Matthew 28:15

15 at illi accepta pecunia fecerunt sicut erant docti et divulgatum est verbum istud apud Iudaeos usque in hodiernum diem

Matthew 28:15 Meaning and Commentary

Matthew 28:15

So they took the money, and did as they were taught
Though they had been just now in the greatest fright and consternation imaginable, at the sight of the angel, and knew what was done; yet being men of no religion or conscience, were tempted with the money, and took it, and reported every where what had been put into their mouths by the chief priests and elders.

And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews unto this day;
to the time that Matthew wrote this Gospel; which according to the subscriptions to a most ancient copy of Beza's, and the Syriac and Arabic versions of De Dieu, was in the "eighth" year after our Lord's ascension; though others make it to be the "ninth"; and others the "fifteenth". The sense is, not that this narrative the evangelist gives, that the sanhedrim bribed the soldiers to give out such a lying story, was known to the Jews, and commonly reported by them; though some take this to be the sense; but that it was reported and believed among the Jews in common, to that time, that the disciples of Christ did really come in the night, and steal away the body of Christ, while the watch slept: to such judicial blindness, and hardness of heart, were they given up, as to believe a lie, and which had no appearance of truth in it. They have since contrived a more monstrous and ridiculous story than this. They say {e}, that Judas, seeing where the body was laid, and the disciples sitting upon the tomb, and mourning over it, in the middle of the night, took his opportunity to take away the body, and buried it in his own garden, under a current of water; having first turned the water another way, and then put it in the same course as before; and which he afterwards discovered to the Jews; and the body was taken up and exposed, and insulted in the most ignominious manner: but alas! Judas had hanged himself some days before; and had he been living, would not have been capable of doing what they ascribe unto him.

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FOOTNOTES:

F5 Toldos Jesu, p. 18, 19, 21.

Matthew 28:15 In-Context

13 dicentes dicite quia discipuli eius nocte venerunt et furati sunt eum nobis dormientibus

14 et si hoc auditum fuerit a praeside nos suadebimus ei et securos vos faciemus

15 at illi accepta pecunia fecerunt sicut erant docti et divulgatum est verbum istud apud Iudaeos usque in hodiernum diem

16 undecim autem discipuli abierunt in Galilaeam in montem ubi constituerat illis Iesus

17 et videntes eum adoraverunt quidam autem dubitaverunt