) = Nisan 1
(Jewish New Year's Day). Hence Nisan 14 (Passover) =April 7.
6 Eusebius, H.E. V. xxiii. i, 2. » Moffat, Yard & Co., New York, 1910.
8 "We take the sheep from the tenth day, recognizing the name of Jesus on
account of the iota'' (Haer. 1. 3).

376 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
everyone knows the Fourth Gospel exhibits a tacit but very patent
correction of the Markan date for the crucifixion, so that Jesus'
death in it coincides even to the hour with the slaughtering of the
Passover lambs. Jesus instead of celebrating the Passover with
his disciples, joins with them in a last supper which is not a passover
meal at all, and whose distinctive rite formally instituted in per
petuity is — foot-washing! In fact, the whole institution of the
sacrament is transferred by the fourth evangelist to the Passover
of the preceding year, on occasion of the miracle of the Loaves in
Galilee. For the significance of all this extraordinary divergence
of the Johannine from synoptic tradition I must content myself
here with a bare reference to the volumes cited, merely recalling
the evidence adduced from the narrative of Mark itself that the
discrepancy is due to the Roman, not to the Asiatic writer. The
Markan narrative has been changed for the purpose of adapting
its form of the story to Western observance and the hebdomadal
system, and Matthew and Luke have followed suit. Sufficient
traces remain, however, in all three Synoptics to prove that in its
precanonical form this narrative agreed with the Johannine and
with the immemorial practice of the churches of the East with respect
to the date of Jesus' death. The crucifixion did take place, as the
the conspirators planned it should, "before the feast" with its
attendant danger of "a tumult of the people." On this point,
as well as on the probable motive for the change, I am glad to cite
the emphatic endorsement of two such eminent authorities as
Burkitt at Cambridge,9 and Loisy in Paris.10 Mark's narrative
still plainly shows the effects of a recasting in the interest of the
hebdomadal system of the western churches. Every element in
the redactor's dating of what we still call "Passion Week" is
determined by the pivotal Lord's Day after Passover. The
crucifixion fast-day (cf . the proleptic reference in 2 : 20) is exactly
subdivided into its four watches of three hours each: from dawn
till 9 a.m. the trial and mockery; from 9 till 12 crucifixion; from 12
till 3 p.m. darkness; at 3 p.m. the expiring cry; at sunset the
burial. So with the preceding two days. The second day before
» Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus, 1910, p. 93 f.
10 Revue d'histoire et de litlerature religieuses, I, 4 (1910), p. 375.

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 377
the Passover (Mk. 14:1) is the day of the Anointing. The day
before the Passover (14:12) is that of the Preparation. "At
evening" (14:17), the legal date for the Passover Supper, we have
the institution of the Eucharist; thereafter the night of watching
in Gethsemane, corresponding to the Passover "night of watching
unto Yahweh" (Exod. 13:42), an observance perpetuated in
the Easter vigil of the primitive Church. Perhaps the evangelist
even intends to mark the close of each watch before the last in
this night of vigil by the three-fold coming of Jesus to rouse the
sleeping disciples. This is open to doubt. It cannot possibly be
accidental, however, that when we bring the narrative thus minutely
dated — and be it remembered that no other gospel narratives are
dated at all save these pertaining to the death and resurrection —
into comparison with the known observances by which the early
church commemorated the great tragedy of Redemption, they
are found to be in exact chronological coincidence. Moreover, in
the synoptic tradition, the Western, or hebdomadal system, in
which the first day of the week as commemorating the resurrection
is pivotal, has progressively and almost completely triumphed
over the luni-solar, or annual, in which the pivotal date is the
annual Passover of the new Redemption. For Quartodecimans
observed only a single day, coincident with "that on which the
people (of the Jews) put away the leaven," i.e., Nisan 14. This
was to them the day in which the Redeemer "through death
overcame him that had the power of Death, and liberated us who
through fear of Death were all our life-time subject to bondage."11
A recapitulation of these facts already established regarding
the recasting in the synoptic record of the ancient Petrine story
of Calvary to conform to Western ritual was necessary as a pre
liminary to the further question whether and to what extent the
more fundamental disagreement of the records regarding the
resurrection were involved in this process.
As already stated there still remain in Mark many traces that
the Western or hebdomadal system of commemoration of the
resurrection has been forced upon the older Petrine narrative.
For most of these traces I must refer to the volume already cited.
"Heb. 2:15.

378 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
One I will recall. Notoriously the Gospel of Mark has suffered
mutilation at the end, and that almost certainly at a date anterior
to its employment by Matthew and Luke. The account of the
"manifestation to Cephas" implied in Mark 14:28 and 16:7 as
about to take place "in Galilee," a manifestation both foretold
in Luke 22:32 and subsequently referred to in Luke 22:34, has
disappeared. We can indeed reconstruct it with considerable
confidence from the fragmentary end of the Gospel of Peter, in
combination with the chapter appended to the Gospel of John.
According to these authorities Peter and his companions remained
in hiding in Jerusalem, paralyzed with fear and grief, until the
seven days of the feast (Passover and Unleavened Bread) were over."
Then a smaller group, Peter at the head, returned heartbroken
to their fishing at the Lake of Galilee. It was there, some ten days
at least after the crucifixion, that "the Lord appeared unto Simon"
and he "turned again and rallied his brethren."13 This earlier
form of the narrative, a form surely guaranteed by the statement
of Paul, is absolutely unaffected by that whose cardinal point is
the discovery of the empty tomb "on the third day." Paul refers
indeed to "the third day," but his chronology, as we shall see, has
no relation to the hebdomadal system, and his tradition takes
no cognizance whatever of any of the group of Sepulcher stories.
His statement that Jesus rose "on the third day" is not even based
upon any of these, but explicitly upon "Scripture." Just what is
here implied we must inquire hereafter. The expression "the
third day" may have affected our form of the Sepulcher traditions;
it certainly has not been itself affected by them. For the Synop
tists themselves have not yet fully adjusted this "third-day"
date to their chronology. The practical difficulties of bringing
in so early an appearance to Peter "in Galilee" are in fact almost
insuperable. Luke, as we know, overcomes them by excluding the
flight to Galilee altogether ; but with such obvious violence to his
sources as to leave no choice on the point of originality. And this
fundamental date itself is vacillating. In Mark we still have uni
formly "after three days," a phrase corresponding to the Jonah
" Ev. Petri vii. 26 f., xiv. 58 f.; Preuschen, Antileg.
" Ev. Petri xiv. 58 to end.

