Meanings
From the archive . . .
There he was, standing among them, and they were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost (Luke 24:36-7).
The risen Christ was not a disembodied spirit, in Luke’s view: he had the flesh and bone of a physical man; he could be touched, he could eat physical food. We may understand Jesus’ resurrection appearances as spiritual experiences, but for Luke they were a physical reality. In the same way, at Jesus’ baptism, where Mark is content to say that the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, Luke adds that it came down in physical form as a dove.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.