Acts 1:3

Excursus on Acts 1:3.

‘THE FORTY DAYS.'

This is the only place where the interval between the resurrection and ascension is specified. It has been suggested (see Ewald, Apostelgeschicht. Ier Theil. 2teHalfte, pp. 56-61) that the ascension took place on the resurrection day, the first Sunday after the crucifixion, and that this hypothesis reconciles any apparent discrepancies in the several accounts of the ascension given by St. Mark, St. Luke, and in the ‘Acts.'

Upon this supposition Acts 1:4 must be read in close connection with Acts 1:2, and Acts 1:3 placed in a parenthesis, as telling of another and post-ascension period which lasted forty days, during which period our Lord appears at intervals to different disciples, now in Jerusalem, now in Galilee, on the mountain side and by the shore of the lake of Gennesaret. These appearances are mentioned by St. John, John 20:26-29; John 21:1; John 21:22; St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:6-7. This ingenious hypothesis, although it in no wise weakens the evidence given by the resurrection-life of our Lord, is not necessary to explain St. Luke, Luke 24:49-50. Forty days may well have elapsed between the meeting of Jesus and His disciples (the closing words of which are contained in Luke 24:49) and the ascension related in Luke 24:50-51. The common opinion among the wide-spread Gnostic heretics was, that the resurrection-life of the Lord lasted eighteen months. See Irenæus, Adv. Her. lib. iii. 2, ‘System of the Valentinians;' and again, Irenæus, xxx. 14, ‘System of the Ophites.'

Acts 1:3. After his passion lit. ‘after He had suffered, viz. the death of the cross. See Hebrews 13:11, and 1 Peter 3:18. The term occurs thus absolutely in Acts 3:18 and Acts 17:3 (comp. also Acts 26:23), and is a striking usage. It arose probably out of the impression which the painful nature of Christ's sufferings had made on the first disciples.'

By many infallible proofs. The Greek word, translated by ‘infallible proofs,' occurs here only in the New Testament. It is used frequently by Plato and Aristotle, and denotes ‘the strongest proofs of which a subject is capable;' ‘an irresistible proof.' Bela renders it well, certissimis signis. The irresistible, incontrovertible proofs which Jesus gave to His disciples of His resurrection, such as talking with them, eating with them, walking with them, inviting them to look at and to touch His hands, His feet, His side, with the still visible print of the nails and the scar of the spear, are described in Luke 24:36-48; Mark 16:14; John 20:19; John 20:29; John 20:21. Comp. also John, First Epistle, 1 John 1:1-2.

Being seen of them forty days. A better translation would be: ‘Through (or during) forty days appearing (or manifesting Himself) to them;' for St. Luke does not intend to convey the notion that our Lord continued visibly present with any of His disciples during the whole forty days, but that during that period from time to time He appeared to them, and then disappeared, ‘proving to them His humanity by eating and drinking with them, yet weaning them, by vanishing suddenly, from dwelling on His corporal presence, and instructing them in His Divine power and perpetual though unseen presence by unexpected appearances among them and disappearances from them' (Wordsworth). There is also a note by this writer on John 20:19, where the mysterious question of the resurrection-body of the Lord is reverently di s cussed. On the period of ‘forty days,' see a short excursus at the end of this chapter.