Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] It was fitting that even the Lord's burial be prophesied and there and then rightly blessed, since prophecy does not pass over even the office of those women who came before dawn to the tomb with their prepared spices. For of this, through Hosea, he says: "That they may seek my face, before dawn they will watch for me, saying, Let us go and turn back to the Lord, for he has struck and will heal us, he has smitten and will have mercy on us, he will heal us after two days, on the third day we shall rise again." [2] Who could fail to believe that this was turning over in the minds of those women, tossed between the grief of their present bereavement, by which they felt themselves struck down by the Lord, and the hope of his resurrection, by which they rightly reckoned they would be restored? And since the body was not found, its burial had been lifted clean away, according to Isaiah. And indeed two angels appeared there too — God's word customarily standing on the strength of two witnesses, much as it does on a pair of parties in court. The women too, returning from the tomb, and from that vision of angels — Isaiah had foreseen it: "Women," he says, "coming from a vision, come" — to bring word, of course, of the Lord's resurrection. [3] And it was well that the disciples' unbelief persisted, so that to this day our defense might stand firm: that Christ Jesus showed the disciples no other self than the one the prophets had described. For when two of them were on the road and the Lord had joined them, not revealing that it was he, even feigning ignorance of what had happened, they said: "But we were hoping that he was the redeemer of Israel" — his Christ, that is, the Creator's. [4] So thoroughly had he not shown himself to them as someone else. Otherwise they would not have taken him for the Creator's; and had they taken him for the Creator's while he was not in fact the one so taken, he would never have tolerated that opinion of himself — unless he were the author of error and a traitor to truth, set against the title of the good God. But not even after the resurrection did he show himself to them as anyone other than the one they had already taken him to be. Indeed he rebuked them roundly: "O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that he has spoken to you." What he had spoken proves him no other god's, but the same God's. [5] For the angels said the same thing to the women: "Remember what he spoke to you in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up and crucified and rise on the third day." And why "must" — unless because so it was written by God the Creator? He rebuked them, then, for stumbling merely over the passion, and for doubting the report of the resurrection brought them by the women — through which very disbelief they showed they had not believed him to be who they had taken him for. And so, by wanting them to believe just what they had already supposed, he was confirming himself to be the very one they had supposed: the Creator's Christ, that is, the redeemer of Israel. [6] And as for the reality of his body, what could be plainer? When they wavered, fearing it was a ghost — indeed believing it a ghost — he said: "Why are you shaken, and why do questionings climb up into your hearts? Look upon these hands, these feet of mine — recognize that it is I in person, since a ghost has no bones the way you can see I possess them." [7] And Marcion — some things that told against him, out of what I take to be sheer calculation, he declined to scrape out of his gospel, so that from what he could have erased and did not, one might either deny that he erased what he did erase, or grant that he was right to erase it. He spares nothing except what he can subvert by misreading no less thoroughly than by deleting. So he wants it read as though "a spirit does not have bones as you see me having" refers to the spirit — "as you see me having," meaning, not having bones, as a spirit does not either. And what point could such a twist possibly serve, when he could simply have said: "For a spirit does not have bones, as you see that I do not"? [8] But why does he hold out to their inspection his hands and feet — limbs made of bone — if he had no bones? Why does he add, "and know that it is I," the very one they had formerly known in the flesh? Or if he was a ghost through and through, why rebuke them for believing him a ghost? And yet, since they still did not believe, he then asked for food, precisely to show that he even had teeth. [9] We have, I think, made good our pledge. We have exhibited Jesus Christ through the prophets' teachings, sayings, feelings, senses, powers, sufferings, and even his resurrection, as no other than the Creator's — since indeed, in sending out his apostles to preach to all nations, he was fulfilling the psalm that decreed: their voice would carry out across every land, and their sayings reach the farthest edges of the earth. I pity you, Marcion: you have labored in vain. For the Christ Jesus in your own gospel is mine.