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 379
prophecy applied to the Resurrection in Mark 1 2 : 40, and to certain
forms of observance in the resurrection cults, but so manifestly
discordant with the story, that the dependent gospels change to
"the third day,"14 while other primitive documents make curious
and ingenious attempts at harmonization.15
Nor is this by any means the only evidence of the secondary
and relatively late origin of the synoptic as against the Pauline
tradition. In Mark, its earliest form, it winds up with a statement
calculated to obviate the objection inevitably suggested by the
parallel tradition that the disciples departed some four days later
to Galilee, still "weeping and mourning."16 The women, we are
told, "said nothing to any man because they were afraid." With
out some such explanation the Markan story could not have found
room alongside that of the apostolic manifestations. Later
forms of the story introduce various devices to account for the
lack of communication between the women and the disciples.
Matthew, among other readjustments, introduces two parallel
explanations: (1) The women did carry the message (28:8); (2)
Jesus himself by special intervention prevented its miscarriage
(28:9 f.). Still, however, the manifestations to the eleven are
"in Galilee." According to Luke the Twelve were indeed told,
they even verified the women's account to the extent of investigat
ing the tomb, but they "disbelieved." This leaves room for
independent manifestations to the eleven. The needless removal
to Galilee is cancelled. The fourth evangelist reduces the number
of those who receive the message to two, and attributes the dis
belief only to Peter. The Beloved Disciple "saw and believed";
but he, too, like the women, "said nothing to any man," which
is the more surprising because it does not appear that he "was
afraid." After this treatment of the harmonized tradition of
Luke 24:12, 22-24, the fourth evangelist adds a development of
the equally secondary elements of Matt. 28:9 f. and 17, dominated
as they are by a different harmonistic theory. The motives of
message and disbelief are thus repeated in John 20:11-29. A
'4 In one instance (Matt. 27:64) our first evangelist fails to make the change.
rs See below p. 387.
16 Ev. Petri vii. 26 f.; xiv. 59.

380 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
still later hand in an appendix (chap. 21) reannexes the Galilean
appearances excluded by John 20:20-23.
The interaction of the two conflicting forms of the resurrection
tradition has thus left its indelible traces in the gospels themselves.
The question for us to consider is whether the method of pragmatic
values cannot throw some light upon this most astonishing of all
the contradictions of primitive church tradition. We have seen
that no narratives are so intimately bound up with primitive
ritual observance as those of Mark. No observances of the primi
tive church are more copiously or surely attested than the two
which commemorate the great events these chapters relate. In
the East we have Quartodeciman observance of "the true Passover
of the Lord," an annual celebration of a single night and day,
regardless of its weekly incidence; in the West we find a weekly
celebration of the "first day of the week," heightened at the
Passover season (at least in later times) into an annual commemora
tion. Is it not possible to determine which of these two modes
of commemoration is primitive, and which derived? I believe
that it surely is, and that we shall find the comparison to throw
a welcome, though probably very unexpected, light upon the
problem of the origins of the church and the true significance of
its early observance of "the first day of the week" as "the Lord's
day." At the outset I find the substance of my convictions ably set
forth by so eminent a scholar as E. Preuschen, while I am at the
same time compelled to withhold assent from certain statements
which seem to me to exaggerate the facts. Preuschen thus ex
plains the " Easter "-controversy in his article s.v. in the New
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia (Vol. IV, 1910):
Eusebius says that it was decided on the basis of numerous conferences
of bishops that the mystery of the resurrection of the Lord from the dead
should be celebrated on no other day than on the Lord's day, and on that day
the Easter fast should be broken (H.E. V. xxiii. 2). Hence it is evident that
the party who were opposed in the conferences, who were undoubtedly the
Christians of Asia Minor, must have celebrated the mystery of the resurrection
on the day on which the fast was broken, and that this day was not Sunday
but the 14th of Nisan, around which the controversy revolved. This con
clusion is justified by the account of Epiphanius concerning the Quarto-

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 381
decimans .... in which he relates that fasting and the celebration of
the resurrection took place on the same day. It is hardly conceivable that
a bitter and protracted controversy should have originated on a mere matter
of fasting; the real reason for the differences lay deeper. The Christians of
Asia Minor appealed to an old apostolic tradition according to which Jesus rose
on the evemng of the day of his death, and the opposition of the Occidentals
was directed mainly against the commemoration of death and resurrection on
the same day.
With most of this statement I find myself in complete accord.
Had earlier writers on Quartodecimanism expressed themselves
as clearly and accurately, much useless controversy and much
darkening of counsel on the Johannine problem might have been
spared us. It is not exact, however, to say that the Asiatics
"appealed to an old apostolic tradition according to which Jesus
rose on the evening of the day of his death." On the contrary, igno
rance as to the precise time when Jesus "rose" was freely acknowl
edged by Quartodecimans in many regions. We need only cite
from Drummond's admirable discussion of "The Paschal Con
troversy" in his Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel:11
That the fast terminated, at the latest, very early on Easter morning we
know from express testimony. The first part of a letter addressed by Diony
sius of Alexandria to his "beloved son and brother Basilides" relates to this
question. Basilides, who, as we learn from Eusebius, was bishop of the par
ishes in Pentapolis, had consulted Dionysius about the hour for concluding the
fast. He did so owing to a difference of opinion among the brethren, some
thinking that they should do it at cock-crow, others "from the evening" (that
is, the evening before Easter Sunday), the brethren in Rome, as was alleged,
following the former practice, "those here" (in Egypt, or perhaps the East
generally) closing the fast sooner. He was at a loss how to fix an exact hour;
for while it would be "acknowledged by all alike" that they ought to begin
their festivities after the time of the resurrection of our Lord, and to humble
their souls with fasts up to that time, the Gospels contained no exact statement
of the hour at which he rose. Dionysius in reply considers the accounts in the
Gospels, and then pronounces his opinion for the guidance of those who inquire
at what hour or half hour or quarter of an hour they ought "to begin the
rejoicing at the resurrection of our Lord from the dead."
The reason why it was a matter of free difference of opinion and
even of professed ignorance and indifference in many quarters in
the East so late as the time of Dionysius at what precise hour
¦7 P. 47i-

382 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
Jesus "rose," is that it was not the Lord's "rising" in the strict
sense of the word, i.e., his manifestation of himself on earth, whether
at the sepulcher or elsewhere, which the earlier Asiatics celebrated
in their annual festival; nor did they profess to have any special
apostolic tradition on this subject. What they celebrated was
not a terrestrial but a sub-terrestrial event. Their feast was the
Christian counterpart of the Jewish Redemption feast. It cele
brated Christ's conquest of the power of the underworld and release
of its prisoners. It was almost as easy to connect commemoration
of this kind with the various mystery cults which celebrated a
similar victory of the sun-hero over Hades, and employed
similar mythological symbolism, as with Jewish ritual; for vernal
equinox (March 25) was celebrated in many forms of oriental
religion as the anniversary of the triumph of the god of Hght and
life, just as the Jews were holding their annual commemoration of
the Redemption out of the darkness and bondage of Egypt. If
we wish with Preuschen to use the word "resurrection" and its
cognates to designate this event of immemorial and central sig
nificance in all the great oriental religions, we must be careful to
distinguish it from the event which the occidental commemorated,
and still commemorates. For the occidental employs the word
"resurrection" to designate the self -manifestation of Jesus to the
women and others after his return from the underworld. The
oriental (at least in earfier times) meant by the "resurrection"
the breaking of the gates of Sheol and deliverance of its prisoners.
This is evidenced among other proofs by many of the newly dis
covered Odes of Solomon.1* For these, whether Jewish or Christian,
are true Redemption odes, in that they celebrate the victory of
Yahweh's Servant (Christ ?) over the gates and bars of Hades in the
vein of Isa. 26:19, 27:1, Ezek. 37:1-14, and Shemoneh Esreh II. In
fact, we can point to a progressive transition in Jewish and early
Christian literature from the Hebrew figure of national restoration,
often compared in the later poetry to a redemption from the power
of Sheol, down to the mediaeval doctrine of the Harrowing of Hell.19
18 See especially Odes 17, 21, 22, 25, 28, 29, 31, 42.
'» In this chain of literary remains we must not omit the " Scripture" quoted no less
than five times by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, sometimes attributing it to "Jere
miah "and sometimes to "Isaiah." "The Lord God remembered his dead people which
slept in their graves and He descended to proclaim to them His own salvation."

