Seeing Jesus: Same World, New Eyes[1]

Like all Christians, my faith is centered on the transformative experiences that took place among the disciples of Jesus before, during, and after the resurrection. Before he died, Jesus left his followers with a vision of a new kingdom on earth and of eternal life. In the account of Matthew 28, both Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James were probably attracted to that vision before his death. If so, that vision may have faded, possibly dramatically, right after his crucifixion. We don’t know. We do know that the reality of that vision began its dramatic dispersion when both Marys miraculously experienced the presence of Jesus two days after his death, a day now commemorated by millions as the first Easter. The “open tomb” gave new meaning to the words Jesus said in John 12:24 shortly before his death, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

We cannot know what happened to the disciples, physically or mentally, that made these experiences transformative. We can only believe and try to infer what went on based on the memories of his followers. The treasured anecdotes and narratives circulated and continued to evolve until those concerned stabilized their veracity by writing them down. It would be nice to have the original manuscripts. We have only the results of copied and recopied parchments, easily torn and lost.

The earliest historically defisnitive manuscript, extant only as a copy, is a letter. According to Edgar Krentz in The HarperCollins Study Bible[2], that letter, I Thessalonians, was either penned or dictated by the Apostle Paul around 50 CE, roughly two decades after Jesus was crucified. In a subsequent letter, I Corinthians 15:3–8, Paul documents a number of different instances when Jesus first appeared to some of the followers and, roughly three to five years later, appeared to him. The letter is written in Greek. I have added in brackets the relevant Greek word Paul used for “appeared”:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I had also receive, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared [horao] to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared [horao] to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared [horao] to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared [horao] also to me. For I am least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

The inspired authors of our scriptures, although human, were skilled in communicating the central truths that had changed their lives and were changing the lives of their fellow believers. Paul notes his singular unworthiness in receiving the experience that transformed his life from the worthiness of Jesus’s disciples, Cephas, and James. Due to our “modern” interest in “getting the facts straight,” it is surprising that Paul did not differentiate the nature of his “seeing” experience from that of Cephas and James, for Paul was still persecuting the early Christians after Jesus had ascended to heaven.

I, like Walter, have no time to study the centuries-old Hebrew and Greek dialects in which our earliest copies of the New Testament manuscripts were written. However, I can use The NIV Exhaustive Concordance³ to illustrate two critical semantic distinctions that the Greek manuscripts make that are easily lost in English translations of what it meant to “see” Jesus. The issues are present in the flexible ways we can use the verbs “to look” and “to see” to change the expression and meaning of the sentence: He saw her and he looked at her, and as he looked at her, he saw into her.

The critical distinction between seeing something through one’s physical eye and experiencing a revelation through one’s “mental eye” is evident in Paul’s defense of his actions before a riled-up crowd of fellow Jews in Jerusalem that occurred roughly two and a half decades after his vision of Jesus. Luke and his colleagues gathered and wove into a gripping and unifying narrative the stories and recollections of Paul’s defense some years after Paul had traveled to Rome. It comes to us in Acts 22:3–4, 6–14.

I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day. I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women.

As I made my journey and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone about me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And I answered, “Who are you Lord?” And he said to me, “I am Jesus of Nazareth whom you are persecuting.” . . . And when I could not see because of the brightness of the light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me, and came into Damascus.

And one Ananias . . . came to me, and standing by me said to me, “Brother Saul, receive your sight.” And in the very hour I received my sight and saw [anablepo] him. And he said, “The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will, to see [horao] the Just One and to hear a voice from his mouth.

Jesus anticipated issues his followers would raise on seeing him after the crucifixion. What was new that they hadn’t seen or realized before? What was critical for those who saw Jesus after his crucifixion and for those who didn’t? How is it some could see Jesus after his body no longer walked this earth? His words are given to us through the memories of his followers as they were trying to comprehend and share the different post-crucifixion experiences of Jesus that were transforming their worlds. These memories are mainly recorded in the Gospel of John, written fifty or sixty years after the crucifixion.

That those who had walked with him would come to a new sense of the presence of Jesus after the crucifixion is suggested in the writer’s careful juxtaposition of two Greek verbs in John 16:16:

A little while, and you will see [theoreo] me no more; again a little while, and you will see [horao] me.

The difference between seeing the significance of Jesus through the mental eye as opposed to the physical eye comes across in the juxtaposition of these two Greek verbs in John 20:11–16.

Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw [theoreo] two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.” Saying this, she turned around and saw [theoreo] Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. . . . Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rab-boni!” [which means “Teacher”]. Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen [horao] the Lord.”

[1] Johnson, M. A., 2018, Questioning God’s Will: Reflections on Pivotal Concerns in My Parents’ Letters, EA Books, Inc., Oviedo, 327-333.

[2] E. Krentz, “1 Thessalonians: Introduction,” in The HarperCollins Study Bible, W. Weeks, gen. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 2218.