The Lord said, “Search the scriptures; for . . . they are they which testify of me”; and when in reply to that the people said in effect, “We have the scripture, so we don’t need you at all,” he answered, “If you believed the scriptures, you would believe me.” Here we have the two witnesses, the scripture and the Lord in person, side by side, testifying of each other. The fact that the Jews had the holy writings did not, as they supposed, make the presence of a living prophet among them superfluous; and the presence of a prophet did not, as the scholars supposed, make the written word superfluous. As a remarkable illustration of this, what did Christ do when he first appeared to the assembled Apostles as the resurrected Lord? There he was, the Son of God in his own person, a glorified and resurrected being who could have told them all things by his own authority; but instead of that, we are told, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27 [Luke 14:3]). Is it surprising, then, that when the Lord and other glorious beings appeared to men in these latter days they again cited the ancient prophets at length? One could not ask for a more powerful recommendation for the sacredness of the holy writings than the Lord’s use of them after his resurrection; nor on the other hand, could one have a more convincing demonstration that the scriptures cannot stand alone, for it was only after Christ had expounded their meaning to them in person that the disciples’ “eyes were opened, and they knew him. . . . And they said . . . Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:31 [Luke 14:4]—32.) Even to the Apostles the scriptures did not convey their full message until they were “opened” to them by their heavenly teacher.
The Road to Emmaus
Two disciples walking home in the afternoon, going over the worst weekend of their lives, are joined by a stranger who listens to the whole account and then calls them slow. He teaches them out of their own scriptures for seven miles, and they recognize him only at supper, in the second the bread is broken.
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Note. A handful of Joseph Smith Translation changes, and the largest is at the end of the meal: “he vanished out of their sight” becomes “he was taken up out of their sight.” The same revision recurs at the Ascension. Luke’s two departures are made the same kind of event, and neither of them is a disappearance.
? How to read this edition
The reading is the Joseph Smith Translation, in the text of the Covenant Christian Edition, carried beside each Gospel and set against the King James baseline. Headers give both numbering systems: the CCE chapter and verse, and the traditional KJV reference.
12After that, he appeared in another form unto two of them as they walked and went into the country. 13And they went and told it unto the residue. Neither did they believe them.
13And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem sixty furlongs. 14And they talked together of all these things which had happened. 15And it came to pass that while they spoke together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16But their eyes were held, or covered, that they could not know him. 17And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these which you have one with another as you walk and are sad? 18And one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Are you a stranger in Jerusalem and have not known the things which have come to pass there in these days? 19And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and have crucified him. 21But we trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel. And besides all this, today is the third day since these things were done, 22yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished who were early at the sepulcher. 23And when they found not his body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24And certain of them who were with us went to the sepulcher and found it even so as the women had said, but him they saw not.
25Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. 26Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? 27And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
28And they drew near unto the village to which they went, and he made as though he would have gone further, 29but they constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. 30And it came to pass, as he sat at a meal with them, he took bread and blessed it, and broke, and gave to them. 31And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished was taken up out of their sight. 32And they said one to another, Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked with us by the way and while he opened to us the scriptures?
33And they rose up the same hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and those who were with them, 34saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon. 35And they told what things were done they saw and heard in the way, and how he was known to them in breaking of bread.
The Two Witnesses on the Road
Nibley uses this walk as his single best illustration of a point he spent a career making: that scripture and living revelation are not rivals, and that neither works without the other. The risen Lord had every authority to simply announce himself. He read them the Old Testament instead, and their eyes stayed shut until he had finished.
The early Christians did not regard the canon of the scripture as closed. In a recent and important study, Van Unnik has shown that for the earliest Christians, the apostolic office, the gift of revelation, and the bringing forth of scripture were always regarded as going hand in hand; and, with von Harnack, he points out that at least as late as A.D. 200 it was held to be perfectly legitimate “for someone to add something to the word of the Gospel.” The Bible itself leaves the door wide open for future revelation in many places, but even if it did not, men fool themselves when they think for a moment that they can read the scripture without ever adding something to the text, or omitting something from it. For in the wise words of St. Hilary, Scripturae enim non in legendo sunt, sed in intelligendo: “Scripture consists not in what one reads, but in what one understands.” We have just seen that the Apostles themselves “knew not the scripture”—though no doubt they had often read it—until the Lord opened it to them. To read is by very definition to unriddle, to expound to oneself, to interpret. In the reading of the scripture we must always have an interpreter, but who qualifies for the task of interpreting God’s word to men? Irenaeus insisted that no special interpreter was needed, the book being self-explanatory so that “the whole of the scripture . . . can be understood clearly and without ambiguity equally and by all.” But then he accuses vast numbers of Christians of reading it all wrong, “becoming bad interpreters of the good and correct word.” What is one to do when, in the words of a later church father, “there are as many interpretations of the scriptures as there are readers”? In that case, Irenaeus recommends appealing to the opinions of the oldest churches, those who had traditions actually going back to the Apostles. But when these churches disagree among themselves, what then?