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 383
In this transition oriental myths of the descent and victory of the
sun-hero mingle with biblical imagery based on the deliverance from
bondage by the smiting of the Red Sea. The oriental Christian in
his celebration of what he called in distinction from the Jewish "the
true passover of the Lord" was not thinking of the institution of the
Lord's Supper, nor of the overcoming of the unbelief of this or that
disciple by miraculous manifestations. He was thinking of the vic
tory of his Lord over the powers of death and darkness. To him
the fabled victories of demi-gods over the same powers, and the
real victory of Moses in the redemption of Israel, were mere fore-
shadowings of this. Therefore he celebrated death and "resurrec
tion" together. If he made any attempt to fix the exact moment
of the great encounter he did not conceive it as deferred until
the ensuing "Lord's day." It was on the day of the crucifixion
itself, at the moment of the earthquake and rending of the rocks
of Matt. 27:52. These were the visible tokens of the death-
conqueror's victory, and the bursting of "the gates of Sheol."
On that same day, therefore, "many bodies of the saints that had
fallen asleep were raised and came forth out of the tombs." It
is a very characteristic westernizing of this truly oriental trait in
Matthew's material, when the evangefist, more anxious to avoid the
indecorum of an anticipation by these "saints" of the resurrection
of the Lord, than considerate of their shelterless condition during
the ensuing 36 hours, postpones their entering into the city and
appearing to many until "after his resurrection." The original
author of the tradition thought of the "resurrection" like a true
Quartodeciman. The "resurrection" day that the Quartodeciman
celebrated was not the "Lord's day," nor "the first day of the
week"; it was an anniversary, the anniversary of the greater
Redemption. This is apparent in every line of the defense made
by their great champion Apollinaris of Hierapolis :
The fourteenth [of Nisan] is the true Passover of the Lord, the great
sacrifice, the Servant of God instead of the lamb, he who, himself fettered,
bound the Strong Man, himself under judgment, became Judge of quick and
dead. Delivered into the hands of sinners for crucifixion, exalted on the horns
of the unicorn, and pierced in his holy side, he poured out from his side the two
elements of purification, water and blood, word and spirit, and was buried
on Passover day (14th Nisan) the stone having been laid upon his tomb.20
20 Paschal Chronicle.

384 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
What the hard-headed occidental thought of and commemo
rated as the "resurrection" may well have been the re-emergence
of Jesus from the rock-hewn sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea,
an event which he finally concluded must be dated "on the third
day" just before dawn. In his hebdomadal system this made
"the first day of the week" sacred as a memorial of the "resurrec
tion," and his "Easter" was a mere heightening at the appropriate
season of the year of the weekly festival. The oriental, on the
contrary, commemorated conflict and victory in a single day
annually recurrent. In the Gospel of Peter even the ascension
is included in its span of twelve hours. His conception of the
"resurrection" is voiced in the redemption songs designated the
Odes of Solomon. The coming forth of the triumphant Redeemer
is not from Joseph's tomb, but from "the gates of Sheol." Paul's
statement shows that in the earliest times this "rising" was thought
of as occurring — it may even, in the earliest times, have been
separately celebrated — "on the third day," but it is certain that
second-century Quartodecimans celebrated "a single day" in
commemoration both of crucifixion and resurrection. The later
divergence is explicable from the fact that it was not the "rising"
so much as the bursting of " the gates of Sheol" which was commem
orated. That such was the thought is already evidenced in Matt.
27 : 51-53. Ode 42 of the Odes of Solomon, speaking in the name of
the Redeemer, gives dramatic expression to the scene:
I was not rejected though it appeared to be so,
I did not perish, though men imagined it.
Sheol saw me and fainted,
Death vomited me out and many with me.
I became to him gall and poison
I went down with him to the utmost of his depth.
His head and his feet became palsied;
For my countenance he could not endure.
I made a congregation of living men among his dead
And spoke to them with living lips,
That my word might not be in vain.
Those who had died hastened to me, and cried out and said:
"Have pity upon us, Son of God!
Do to us according to thy mercy!
Bring us out from the bonds of darkness,

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 385
Open the gate, that we may go out of it with thee.
For we see that Death has not touched thee.
Let us also be redeemed with thee; for thou art our Redeemer."
And I heard their voice, and sealed their heads with my name;
For they are free men, and belong unto me. Hallelujah.21
The real significance of Quartodecimanism is placed finally
beyond doubt by the survivals of the practice in Gaul and Rome;
for even in the West it survived so late as the sixth century! At
Rome, where the death and resurrection of Attis had been officially
celebrated on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of March, the
latter being regarded as the spring equinox,22 ancient Martyrologies
give March 25 and March 27 as the dates of the Crucifixion and
Resurrection. This doubtless rests upon the chronology of Hip
polytus, who in his Paschal Table marks the Passion of Christ in
29 a.d., a date astronomically impossible, but widely accepted
in the second century, and at least in Rome explicitly based (Ter
tullian, Augustine) on the fact that in this year Friday fell on
March 25 and was coincident with the fourteenth Nisan. In his
commentary on Daniel Hippolytus expressly indicates Friday,
March 25, in the consulship of the two Gemini (29 a.d.) as the true
date, and the Philocalien Catalogue of the Popes gives the same.
Both chronologies according to Duchesne23 "are derived from offi
cial documents, and may be cited as evidence of the [primitive]
Roman ecclesiastical usage."
The dating of the Resurrection on March 27 is probably a mere
inference from the ancient celebration of March 25 as in Cappa-
docia. We cannot properly infer an existing ritual observance
of March 27 besides March 25 from the chronologies. Frazer
gives no evidence to show that any such existed at Rome, and if in
Gaul, this does not appear from the authorities cited. On the
contrary the passage cited from S. Martinus Dumiensis (Migne,
Pal. Lat. Ixxii. 50) is as follows:
A plerisque Gallicanis episcopis usque ante non multum tempus custodi-
tum est, ut semper VIII. Kal. April, diem Paschae celebrent, in quo facta
Christi resurrectio traditur.
21 Translation of J. Rendel Harris, Odes of Solomon (1910), 137, with emendations
of Gunkel, Zfntl. W ., XI, 4 (1910).
22 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1906), 199. '* Origines du Culte Chretien3, 262.

