JESUS AS THE MESSIAH.
§ 61. JESUS, THE SON OF MAN.
IN treating of the relation in which Jesus conceived himself to stand to the messianic idea, we can distinguish his dicta concerning his own person from those concerning the work he had undertaken.
The appellation which Jesus commonly gives himself in the Gospels is, the, Son of man, 6 vîoç rov âvOpéirov. The exactly corresponding Hebrew expression — is in the Old Testament a frequent designation of man in general, and thus we might be induced to understand it in the mouth of Jesus. This interpretation would suit some passages; for example, Matt xiL 8, where Jesus says: The Son of man is lord also of the Sabbath day, tcvpios yap iori rov o-afipdrov o vîos rov àvdpwrov, — words which will fitly enough take a general meaning, such as Grotius affixes to them, namely, that man is lord of the Sabbath, especially if we compare Mark (ii. 27), who introduces them by the proposition, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, ro <ra/?j9arov &à rov avOponrov iycvero, ov\ o avdponros 81a to vdfifiarov. But in the majority of cases, the phrase in question is evidently used as a special designation. Thus, Matt viii. 20, a scribe volunteers to become a disciple of Jesus, and is admonished to count the cost in the words, The Son of tnan hath not where to lay his head, o vîoç rov âv$p<oirov ovk irov rrjv Kt<f>akrjv kAIvyj: here some particular man must be intended, nay, the particular man into whose companionship the scribe wished to enter, that is, Jesus himself. As a reason for the self-application of this term by Jesus, it has been suggested that he used the third person after the oriental manner, to avoid the 7. But for a speaker to use the third person in reference to himself, is only admissible, if he would be understood, when the designation he employs is precise, and inapplicable to any other person present, as when a father or a king uses his appropriate tide of himself; or when, if the designation be not precise, its relation is made clear by a demonstrative pronoun, which limitation is eminently indispensable if an individual speak of himself under the universal designation man. We grant that occasionally a gesture might supply the place of the demonstrative pronoun; but that Jesus in every instance of his using this habitual expression had recourse to some visible explanatory sign, or that the Evangelists would not, in that case, have supplied its necessary absence from a written document by some demonstrative addition, is inconceivable. If both Jesus and the Evangelists held such an elucidation superfluous, they must have seen in the expression itself the key to its precise application. Some are of opinion that Jesus intended by it to point himself out gthe ideal man — man in the noblest sense of the word; but this is a modern theory, not an historical inference, for there is no trace of such an interpretation of the expression in the time of Jesus, and it would be more easy to show, as others have attempted, that the appellation, Son of Man, so frequently used by Jesus, had reference to his lowly and despised condition. Apart however from the objection that this acceptation also would require the addition of the demonstrative pronoun, though it might be adapted to many passages, as Matt viii. 20; John L 51, there are others (such as Matt xvii. 22, where Jesus, foretelling his violent death, designates himself o vlos TOV avOpwrov) which demand the contrast of high dignity with an ignominious fate. So in Matt x. 23, the assurance given to the commissioned disciples that before they had gone over the cities of Israel the Son of Man would come, could have no weight unless this expression denoted a person of importance; and that such was its significance is proved by a comparison of Matt xvi. 28, where there is also a mention of an cpco-flai, a coming of the Son of man, but with the addition iv rfj fido-tAtcy avrov. As this addition can only refer to the messianic kingdom, the vlos TOV àvûpanrov must be the Messiah.
How so apparently vague an appellation came to be appropriated to the I, Messiah, we gather from Matt xxvL 64 parall., where the Son of man is ‘depicted as coming in the clouds of heaven. This is evidently an allusion to JDan vii. 13 f where after having treated of the fall of the four beasts, the writer says: Ïsaw in the night visions, and behold,\ one like the Son of Man (?Ç: “Q3 o>ç vloç àvQpûmov, LXX.) came with the clouds of heaven, and came to Ihe Ancient of days. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdomt that all people, nations and languages should serve him: his dominion, if an everlasting dominion. The four beasts (v. 17 ff.) were symbolical of the 1 four great empires, the last of whicFTwas The Macedonian, with its offshoot, — Syria. After their fall, the kingdom was to be given in perpetuity to the People of God, the saints of the Most High: hence, he was to come with clouds of heaven could only be, either a personification of the holy people, or a leader of heavenly origin under whom they were to achieve their destined triumph — in a word, the Messiah; and this was the customary interpretation among the Jews. Two things are predicated of this personage, — that he was ‘ like the Son of man, and that he came with ])he clouds of heaven; but the former particular is his distinctive characteristic, and imports either that he had not a superhuman form, that of an angel for instance, though descending from heaven, or else that the kingdom about to be established presented in its J uaiaBity a contrast to the inhumanity of its predecessors, of which ferocious beasts were the fitting emblems. At a later period, it is true, the Jews regarded,the coming with the clouds of heaven KJW \3JUT03? as the more essential attribute of the Messiah, and hence gave him the name Anani, after the Jewish taste of making a merely accessory circumstance the permanent epithet of a person or thing. If, then, the expression 6 vîôç rov àvOp<ïnrov necessarily recalled the above passage in Daniel, generally believed to relate to the Messiah, it is impossible that Jesus could so often use it, and in connexion with declarations evidently referring to the Messiah, without intending it as the designation of that personage.
