Image Details

Collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, The State Art Museum of Florida, a division of Florida State University

“They gave him a piece of a broiled fish and he … ate in their presence.” The supper after Jesus’ appearance at Emmaus recounted in Luke 24:36–42 (and shown here in a 17th-century Italian painting, The Supper at Emmaus, located in Florida’s Ringling Museum) was meant to prove that Jesus had risen bodily from the grave. According to Freyne, Jesus’ early followers believed that Jesus had triumphed over death and that God had rewarded him with a form of immortality. Although the Jewish idea of resurrection was a complex one, Freyne does not see Jesus’ experience as “the resuscitation of a corpse.” He believes that the supper after his Emmaus appearance reflects narrative developments and embellishments of the Resurrection story as the early Christian community came to grips with a wondrous, supernatural experience.