Jesus In India — Page 54
54 J e s u s i n I n d i a on seeing such a spectacle, only by an implicit trust in the goodness of Jesus. Nevertheless, the example is hardly worthy of being followed. In short, these Gospels are full of material which shows that they have not preserved their original form, or that their writers were other than the disciples. For example, can the statement: “And this is well known among the Jews till today" 19 be properly ascribed to Matthew? Does it not show that the writer of the Gospel was some person other than Matthew, who lived at a time when Matthew had already died? Then, the same Gospel of Matthew says: And they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, Saying, ‘Say ye, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. (Matthew 28:12-13) It would be noticed how childish and meaningless such statements are. If it means that the Jews wanted to conceal the rising of Jesus from the dead, and had bribed the soldiers so that this great miracle should not become generally known, why was it that Jesus, whose duty it was to proclaim this miracle among the Jews, kept it a secret and forbade even others to disclose it? If it is urged that he was afraid of being caught, I would say, that when the decree of God had descended upon him once and for all, and he had, after suffering death, come to life again, assuming a spiritual body, what fear did he now have of the Jews? Surely, the Jews now had no power over him; he was now beyond and above mortal existence? One observes with regret that while, on the one hand, it is said that he was 19 Matthew 28:15 (Translator)