386 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
How curious that the very points of chief significance should
have been rejected by the discoverer of this interesting testimony !
It shows that Irenaeus in pleading with Victor for toleration of the
"ancient" practice was speaking not for Asia only but for "observ
ers " in his own region also. As Frazer remarks :
According to this last testimony, it was the resurrection, not the cruci
fixion, of Christ that was celebrated on the twenty-fifth of March; but Mgr.
Duchesne attributes the statement to a mistake [!] of the writer.2''
Preuschen's statement that "the Christians of Asia Minor
appealed to an old apostolic tradition according to which Jesus
rose on the evening of the day of his death" must, therefore, if
accepted, be quaHfied by a recognition that the word "rose" is
here used in a non-occidental sense.
We have still to inquire to what extent the Asiatics may justly
be said to have possessed an "apostolic tradition" to this effect.
Before proceeding to this, however, Preuschen's further statement
of his view should be heard. He continues as follows:
The Syriac Didascalia makes an attempt to harmonize the tradition of
the canonical Gospels and that of the Christians of Asia Minor. On the
morning of Friday Jesus was led before Pilate and crucified on the same day.
He suffered six hours and those are counted as one day. Then there was a
darkness, lasting three hours, and that is counted as a night, and further,
from the ninth hour until evening three hours — another day, and then followed
the night of the Sabbath. In the Gospel of Matthew we read, "Now late on
the Sabbath day, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came
Mary Magdalene," etc. (Matt. 28:1, R.V.). The calculation is strange,
but its purpose is easily seen. The author believed that Jesus rose on the
evening of the Friday on which he suffered death. In order to reconcile this
tradition with the other which assumed a resurrection on the third day, he
calculated (as above) in such a way that Jesus really rose after two days and
two nights although only one day had passed. It is not known whether
Friday of every week was celebrated, by fasts and the mysteries of resurrection
[!], or the 14th of each month [!], or the 14th of Nisan in each year. In the
Orient Sunday was not known as the day of resurrection, and hence there was
no weekly celebration of this day [!], but in the Occident Wednesday and Friday
were regular fast days, and Sunday was celebrated as the day of resurrection.
It is doubtful whether the Occident possessed in addition a special day in the
year for the commemoration of the death and the resurrection of the Lord.
2< I am indebted to Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., for the important data above
given as to occidental Quartodecimanism from Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 199,
where references are given to the sources cited.

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 387
Of the curious evidences adduced from the Syriac Didascalia
and Matt. 28:1 to show how the process of harmonization was
appHed even down to a late period to the conflicting traditions
regarding "the third day" we need say but little. These, like the
perplexities of Basilides of PentapoHs, are mere consequences of the
impartation of the Western idea of the "rising." It was pointed
out above25 that the process of adjustment was still incomplete
when the Gospel of Mark took its present form. Only Matthew
and Luke go to the full length of logical consistency by substituting
"on the third day" for Mark's "after three days." This is of
minor importance, and merely confirms our previous statements
regarding the slow adjustment of the "third day" datum in the
synoptic tradition. In the latter part of the above extract, on
the other hand, we have itaficized certain statements concerning
weekly and annual commemoration of the resurrection in the
churches of the Orient, which at least require substantiation, if
indeed they are not altogether misleading.
If we go far enough back in time it is probable that Preuschen
is right in his statement of the purely hebdomadal character of
occidental fasts and feasts. The addition in the West of "a
special day in the year for the commemoration of the death and
[another of] the resurrection of the Lord" may have been later
and due to oriental influence. But nothing known to the present
writer warrants the converse statement as to oriental practice.
It would surely be difficult to substantiate the statement that
"in the Orient there was no weekly celebration of this [the Lord's]
day." On the contrary, the earliest sources that we possess for
the observance of "the first day of the week" as "the Lord's day"
(fi KvpiaKT) ripipa) are distinctly oriental, including the Pauline
epistles,26 the contemporary " We "-document of Acts,27 and the
Ephesian apocalypse called the Revelation of John.28 Moreover
it is the Didache, a document attributed by most critics to northern
Syria, and almost certainly of oriental origin, which shows the
Church to be still maintaining the Synagogue practice of fasting
twice in the week (Luke 18:12), distinguishing its ritual from that
2s P. 379. 2? Acts 20:7.
26 1 Cor. 16:2. 28 Rev. 1 : 10.

388 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
of "the hypocrites" (Jews) by fasting on "the fourth day of the
week and the Preparation" (Friday) instead of "the second
and fifth."29 Such evidence as the Gospel of Mark affords30 of
occidental practice, early as it is, can scarcely be said to evince
even an equal degree of attention to the hebdomadal system.
Mark seems to know but one fast-day in the week — Friday. Lack
ing further evidence it can hardly then appear otherwise than a
decided exaggeration to declare that in the Orient "there was
no weekly celebration of this (the Lord's) day." Jewish as it
was in origin, we should expect the hebdomadal system to take
greater prominence among the oriental churches than among the
occidental; and, so far as the present writer's knowledge extends,
such is in reality the case. The true point of contrast is that
whereas in the West the weekly Lord's day served as a mode of
commemorating (and possibly at the very first even as the only
mode of commemorating) the death and resurrection of Jesus, in
the Orient the death and resurrection of Jesus were commemorated
by the annual feast of the new Redemption on Nisan fourteenth,
the weekly fasts and feast having (originally) a different occasion
and application. "Fasts and celebrations of the mysteries of the
resurrection" on "the fourteenth of each month" would seem to
be nothing less than figments of Preuschen's imagination, and we
have yet to hear of evidence looking to "celebration of the mysteries
of the resurrection" on " Friday of every week." The semi-
weekly fasts of Didache viii, as the context itself indicates, are
simply taken over from the Synagogue. Why the days were
changed from "the second and fifth" to "the fourth and the
Preparation" would not be hard to guess even if we had not the
express statement of Apost. Const, v. 15, 18, and the parallel
occidental phenomenon of Mark 2 : 20 {ev e/ceivr) tj} rip-epq, not
¦fj/xepaK, as in Luke, or tots, as in Matthew). But this mere
shifting of the semi-weekly fasts is a very different thing from
instituting a weekly observance (on Friday!) of Jesus' death and
resurrection. Why, indeed, should it be weekly? We miss the
2» Didache viii. In Apost. Const, v. 15, 18 the placing of the facts of passion
week on Wednesday and Friday is said to be on account of the Betrayal and the
Crucifixion. 3° Mark 2:20, 16:2.

