Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 82
? 82 clear-cut statement that he was the same Jesus with his body of flesh and bones. I had already written the above account of the sudden appear- ance of Jesus in a closed room, when I found Docker’s book ‘If Jesus did not Die upon the Cross?’ in which he has given a similar explanation of this sudden appearance. He writes (p. 14–16): Some have supposed that his body, after crucifixion, was endowed with supernatural power, such as the power of passing through closed doors … But there is really no ground for this supposition. The three earliest Evangelists carefully arranged, what details they give as to the appear- ance, so as to exclude the idea that what the observer saw was Spirit and not a natural body; and even St. John does not say explicitly that Jesus passed through a closed door. Taking the words he uses as literally correct, it is a rea- sonable explanation to say that Jesus must have remained in concealment in Jerusalem until his return to Galilee. It is expressly stated that he did not appear in public. Obviously if the authorities became aware that he was alive he would be rearrested and executed, and so St. John says that doors were shut ‘for fear of the Jews’. The doors so shut would be the outer doors. The most likely place for such concealment would be the house of his friends, where he and his disciples were accustomed to assemble, where he could be supplied with food, where he could have his wounds attended to. The outer doors being shut would not prevent him from coming from another part of the house into the room where the disciples assembled.