Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
3| But so that my discourse may not now stretch out at length over all his mighty works, let his death be set before our eyes: the death which, as all acknowledge, was undergone by the interpreter, the covering of the divine Word, the statue that had been revealed. And this much-proclaimed death is itself full of wonder, since it was not the death common to human beings. For he did not waste away from disease, nor die by the noose or by fire; nor, on the very trophy of the cross, was he cut down with iron like the other criminals; nor did he endure a violent end at all by suffering at anyone’s hands any of the things that usually kill. Rather, as soon as he willingly handed over his instrument alone to those who plotted against him, it was at once lifted up from the earth; and he, crying out with a loud voice and saying that he committed his spirit to the Father, freely and of his own accord made his departure from the body. That is why, before his death, he taught his disciples this very thing, saying: “No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” And again: “I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and mine know me,” and, “My soul I lay down for the sheep.” The reason for his death he sets out in few words: “Unless the grain of wheat dies in the earth, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Giving such signs, then, at his death, he freely and of his own accord made his departure from the body. Then, when his body had been taken by his disciples and committed to fitting burial, on the third day he who had earlier departed of his own will took it back again. And once more he showed himself to his own disciples in the flesh, in the body, the very same as he had been at first; and after speaking with them a little and spending some time with them, he went up to where he had come from, making his journey and ascent to the heavens before their eyes. To them he also handed down instructions about what was to be done, and he made them teachers of the most exalted worship of God to all the nations. What, then, remains after this but to tell what cause lay behind the very crown of the whole: I mean the much-celebrated end of his life, the manner of his passion, and the great wonder of his return to life after death? When we have considered these, we shall go on again to the demonstrations and confirm them by clear testimonies. Using, then, for the reasons we gave before, a mortal instrument as a statue worthy of God, and passing through human life by means of it as a great king does through an interpreter, he did everything in a manner worthy of divine power. Now if, after his time among human beings, he had vanished in some other way and suddenly flown off, secretly stealing away his interpreter and his own statue in an effort to escape death by flight, and then somewhere had himself consigned the mortal part to corruption and destruction, he would have seemed to everyone a phantom. He would not have done what befitted himself, if, being life and the Word of God and the power of God, he had handed over his own interpreter to corruption and destruction; his deeds against the demons would not have been brought to completion through his grappling with death; no one would have known where he had gone; he would not have won belief among those who had not received him; he would not have been shown stronger than the nature of death; he would not have freed the mortal from its own nature; he would not have been heard of throughout the whole inhabited world of human beings; he would not have persuaded his disciples to despise death; he would not have set before those who pursue [….] the hope of what awaits with God after death; he would not have made good the promises of his own words; he would not have matched the prophetic predictions about him with their fulfillments; and he would not have fought out the last contest of all. That was the contest against death. For all these reasons, then, since the mortal instrument had in any case to meet an end worthy of God after the sufficient service it had rendered to the divine Word, his death too was ordered in this way. For two courses remained for the end: either to hand over the whole to corruption and destruction and to make the close of his life the most shameful ending of the whole drama, or to show himself stronger than death, having by divine power made the mortal immortal, the former was foreign to his promise. For it is not proper to fire to chill, nor to light to darken; so neither is it proper to life to put to death, nor to the Word of God to act contrary to reason. What reason was there, then, for one who promised life to others to overlook his own instrument being corrupted, to hand over his own statue to destruction, and to let death mutilate the interpreter of his divinity, he who wooed immortality for those who take refuge with him? The second, therefore, was necessary, I mean to show himself stronger than death. How, then, ought this to be done? In secret and by stealth, or in a manner conspicuous and manifest to all? But an achievement done in the dark and hidden, and known to no one, would have profited no one; announced and heard of to all, it provided all with the benefit that comes from the wonder. Reasonably, then, since it was necessary to show his instrument stronger than death, and to do this not in concealment but before the eyes of human beings, he does not flee death, for he would have been thought a coward and worse than death; but through his grappling with death, as with an adversary, he made the mortal immortal, having undertaken this last contest for the salvation and immortality of all. For the first contest was worked by him against the demons, for the overthrow of the error of many gods [….] [….] but when the contest against these had come to its end, the Savior, victorious over all, went up thereafter, and sojourned in the life among human beings [….] and the second was for the dissolution of the tyranny of death. For it was necessary that what had proved stronger than godless and demonic error, as befitted the divine Word, should receive the honor worthy of its own work, namely the victory over death. For the demons gathered against him, and