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 389
whole point of the Quartodeciman's plea in his great struggle
against the overmastering domination of Roman practice, if we
fail to see that in his view the commemoration of the death and
resurrection of Jesus is completely independent of the hebdomadal
system, and should be mainly, if not exclusively, annual.
Here, then, is the really striking and important truth of the
extract we have cited. It is not true (unless all our knowledge
be at fault) that in the oriental churches "there was no weekly
celebration of this day" (Sunday). It is, however, true — and a
truth of no small significance, that — if we go back far enough —
"in the Orient Sunday was not known as the day of resurrection."
The final step in our problem is one which involves again the
appUcation in our exegesis of the method of pragmatic values.
It calls upon us to go back in the history of the Asiatic and oriental
churches and determine, as well as we are able, what ground existed
for their claim in the matter of commemoration of the Lord's
death and resurrection to be better representatives than the
church at Rome of the true and authentic apostolic tradition. It
calls upon us also to explain the prevalence in both East and West
of the hebdomadal system with festal observance of "the first day
of the week" as "the Lord's day." For certainly after admitting
the weekly observance of this day throughout Christendom, if we
deny its origin to have been what the modern world supposes, we
shall be called upon to explain both its real origin and the occasion
of the misapprehension.
First of all we must determine a little more exactly what sort
of "old apostolic tradition" the Quartodeciman Asiatic churches
really appealed to. In making his statement in the form above
quoted31 Preuschen doubtless does not wish to be understood as
maintaining that these churches quoted definite statements
attributed to the apostles "according to which Jesus rose on the
evening of the day of his death." Such statements are hardly
conceivable in view of the relatively uniform tradition regarding
"the third day," and would certainly have provoked appeal to
the definitely contrary statements of the apostle Paul in one of
the best known and most widely circulated of his epistles,32 to
31 p. 381. 32 1 Cor. 15:4.

390 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
say nothing of the Gospels. We are to understand, no doubt,
that the churches of Asia, mainly through Polycarp, their most
venerable authority, who suffered martyrdom in 155 a.d. as
"the father of the Christians of Asia" at 86 years of age,33 main
tained that the Quartodeciman annual commemoration of the
Lord's death and resurrection, and not the Roman hebdomadal (or
hebdomadal-annual), was the authentic practice of the very
apostles themselves. At Rome in 154 a.d. Polycarp had in fact
resisted all the attempts of Anicetus to persuade him "not to
observe what he had always observed with John the disciple of
our Lord, and the other apostles with whom he had associated,"
i.e., the annual rite on the fourteenth. As in later forms of the
controversy so also at the earliest the distinction is between "ob
servers" (xi/powTe?) and "non-observers." The Roman bishop
makes the definite attempt to dissuade his venerable guest from a
practice which he no doubt regarded as a survival of Judaism.
And Irenaeus expressly testifies that Victor's predecessors before
Soter back to Sixtus (115-25 a.d.) were "non-observers," though
tolerant of those who observed. Irenaeus in his reference of
Victor34 to the observance of Polycarp "with John" has of course
John the Apostle in mind. Polycarp, on the other hand, who
never refers in his extant letter to John, but always to Paul, as his
apostolic authority, is more likely to have had in mind John the
Presbyter of Jerusalem, referred to as a leading member of the
apostolic community in Palestine down to 117 a.d. by Papias,
Eusebius, and Epiphanius. But this scarcely diminishes the
value of his testimony. For Polycarp had been a Christian from
infancy,35 and had been brought to Smyrna from Syria as a youth.36
He may very well, therefore, have had substantially the experience
claimed, and in any event his testimony as to apostolic practice on
such a point would be well-nigh conclusive. Moreover, no modern
historian would question for a moment the historicity of this
view of apostolic practice. It is substantially certain that at least
the apostolic community in Jerusalem continued to observe the
" Martyrdom ix. 3. 35 Martyrdom ix. 3.
3-1 Eusebius, H.E. V. xxiv. 16. 3« Vita, beginning.

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 391
annual rite of the Passover, however different and larger the
Christian significance they probably attached to it.
But we may go farther still. The oldest and most authentic
documents we possess, when studied from the viewpoint of historic
ritual, make it well-nigh certain that at least in Ephesus and among
the churches of Asia Quartodeciman observance was sanctioned
and approved by the apostle Paul himself.
Whatever objection might be drawn from Paul's rebuke of the
Galatians and Colossians for a Judaizing and legalistic observance
of "days and months and (sacred) seasons and years"37 is more
than offset by his clear approval elsewhere of Christianized, non-
legalistic observance38 and the indisputable evidence of the "We"-
document of Acts as to the keeping of "the days of Unleavened
Bread" at Philippi.39 But to come directly to the ancient head
quarters of Quartodeciman observance, Ephesus. It is generally
recognized that the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written
from Ephesus at about the season of Passover (I Cor. 16:8) and
that it contains more than one allusion to observances connected
with the ritual. The exhortation, "Purge out the old leaven,
that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened; for our
passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ: wherefore let
us keep the feast not with old leaven .... but with the unleav
ened bread of sincerity and truth"40 certainly implies sanction
and approval of the keeping of a Christian Passover, and is uni
versally recognized as alluding to the Jewish ceremony on Nisan
13 of the "putting away of the leaven." But the clew should
have been followed up. Not only in chap. 5, but throughout the
epistle figures recur which are suggested by the Passover ritual.
That of the defiling "old leaven" returns perhaps in 15 :33- "This
bread," referred to in 11:26 as consecrated by Jesus and made a
perpetual memorial, is the new, unleavened bread of the new
(Jewish) year. The story of the redemption out of Egypt, when
Israel passed through the Red Sea, a distinctively Passover theme,
is employed as a figure of baptism in 10 : 1. But all these are merely
37 Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16. 39 Acts 20:6.
38 Rom. 14:5- 40I Cor. 5:7 f.

392 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
subsidiary. We are concerned with the commemoration of the
resurrection, and particularly with the allusion to "the third day"
as having some special significance in Christian tradition. It
is vital to any historical understanding of the great resurrection
chapter in I Cor., chap. 15, to realize that the entire argument,
from its allusion to the fate of the seed-corn buried in the earth
through the winter but raised again in the new body which God
has given it at the beginning of the new year, down to its reference
to Christ as the "firstfruits of them that slept," is not only sug
gested by, but frankly based upon, the Jewish ritual of the feast
of Unleavened Bread. "Firstfruits," with its ritual of the Hfting
up before God of the first sheaf of the new crop marked the begin
ning, as Pentecost marked the close, of the seven festal weeks of
wheat-harvest. It is true the phrase "on the morrow after the
Sabbath" in the calendar law of Lev. 23:11, 15 was variously
interpreted, orthodox Jews counting from 16th Nisan to 6th Sivan.
But Samaritans and Karaites made every Firstfruits and every
Pentecost a first day of the week. In the year of the crucifixion
all must have been in agreement if the crucifixion was, as we have
reason to believe, on Nisan 14; for Firstfruits fell of course on
" the third day" from the Friday of the great tragedy. It becomes
obvious at once, therefore, why Paul mentions the burial of Jesus
and his rising "on the third day," however indifferent he might be
to the sepulcher traditions, or ignorant of them. Jesus' burial is
mentioned because it corresponds to the dropping of the kernel
of wheat into the ground. His rising "on the third day" (what
ever the "Scripture" on which Paul based his conviction of the
fact) is affirmed because of the ritual of the aTrapxv; "for now
is Christ risen from the dead and become the cnrapxn of them
that slept."
We have a precisely parallel case in the passage from Clement
of Alexandria excerpted no doubt from his work on the Quarto
deciman controversy by the author of the Paschal Chronicle (630
a.d.): The resurrection also testifies to it (the fourteenth Nisan as the true Pass
over) ; at least he rose on the third day, which was the first of the weeks of
the harvest, in which it had been enacted (Lev. 22:11) that the priest should
offer the (wave)-sheaf.

