So in Mark we can speak of an accelerating disappearance of the Twelve from the ending of the gospel. How should we interpret their vanishing? Did they simply hide in Jerusalem, so that we may still suppose they were in the city? Or did they leave Judea and flee to their homeland in Galilee? There are two texts that favor flight. The first is Mark 14:27, where Jesus, quoting Zechariah 13:7, says, “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’” This text speaks about the scattering of the disciples in a kind of epic anticipation that, however, is historically retrospective. “Scattering”—that seems meant to say more than merely concealment in the capital city. A second text, John 16:32, says much the same. There Jesus prophesies, “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his [home], and you will leave me alone.” This text too acquires its historical force only if we see it as retrospective. The translators of the NRSV have expanded the Greek expression “each to his own” to read “each one to his home,” which captures the meaning; an alternate translation would be “each to his private interests.” But that means that the disciples have fled, returned pell-mell to their homeland, and they have resumed their former occupations.2
But at this point we need also to take note of Mark 16:7 (cf. 14:28), where an angel orders the women, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” Lived history lies behind these words as well. The disciples—or more precisely the Galileans among them—have gone to Galilee. Why? Evidently because they have fled there. But the angel’s words give their flight a positive meaning: the disciples flee and seem thereby to have abandoned Jesus, but in reality he is with them; he is even ahead of them. Precisely in the place where they appear to have lost him forever they will find him: in their home, in Galilee, when they have taken up their old occupations once more.
So Mark 16:7 in particular seems to presume the flight of the disciples to Galilee, and it is completely plausible. Jesus’ execution would have had a shocking effect on his followers. As we have already seen, on the basis of Deuteronomy 21:23, “being hanged on a tree” would have seemed like God’s judgment on Jesus. From that point of view the confusion of Jesus’ associates and the pell-mell flight of the group of Twelve is easily understood. In addition, it was completely possible at the outset that the inner circle of disciples was threatened with a fate similar to that of Jesus himself. What was more likely than that the Galileans would return to Galilee? There they could feel safe; in Galilee they were far enough from the Sanhedrin’s grasp.
The Beginning of the Appearances
One of the surest indicators of the flight of the Galilean disciples to their home country is, in fact, the phenomenon that the appearances to Peter and the Twelve did not take place in Jerusalem but in Galilee. It is true that the gospels give a contradictory picture in this regard: Mark 16:7 announces that the first appearance will be in Galilee, and Matthew 28:16-20 tells of the first appearance to the Eleven, which for him is a summary of all appearances, and locates it in Galilee. Luke, in contrast, places all the appearances in or near Jerusalem. But in doing so he betrays an obvious theological intention: for Luke, Jerusalem is a symbol of the continuity between the time of Jesus and the time of the church.3 Therefore he omits the angel’s order, according to which the disciples should go to Galilee, even though he read it in Mark, which he was using as a model.4 According to Luke the disciples were to remain in the city (Luke 24:49). He thus says nothing about the Galilean appearances, which very certainly played as great a role in the tradition as did the accounts of appearances in Jerusalem.
John also locates the appearances in Jerusalem, but in this he appears to be directly or indirectly dependent on Luke. Finally, we are faced with the striking phenomenon that chapter 21, an addition to John’s gospel, tells of an appearance to seven disciples in Galilee, on the Sea of Gennesareth. It is not introduced as a first appearance, but it might originally have been the story of such an initial encounter. The overall finding thus points clearly to Galilee as the place where appearances to the inner group of disciples began.
Here commenced a series of appearances in which the Risen One was seen. The first of these Galilean appearances apparently came to Simon Peter. Two texts favor this. First there is the very ancient confession of faith retained in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul himself had received it as a faith tradition and handed it on to the congregation in Corinth:
I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (15:3-5)
Probably the ancient creed ended here, but Paul adds the following, on the basis of a good knowledge of the first period after Easter:
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (15:6-8)
The second text that speaks of an initial appearance to Peter is Luke 24:34. The context here is that the two disciples who had encountered the Risen One on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus have returned immediately to the capital. There they have found the Eleven and a larger group of Jesus’ followers gathered together, and the group says to them, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon.” It is odd that Luke does not describe the appearance to Simon Peter but simply inserts a formulaic reference to it in a single sentence. What he is really telling about is the appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, not the much more important appearance to Peter. How can we explain that? By no means can we say that he had no narrative of an appearance to Peter available to him. The matter is much more simply explained: the tradition that related the appearance to Peter was so clearly located in Galilee that Luke, who concentrates all appearances in Jerusalem or its neighborhood, simply could not include it at this point. A story that took place at the lake, with boats and a fisherman pursuing his task, was one that Luke with the best will in the world could not shift to the city of Jerusalem. It is true that John 21:1-14 does not tell of an appearance to Peter alone, but the text does clearly reflect the possible milieu of such a story.
So we can with good reason suppose that Peter, who had fled to Galilee with the rest of the inner group of disciples, experienced an appearance of the Risen One there. It banished all doubts and made Peter one of the first Easter witnesses. Apparently the high regard for Peter and his leading role in the early church rested, among other things, on that appearance, which was then followed by further appearance phenomena, including some in Jerusalem.
But before turning to the progress of events, I need first to offer some reflections on the structure of the Easter appearances.
The Structure of the Easter Experience
There is a current position that exercises a certain fascination because it makes things easier for people today. It could be described this way: After the death of Jesus there were no visions or appearances; Jesus’ disciples came to their Easter faith through “experience” that, as regards its psychic structure, was wholly within the framework of religious experiences as they are commonly understood. There was nothing unusual or ecstatic about it. The disciples mourned, but in their sorrow the death of Jesus opened itself to them in a new way. They entered into a “disclosure situation.”5 Suddenly they knew that Jesus had not remained in death but was exalted to the right hand of God. God had justified him, contrary to the sentence of his judges in the Sanhedrin. They experienced the nearness of Jesus in their hearts and the grace of his forgiveness. They turned again to the Jesus they had abandoned. Then these “disclosure experiences,” in which, of course, things drawn from Scripture played a role, were secondarily fitted into the existing narrative model of “appearances.” Originally the Easter experiences had nothing visionary or ecstatic about them.