their leader together with the spirits that go about with them above the earth, invisible to the eyes of mortals, having yielded their backs to him at the first encounter, were watching for the second contest, awaiting the final catastrophe of his life, and expecting the end of the mortal to be like that of all human beings. For never had they expected that a mortal nature could become stronger than death, but that death was the common king of all who had once experienced mortal birth. They thought it the most terrible of all things, which no one could flee or escape; but he, after his first trophies over the demons, was now drawn up in battle line against death also. Just as if someone wished to show us a vessel that did not burn and was by nature stronger than fire, he could establish the wonder in no other way than by putting the vessel at hand into the fire and then drawing it out of the fire safe and uncorrupted, in the same way the Word of God, the universe's life-giver, wishing to show the mortal instrument, which he had used for the salvation of human beings, to be stronger than death, and to make it a sharer in his own life and immortality, undertook a thoroughly useful economy: he left the body for a little while and handed the mortal over to death, as a proof of its own nature, and then, not long after, took it back from death, as a demonstration of the divine power by which he showed the life from him to be stronger than all death and everlasting. This, then, was the first cause; the second was the demonstration of the divine power that dwelt in the body. For since formerly people deified men who had been conquered by death, who were truly mortal and had undergone the common end, and called heroes and gods those who had been mastered by death, there too, reasonably, for this cause the Word of God, who loves humankind, showed himself, displaying to human beings a nature stronger than death, leading the mortal after its dissolution to a second life, providing all with a trophy of immortality to look upon against death, and teaching them to confess as true God only the one who, in death, had crowned himself with the prizes of victory over death. And a third cause of the saving death would be that which secret teachings contain. What are these? A victim given over to death as a ransom for the common race, a victim slaughtered on behalf of the common flock of human beings, a victim to avert demonic error. Since one victim and one great sacrifice, the all-holy body of our Savior, was slaughtered like a sheep for the human race, and offered as a ransom for all the nations formerly held in the ungodliness of demonic error, the whole power of the impure and unholy demons was cast down, and all earthly and deceitful error was at once dissolved and let go by a stronger power. The saving sacrifice from among human beings, then, the bodily instrument of the divine Word itself, was consecrated on behalf of the common flock of human beings; and this was the victim thrown to death through the slander of human beings, about which the voices of the sacred words cry out, at one time saying something like this: “Behold the Lamb of God, who removes the sin of the world,” and at another proclaiming beforehand: “He was led to slaughter like a sheep, and like a lamb silent before the one who shears it,” and teaching further by adding: “This man carries our sins, and is pained on our behalf. And we esteemed him to be in toil and in affliction and in ill-treatment, but he was wounded because of our sins, and has been made weak because of our lawless acts; the chastisement for our peace was upon him. By his bruise we were healed. All of us like sheep went astray, each went astray in his own way. And the Lord handed him over to our sins.” The bodily instrument of the divine Word, then, was consecrated for these reasons; but the great high priest, consecrated to the God who is ruler and king of all, being other than the victim, the Word of God and “God's power and God's wisdom,” not long after called the mortal back from death, and this, the firstfruits of our common salvation, he set forth as a sharer in divine life and immortality, a victory trophy against death and against the demonic array, and a trophy averting the human sacrifices performed of old, on behalf of all. Hence there was also added to him the title Christ, modeled on the high priest among the Hebrews. He received two names, then, of which the name Jesus indicates the saving sacrifice, and the name Christ indicates, according to the custom of the Hebrews, the high priest, the Word of God consecrated on behalf of us all. In addition to what has been said, there may be another very great cause of the saving death, which will now be told. For since it was necessary for his disciples to see with their own eyes, plainly, the rebirth into the life after death, on which he taught them to hang their hopes, and for the sake of which he urged them to take up the yoke of the worship of God, reasonably he gave them this to see exactly with their eyes. For those who were going to pursue a pious life had to receive this first and most necessary lesson through clear sight, and much more those who were about to proclaim him to the whole inhabited world and announce to all human beings the teaching and the knowledge of God set before all the nations by him. These had to receive the greatest assurance of the life after death, so that, fearless and unafraid of death, they would eagerly take up the contest against the polytheistic error; for unless they had practiced despising death, they would never have been prepared for terrors. For this reason, necessarily arming them against the tyranny of death, he did not hand on the lesson by little phrases and sounds, nor by arguments as human beings do, composing plausibly and from probabilities the account of the immortality of the soul, but showed them by the deed itself the trophies over death. For in earlier times death, the destroyer of the mortal race, was dreaded by all, and its dominion was thought to be the dissolution of the whole nature of man, soul and body together; nor was there anyone in the age able to remove this bugbear from among human beings, but all cowered before death in fear, small and great, rulers