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 393
Epiphanius, too, though opposed to the Quartodecimans, shows
many traces of acquaintance with their views and practices.
In his opinion {Haer. Ii. 26 f.) Jesus was crucified on the 14th
Nisan and rose on the 16th, which in that year was the equinox.
"It was on the 16th that the sheaf was presented at the annual
festival,41 and thus it prefigured the resurrection of Him who was
the Firstfruits of the dead."
To Clement and Epiphanius, as to Paul, the fact (however
estabfished) that Jesus "rose on the third day" is of interest not
because in the particular year of the crucifixion this happened to
be a Sunday, but because it coincided with the day of the lifting of
the sheaf.
But First Corinthians, written as it was from Ephesus at
Passover season, is not the only PauHne epistle which testifies
to primitive observance of this season among the churches of this
region. Ephesians from end to end is echoing with Passover
songs of redemption. Its opening paean is based upon the Redemp
tion of a people for an "own possession." In 1:15 — 2:6 this
theme passes over into the kindred one of deliverance from the
bondage and darkness of death; in 4:8-10 it takes almost the
mythological form of an avatar doctrine, employing the same
scriptural passages and figures as the perhaps contemporary
Odes of Solomon; in 5 : 7-14 we have the Isaian figure of Yahweh's
triumph over the power of darkness and the underworld, while
in 6: 10-17 the armor of the conflict is (as in Isaiah) the full pano
ply of the sun-hero who overcomes the chaos-monster. In 5:14
we have even the explicit citation of a redemption ode of the
character described and now so well exemplified, together with
an encouragement in 5:i8f. to the use of such "spiritual odes"
in the festal assembly. Finally, unless Origen be wrong, we have in
the exhortation to "stand, having your feet shod with the readiness
of the gospel of peace" (Eph. 6:i4f.) a distinct allusion to the
ritual of Passover itself, which was to be eaten "with your loins
girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand"42
** This is correct. See above, p. 392.
v Ex. 12:11. See the quotation from Aphraates, "And if he says: 'Eat it
as men who hasten away' this is fulfilled in the church of God in this wise, that they
eat the lamb 'as men who. hasten away' standing on their feet," in Drummond,
Authorship, etc., p. 461.

394 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
in "readiness" {eTocfiaala) to go forth from "the house of bond-
age." We need not adduce further evidence of the influence of Chris
tianized Jewish ritual upon the epistles of Paul. Enough has been
set forth to make the hypothesis of influence from contemporary
observance almost a certainty. To attempt in view of this an
explanation of the coincidence of dates in the comparison of Jesus'
crucifixion to the slaughtering of the passover lamb, and his resur
rection to the lifting of the "firstfruits" of wheat-harvest as
merely accidental would be irrational. It follows that Quarto
deciman commemoration of the resurrection by anniversary is
not only Ephesian and "Johannine." It is Pauline. The heb
domadal system which through the Roman Gospel of Mark has
become dominant in the synoptic Gospels was at least as prevalent
in the East as in the West. But unlike the West the East did not
base it on the events of Passion Week. Its origin then cannot have
been the desire to commemorate the discovery of the empty tomb,
if indeed it were a priori possible to imagine a conclave of the
apostoHc brotherhood inferring from this event and accompanying
manifestations that the "resurrection" must have taken place on
the first day of the week and enacting in consequence a weekly
(why weekly ?) observance of the day.
We are thus brought at last face to face with the question:
What was the historic origin of the Lord's day; and how could
a hebdomadal system of Synagogue origin in the East become
transformed in the West into a weekly commemoration of Jesus'
passion and resurrection ?
We have seen above43 that the transfer in Didache of the semi-
weekly fast-days of "the hypocrites" from "the second and fifth
days of the week" to "the fourth and the Preparation" must be
due to the great tragedy of Calvary. So long as the resurrection
was not understood to be commemorated (or at least not primarily
commemorated) by festal observance of the first day of the week
as "the Lord's day," but had its own far more splendid com
memoration in the annual observance of "the new Passover" on
Nisan 14, the transfer would have but little effect on the resurrec-
43 P. 387-

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 395
tion tradition and observance. Such were the conditions in
Asia so long as the ancient Quartodeciman rite could maintain
itself against the more and more intolerant anti-semitism of the
West. In the West two generally prevalent tendencies brought
about a quite different result. These were: (1) the substitution
of more crudely concrete and external conceptions for more internal
and mystical in interpreting the doctrine of the resurrection;
(2) the rapid disappearance of the Jewish element from the church
and simultaneous growth of an intense antipathy to practices
regarded as "Judaizing," especially the observance of (Jewish)
"times and seasons and days and years."
(1) We need not dwell upon the first of these tendencies. The
trend of orthodox apologetic is only too apparent in the Chiliastic
writers of the second century with their dogma of a "resurrection
of the flesh" (t»)? aapicos:), and their insistence on the palpable
nature of the resurrection body of Jesus,44 in opposition even to
the direct and explicit statements of Paul. They even insist that
the Gnostics who quoted his saying "flesh and blood cannot
inherit the kingdom of God" were perverting his meaning45 and
quoted Rev. 20:6 and sayings of "the Elders" in Jerusalem in
proof of the material nature of the Kingdom. To believe that
"when we die our souls are taken to heaven" became an intolerable
heresy.40 It was considered a "denial of the resurrection."47
As respects the resurrection body a crudely materialistic reanima-
tion doctrine prevailed, widely at variance with the Pauline,
equally at variance, as we may perhaps infer from I Cor., chap. 15,
with the primitive apostolic. Paul's doctrine posits a spiritual
body wherewith we are "clothed upon," a "house from heaven,"
to which this earthly frame is only as the "tabernacle" to the
temple. It rested upon visions of the glorified Lord. Our bodies
were to be "transformed into the likeness of his glory-body."
But it does not differ from the doctrine of the glorified resurrection
body of Apoc. Bar. Ii. 3-1 1 save in the establishment of this pre-
44 Luke 24:36-43; cf. Ignatius, ad Smyrn. iii.
4s II Pet. 3:16; cf. Irenaeus, Haer. V. ix. 1.
46 Justin, Dial. lxxx.
47 Polycarp, Ep. vii; cf. Just. M., On The Resurrection.