Nibley’s “when he first appeared to the assembled Apostles” conflates the Emmaus walk with the evening appearance that follows it; Luke 24:27 and 24:31–32, which he quotes, are both on the road. The argument is unaffected.
What He Expounded May Not Be in Our Bible
Luke says he went through Moses and the prophets. Barker asks the obvious follow-up question (which passages?) and answers it with a claim that changes what the walk was: the version of Isaiah that best fits what he is described as teaching is a pre-Christian one found at Qumran and no longer present in the Hebrew text the world inherited.
The clearest description of his role as the means and focus of unity is hidden under the familiar words of Isaiah 53.5 [Isa. 19:2], which are an example of temple word-play and double meanings. The line “Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53.5 [Isa. 19:2]), can also be read: “Our covenant bond of peace was upon him / his responsibility, and by his joining us together, we are healed.” This is the central line of the poem, because this was the main role of the Servant King, and this is the prophecy expounded by Jesus on the road to Emmaus when he explained his suffering and resurrection to his disciples. The original has to be reconstructed from texts that were not transmitted by the spiritual heirs of the temple revolutionaries, who managed to obscure so much of the ancient temple wisdom.
For example, the text used by Jesus in his Emmaus road discourse (Luke 24.26–27 [Luke 14:3]) is not in the current Hebrew text but could well have been the Qumran version of Isaiah 52–53. The proof text about the angels worshipping the Lord as he comes to earth (Heb.1.6 [Heb. 1:2]) is in a Qumran text of Deuteronomy 32.43 but not in the current Hebrew text.
This ascent text in Isaiah is similar to material in 1 Enoch, where Enoch stands before the throne and hears the same heavenly song (1 En.39.12); and in the Book of Revelation, where St John stands before the throne and hears the heavenly beings with six wings as they sing ‘Holy holy holy’. From this ascent setting, the song of the seraphim passed into Christian liturgy, and ‘Holy Holy Holy’ is still part of the Eucharistic prayer, either as the preface or as the response.
There are many other ascent texts in Isaiah. The four Servant Songs, for example, were important texts for the first Christians. ‘Servant Songs’ is the name given by fairly recent scholarship to four poems, almost certainly from the original Isaiah, that were reused by one of his later disciples. The best known of them is the fourth Song (Isa.52.13-53 [Isa. 19:1].12), recognised by the Christians as a prophecy of the suffering and death of Jesus: ’despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’. This too is an ascent text, and the Hebrew is damaged. The Qumran Isaiah scroll shows that in the time of Jesus, a different text was known, which was clearly an ascent text.. Further, this different text was the one used by Jesus, who, according to Luke, explained to his disciples on the road to Emmaus that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and enter the glory: ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ Luke 24.23 [Luke 14:2]). . He must have been using the Qumran version of Isaiah, an ascent text.
Reading this Qumran text in the light of the Greek translation, we find that the Servant was anointed and transfigured and no longer looked like a human being. He was raised up and acquired understanding. He suffered, and this purified him. After his suffering he saw the light and was filled with knowledge. This knowledge enabled him to set things right. In other words, the Servant was been purified, ascended into heaven and there learned the wisdom that enabled him to understand and so to uphold the creation.
The disciple of Isaiah who re-used the Servant Songs was reminded in his own call vision that he had ascended to the holy of holies and looked out from there to see all history before him. He had seen the divine plan: ’Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? (Isa.40.21 [Isa. 14:5]). He had seen the people of the earth like grasshoppers, and great princes and rulers brought low. He saw the future of his own people. This was an ascent experience.
If Barker is right, the two on the road heard an exposition that cannot be reconstructed from any Bible now in print, which is the practical form of Nibley’s point above, and one reason the Restoration expects the record to be added to rather than only re-read.