and slaves, kings and peoples alike, and the multitudes of all nations and tribes; and there was no consolation for the evil for human beings, no argument, no way, no life, no reasoning of the wise, no writings of the ancients, no oracles of the prophets, no appearances of angels. Death, stronger than all, held the victory over all, lofty, boastful, arrogant; enslaved to it, the mortal race wallowed in every kind of lawlessness, murders, unlawful deeds, impieties, and tangled error; for death was the cause of all these. For supposing that they would no longer exist after death, they spent their lives doing things worth countless deaths, and, as though in no way subject to accountability because of the dissolution that comes with death, they lived a life not worth living, not keeping God in mind, not expecting the tribunals of divine judgment, not rekindling the memory of the intellectual essence of their own souls; but with one terrible patron, Death, and having persuaded themselves that the corruption of bodies resulting from it was the dissolution of the whole, they proclaimed Death a rich god, whence also Pluto. And Death was a god to them not alone, but also the things honored before him, those which contributed to a life of pleasure for them. Thus the pleasure of the flesh was a god to them, food a god, seed cast into the earth a god, its sprouting a god, the growth of fruit trees a god, the luxury that comes through drunkenness a god, the desire of bodies a god, the pleasure of these a god. Hence the mysteries of Demeter and Pherephatta, and the abduction of Kore by Aidoneus and her return again. Hence the rites of Dionysus, and Heracles defeated as by a stronger god, drunkenness; hence the adulterous orgies of Eros and Aphrodite. Hence Zeus himself, mad for women and in love with Ganymede, and the licentious fabrications of myths of pleasure-loving and passion-loving gods. Death was the cause of all these; for supposing that death was the end and consummation of the whole, the dissolution and destruction of [….] and bodies together, and that there was no life other than that of the body and the flesh, they lived a life worse than the whole nature of irrational animals. Taking pity on them, the Word of God, king of all, at the nod of the Father who loves humankind, hastened to their defense; then, as a king most loving toward humankind, he devised the refutation of death through human nature, being himself life and the Word of God and the power of God, yet judging that the bugbear of human beings should be refuted not apart from the one being helped. Therefore, using a human weapon, a mortal body, he who was without body overcame death through the mortal. From this point the first mystery of the body itself was brought about; from this point the trophy of the cross; from this point the memorial of immortal and eternal life, his remembrance, came to bear its name. For he had taken up a mortal weapon, and after showing all a great wonder, he set up through that mortal weapon a trophy of immortality over death. He released the mortal body to be food for the beast, and at once it was nailed to the scaffold and hung on the cross, so that the nature of the mortal might be made known to all and what was being done might escape no one, neither men nor demons nor the higher powers. For all of them had to see clearly, as in the greatest of theaters, a mortal thing confessing its own nature, so that death, coming on next like a terrible beast, might expose itself for what it had always been, and then the power of life, coming on after death, might display to all in turn the victory over death, by showing the mortal to be immortal. So the power of God's Word, which held that body together, released it for a short while, and what hung on the wood was at once a corpse; it was, but the Word who gives life to all things was not what was being put to death; the mortal thing was confessing its own nature. Then the corpse, now held fast by death, was taken down by men and given the usual care. It was committed to a tomb according to the customs of men. The tomb was a newly made cave, a cave freshly hewn in the rock, which had never yet received another body; for it was fitting that it should be kept for him alone, for the one and only extraordinary dead man. The rock too was a marvel to see: standing upright, alone, in an open space, and holding within itself only one cave, so that it might not belong to many and so overshadow the wonder of the one who had fought death and overcome it. There, then, the dead man lay, the instrument of the living Word, and a huge stone closed the cave, and death was greatly exulting in it, as though it had caught him too and brought him under its hand along with those from all the ages. But the space of three days had not yet passed when life showed itself again, after the proof of death had been made sufficiently. For if he had risen too soon, getting ahead of the time, he would not even have been thought to have died; but once he had truly been lifted up and had truly died, he had received death over a span of time. Then, yes then, God's Word, the life-giver of all things, displayed through the rebirth of what had then been mortal the hope laid up for all mankind. What, then, happens after this? I would no longer be your teacher of these events. Their eyewitnesses would be trustworthy witnesses, men who by their blood and their lives made good the truth of what had been done, as they had seen it, and who filled the whole inhabited world, by the power of the one to whom they bore witness, with the religion they had proclaimed. These men, having been onlookers of what was then done, handed down in their own testimonies the rebirth they had grasped with their own eyes. For to them these events were not things heard only as far as word and voice; they were already seen in deeds, and they were even handled with care by those who bore witness to them. That is why, having grasped the plain fact by their own sight and in truth, and having beheld the trophies of the victory over death, they rightly learned to despise death, and they taught the same to their own disciples, having received from the Savior the pledges of immortal life.
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