396 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
cedent of the "firstfruits." A beHever of the Pauline stamp
would therefore have no thought of seeking the body of Jesus in
the sepulcher after he had had the vision of the body which it
pleased God to give him — the "body of glory." Such inquiry was
probably known to be impracticable. It would have seemed
at least unnecessary, if not impious. It would be as if the husband
man, after having reaped his "firstfruits," should seek again
beneath the soil the seed he had placed there the season before.
The Paulinist might expect to find, were such a needless inquiry to
be made, either that the material body of the Lord had been
"changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye"; or that it
had suffered the normal fate of the "sinful flesh" to which it was
"like." Neither alternative would affect the assurance on which
he rested. To the believer of the post-apostoHc age, who held
a more concrete and materialistic type of doctrine, a doctrine
of the reanimation of the flesh, investigation of the sepulcher
would be the very first thought. To him it was incredible that
some at least of the apostoHc company should not have made it.
To him almost any tale of a tomb found empty near Calvary
within a brief time after the crucifixion would be credible and
welcome. Through the preponderant influence of the Gospel
of Mark the particular story which has become dominant in
evangelic tradition is the shrine-story (to give it its true name)
of the sepulcher of Joseph. It has indeed supplanted the older
Petrine narrative in all but a few traces; but as we have seen,
it bears the marks of its later origin upon its face. It has not been
admitted without a struggle, the evidences of change and adapta
tion are everywhere. Refics of piecing, readjusting, and amending
abound. Gradually the sepulcher traditions gain the upper
hand over the PauHne. We can trace their steady advance from
(Deutero-) Mark to Matthew, from these to Luke-Acts, from
these to "John," to Ignatius, and to the Gospel of Peter. Mere
manifestations of the risen Christ in Peter, or in Paul, no longer
satisfy. It is not enough that God "energized in" Peter and ten
other disciples in Galilee ten days or so after the crucifixion, or
later (in Jerusalem?) in great "manifestations of the Spirit" to
"James and all the apostles," and even to "above five hundred

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 397
brethren at once." Mere spiritual experiences like these could
prove nothing on the great question, "With what body do they
come ? " There must be testimony that the sepulcher was empty,
that the resurrection body was palpable, had "flesh and bones,"
that the disciples "ate and drank with him after that he rose from
the dead." A decade after Paul's death it must have been already
a hopeless task to resist the pressure of traditions of this type from
which the gospel of Paul in I Cor., chap. 15, is still completely
free. And down to our own time its main buttress is the supposed
fact that the observance of Sunday commemorates the finding of
the empty tomb.
(2) It is upon this supposed fact of the origin of Sunday observ
ance in the discovery of the empty tomb that our inquiry into
primitive differences between East and West may be expected
to throw Hght. Preuschen, as we have seen, denies altogether the
primitive observance of Sunday in the East; but this seems to be
a misapprehension. The "resurrection" was otherwise com
memorated, though it was believed to have happened on "the
third day" (from the fatal Passover), and the first day of the week
was observed as "the Lord's day," but without relation (primi
tively) to the sepulcher traditions. How came the "resurrection"
to be dated (not without traces of vacillation) on "the third day,"
and all the West to make this "Lord's day" fundamental in its
resurrection observance ?
It is to be explained, unless we are misled, by the growing
antipathy to the Jewish system of annual feasts and fasts, still
observed in the time of Paul and the Travel document, and not only
by the earHer apostles and the Palestinian churches but by Paul
himself and the churches of Asia. Unlike the hebdomadal system,
the annual system of Passover, Pentecost and "the Fast," could
be kept only on the basis of the Jewish luni-solar year, the deter
mination of which was an exclusive prerogative of the Jewish
authorities. It is a marvel that such traces as still remain of this
luni-solar system in our ecclesiastical year should have been able
to maintain front against the Julian calendar. Before the end of
the first century a new hebdomadal system was rapidly super
seding the Jewish fasts and Sabbaths throughout the Christian

398 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
world. Everywhere "the Lord's day" was finding more observers
than the seventh, though for a time both continued side by side,
even at Rome.48 But "fasting the world" and "sabbatizing
(i.e., discontinuing) the Sabbath" were soon decreed to be con
ditions sine qua non of "inheriting the kingdom" and "beholding
the Father."49 The Gospel of Mark will have no more either of
these or of Passovers. The weekly Lord's Supper was instituted
according to this evangelist at the very time of the Passover feast,
and for the express purpose of displacing it.50 Western sentiment
will have been at least equally hostile to the observance of Pente
cost; whereas in the Orient the seven weeks of wheat-harvest
continued to be among Christians as it had been among Jews, a
period of uninterrupted festivity, commemorating, as it did, not
merely "the joy of harvest," but the restoration of the "corn
of wheat," the period when Jesus "ate and drank with the disciples,
after that he was risen from the dead." We have only to go back
to the "Travel-document" of Acts to find Paul and his company
even more careful about the observance of Pentecost in Jerusalem,
than of Passover at Philippi.
But in the West the system of Jewish annual feasts and fasts is
violently repudiated. After Acts 27:9, we hear no more of "the
(annual) Fast." When in its place the Easter fast and feast come
in, especial pains are taken to avoid all appearance of dependence
on, or imitation of, "the most hateful mob of the Jews ....
the slayers of the Lord."51 The calendar is ultimately so arranged
that there shall be the least possible degree of coincidence between
Passover and Easter,52 and none whatever between Pentecost
(Sunday) and Ascension day, while in the East in 100-130 Christians
were still celebrating "the eighth day" (Sunday) as that on which
48 Rom. 14: 5 f. 49 Oxyrhynchus Logia, Log. ii.
s° Mark 14: 25. See comment in Beginnings of Gospel Story, ad loc, and cf. Euse
bius, Pasch. Frgls. §7.
s[ See the references to Socrates, Sozomen, and Eusebius in Drummond, Author
ship, etc., p. 463. Drummond justly observes that the only thing which was objected
to as Jewish in Quartodeciman practice was the time fixed for the observance.
s2 The writer of the Paschal Chronicle admits that "the apostles handed it down
to the churches to keep the fourteenth of the first lunar month," but adds as a reason
for putting off the celebration till the following Sunday "that we may not feast with
the Jews."

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 399
"Jesus both rose again from the dead, and having been manifested
ascended also into the heavens."53
The hebdomadal system of Mark distinctly aims to displace
the Jewish,54 and for this purpose opposes both fasts and Sabbaths
with an explicit claim that the new faith shall determine its own
ordinances (Mark 2:18—3:6). The fasts "on the second and
fifth days of the week" are reduced to a single fast "on that day
on which the Bridegroom was taken away" (2:2o).55 The
Jewish Sabbaths are repudiated. In due time the evangelist
will bring in "the first day of the week" as a memorial of the
resurrection (16: iff.). Here, then, is a system which, while still
fundamentally hebdomadal, is intensely and intentionally anti-
Judaistia The single weekly fast and weekly feast are intended
to supersede both the hebdomadal and the annual system of the
Synagogue. Two data, and two only, it has retained, both from
the hebdomadal system, making one commemorate the death,
the other the resurrection, of the Lord. The fourth evangelist,
on the contrary, abandons the Markan outline of the ministry for
one that is fundamentally based on Jesus' observance of the
system of annual "feasts of the Jews."
But a weekly celebration of the passion and resurrection cannot
be accounted for as original, especially in view of the better attested
annual commemoration of Asia. It can only be accounted for as
an effort to give new and altered application to practices already
too deeply rooted for eradication. That these ancient practices
were of Jewish origin might almost go without saying. The fact
that they are weekly observances is absolutely conclusive. The
sabbatic system is distinctive of Judaism. How, then, did "the
Lord's day," in Paul's time, still on equal terms with the Sabbath,
come gradually to increase in relative importance until post-
Reformation divines could imagine some apostolic decree formally
substituting the first for the seventh day of the week in Mosaic
commandment ?
S3 Ep. Barn. xv. 9.
S4 Cf. Eusebius, On the Passover, §7. Whereas the Jews killed the sheep of the
Passover only once a year "we of the new covenant on each Lord's day celebrate our
own Passover."
ss Matthew characteristically alters iv iKehji rg y/j-ipg. to the plural.

400 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
The place to look when seeking the occasion of change in the
hebdomadal system is the law of the hebdomadal system itself,
the law of the Feast of Weeks. The starting-point for the seven
weeks of wheat-harvest is "the morrow after the Sabbath" of
Passover, Paul's " third day " from the crucifixion. It is signalized,
as already noted, by the offering of "firstfruits." The system
is completed by the great Day of Pentecost, on the fiftieth day.
Now it is true that only Samaritans and other heretical sects
interpreted "the morrow after the Sabbath" in Lev. 23:11 as
fixing Firstfruits (and consequently Pentecost also) invariably
on the first day of the week. Orthodox synagogue practice, it
would seem, has always adopted Sivan 6 as Pentecost, counting
50 days from Nisan 16, whatever the day of the week. But not
only is it apparent from a comparison of I Cor. 15:20 with the
passages already cited from Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius,
that the point of coincidence aimed at by Paul in his reference to
the resurrection "on the third day" was the offering of the "first-
fruits" in the temple, and not the visit of the women to the sepul
cher, but we are able now to establish on astronomical grounds
that there is no year of Pilate's administration in which Nisan 15
can have fallen on a Friday.56 This really removes the Synoptic
date from consideration and establishes the Johannine tradition
of the crucifixion as having occurred on the 14th. It follows that
Firstfruits (Nisan 16 th) in that year will have been a Sunday by
all reckonings, whether orthodox or sectarian. Pentecost also
fell upon a "first day of the week." If, then, we can point to any
peculiarly significant and memorable event signalizing to the
primitive church this terminus ad quem of the seven weeks period
we need not be at a loss for the determination of the terminus a
quo on "the third day" even without a reference to the visit
of the women to the sepulcher. The hebdomadal system would
stand alongside the annual once Pentecost, its fiftieth day, were
fixed on a given day of the week. If it was a "Lord's day" First-
fruits also was a "Lord's day," that "third day" on which "accord
ing to the Scriptures" Christ must rise from the dead.
s« See J. K. Fotheringham on "Astronomical Evidence for the date of the Crucifix
ion" in Joum. of Theol. Studies, XII, 45 (October, 1910), 123. Professor Fotheringham
kindly refers to my own attempts in this direction on p. 124: "I am pleased to find
that Dr. Bacon's date, 30 a.d., April 7, is now confirmed astronomically."

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 401
But surely it is superfluous to ask whether the Day of Pentecost
had been made memorable to the primitive Church by any pecul
iarly significant occurrence. Whether we identify the manifesta
tion to "above five hundred brethren at once," which in Paul's
summary follows that "to Cephas" and that "to the twelve,"
with the Lukan story of the church's endowment with the Spirit
or not, this "first day of the week" at Pentecost had peculiar
right to the name " the Lord's day" {v Kvpiaicr^ rjfiepa) ; for Peter's
exposition of the significance of the event, as Luke, with his charac
teristic rhetorical skill, reports it, is this: "God hath made this
same Jesus whom ye crucified both Lord, {/cvpcov) and Christ."
Pentecost was the birthday of the church. For centuries
the phenomena whose origin it witnessed remained the supreme
evidence to which the church pointed for its sanction, the "demon
stration of the Spirit and of power." Luke and Paul are at one
in resting their assurance of the message of resurrection and adop
tion upon the fact that God had "poured forth this which ye see
and hear." Surely if the ancient oriental church shifted its two
weekly fasts from the second and fifth to the fourth and sixth days
of the week through the influence of the Passover tragedy, it
would not be surprising that it should — not indeed displace the
weekly festival of the Sabbath, but — add a "first day of the week"
with more or less kindred observances.
Paul is our witness that so early as our First Corinthians the
other terminus of the seven festal weeks of wheat harvest, "the
third day," which in the year of the crucifixion had been coincident
with Firstfruits, was already taken to coincide with Jesus' becom
ing the "Firstfruits of them that slept." He based the belief
on Scripture, not on any reported experience of man or woman in
the church. His " Scripture" may have been Hos. 6:2; it may
have been Lev. 23:11 ff., or the two in combination. All we can
know for certain is that the hebdomadal system had thus received
baptism into the church, and that the great Lord's day, fifty days
from the morrow after the Sabbath of the Passover of the Cruci
fixion, was its pivotal point.
Occidental opposition to the feasts and fasts of the Synagogue
would do the rest. Suppression of the annual system of commemo-

402 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY
ration would throw the whole burden upon the weekly, and
Friday and Sunday would be correspondingly emphasized as
weekly commemorations of the death and resurrection of Jesus,
leading to the whole series of divergences from oriental practice,
and (indirectly) from tradition as well. The manifestations
related in the later documents combine with their heightened
emphasis upon the physical tangibleness of the body, an exact
dating upon "the first day of the week." These are the two
distinctive marks of the later evangelic as against the Pauline
tradition. The PauHne manifestations are not dated, either as
to time or place; and they are not physical, but spiritual experi
ences. One curious date remains embedded in synoptic narrative, but
singularly out of joint with all its context. Acts i : 3 limits the
period of Jesus' post-resurrection intercourse with his disciples not,
as we should expect, to fifty, but to "forty days." We almost
unavoidably think of Pentecost as the inferior limit; for there
is no occurrence of any kind to mark an earlier day. But if Pente
cost be the term originally in mind when the tradition of the 40
days of intercourse took form, from what occurrence were they
reckoned? Clearly it can only be the manifestation to Cephas,
the first of the series, nearly obliterated elsewhere, as we have
seen, from the synoptic record, but certainly an element of primi
tive tradition, and certainly located in Galilee. Forty days before
Pentecost, or ten days after "the morrow after the Sabbath"
of the crucifixion, is a date exactly accordant with all that is
required in the still remaining traces for the date of that funda
mental experience in the history of the church, the "turning
again" of Simon.
But our main contention is independent of this. However the
Lukan datum of the 40 days be accounted for, it is apparent that
the primitive system of weekly fasts and Lord's days in the apostofic
church was not based upon our synoptic tradition of the resurrec
tion. The true relation of the two is more nearly the reverse.
The weekly hebdomadal system East and West was based upon
the Jewish. In the East the deflection caused by a desire to
commemorate the Passion and Resurrection was relatively slight,

THE RESURRECTION IN PRIMITIVE TRADITION 403
a shifting of the semi-weekly fasts, and the addition of a "Lord's
day" to the Sabbath. In the West a less mystical conception of
the "resurrection," and a stronger antipathy to the Jewish system
of annual feasts led to much greater divergence. The observances
of the church were made at first exclusively hebdomadal. The
single weekly fast and weekly feast were perhaps the only com
memoration of the crucifixion and resurrection. The tradition
took on a form corresponding to these ideas. When the effort
at unification of observance was made which culminated in the
great Council of Nicaea, Roman practice, exemplified in synoptic
tradition, was combined as well as might be with Asiatic, exem-
pfified in John. Harmonization of the written tradition still
remains an unfinished if not a hopeless task. But comparison
is instructive.

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