That by the expression in question Jesus meant himself, without relation to the messianic dignity, is lçss probable than the contrary supposition, that he might often mean the Messiah when he spoke of the Son of Man, without relation to his own person. When, Matt x. 23, on the first mission of the twelve apostles to announce the kingdom of heaven, he comforts them under the prospect of their future persecutions by the assurance that they would not have gone over all the cities of Israel before the coming of the Son of Man, we should rather, taking this declaration alone, think of a third person, whose speedy messianic appearance Jesus was promising, than of the speaker himself, seeing that he was already come, and it would not be antecedently clear how he could represent his own coming as one still in anticipation. So also when Jesus (Matt, xiil 37 ff.) interprets the Sower of the parable to be the Son of Man, who at the end of the world will have a harvest and a tribunal, he might be supposed to refer to the Messiah as a third person distinct from himself. This is equally the case, xvi. 27 f., where, to prove the proposition that the loss of the soul is not to be compensated by the gain of the whole world, he urges the speedy coming of the Son of Man, to administer retribution. Lastly, in the connected discourses, Matt, xxiv., xxv parall., many particulars would be more easily conceived, if the vîoç rov àvâpwircv whose irapovo’ta Jesus describes, were understood to mean another than himself.
But this explanation is far from being applicable to the majority of instances in which Jesus uses this expression. When he represents the Son of Man, not as one still to be expected, but as one already come and actually present, for example, in Matt xviii. 11, where Kie’sâÿs YTKc Son of Man is come to save that which was lost; when he justifies his own acts by the authority with which the Son of Man was invested, as in Matt ix. 6; when, Mark viii. 31 if comp. Matt xvi. 22, he speaks of the approaching sufferings and death of the Son of Man, so as to elicit from Peter the exclamation, ov ftrj ccrrai <rot rovro, this shall not be unto thee; in these and similar cases he can only, by the vlos tov avOpdmov, have intended himself. And even those passages, which, taken singly, we might have found capable of application to a messianic person, distinct from Jesus, lose this capability when considered in their entire connexion. It is possible, however, either that the writer may have misplaced certain expressions, or that the ultimately prevalent conviction that Jesus was the Son of Man caused what was originally said merely of the latter, to be viewed in immediate relation to the former.
Thus besides the fact that Jesus on many occasions called himself the Son of Man, there remains the possibility that on many others, he may have designed another person; and if so, the latter would in the order of time naturally precede the former. Whether this possibility can be heightened to 1 a reality, must depend on the answer to the following question: Is there, im the period of the life of Jesus, from which all his recorded declarations are taken, any fragment which indicates that he had not yet conceived himself to be the Messiah?
§ 62.
HOW SOON DID JESUS CONCEIVE HIMSELF TO BE THE MESSIAH, AND FIND RECOGNITION AS SUCH FROM OTHERS?
Jesus held and expressed the conviction that he was the Messiah; this is an indisputable fact. Not only did he, according to the Evangelists, receive with satisfaction the confession of the disciples that he was the X/XOTOÇ (Matt, xvi. — 16 f. ) and the salutation of the people, Hosanna to the Son of David (xxi.
15 — f.); not only did he before a public tribunal (Matt Xxvi. 64, comp. John xviii. — 37) as well as to private individuals (John iv. 26, ix. 37, x. 25) repeatedly declare himself to be the Messiah; but the fact that his disciples Cfter his death believed and proclaimed that he was the Messiah, is not to be comprehended, unless, when living, he had implanted the conviction in their minds.
To the more searching questionJiow soon Jesus began to declare himself the Messiah and to be regarded as sucfiTfey others, the Evangelists almost unanimously reply, that he assumed that character from the time of his:rT)aptism. All of them attach to his baptism circumstances which must have convinced himself, if yet uncertain, and all others who witnessed or credited them, that he was no less than the Messiah; John makes his earliest disciples recognise his right to that dignity on their first interview (i. 42 ff.), and Matthew attributes to him at the very beginning of his ministry, in the sermon on the mount, a representation of himself as the Judge of the world (vii. 21 ff.) and therefore the Messiah.
Nevertheless, on a closer examination, there appears a remarkable diver-
* — agency on this subject between the synoptical statement and that of JofirT While, namely, in JohnJesus remains throughout true to his assertion, and the disciples and his followers among the populace to their coiwiction, that he is the Messiah; in the synoptical gospels (there is a vacillation) discernible ‘ — the previously expressed persuasion on the part of the disciplés and people that Jesus was the Messiah, sometimes vanishes and gives place to a much lower view of him, and even Jesus himself becomes more reserved in his declarations. This is particularly striking when the synoptical statement is compared with that of John; but even when they are separately considered, the result is the same.
‘ According to John (vi. 15), after the miracle of the loaves the people were inclined to constitute Jesus their (messianic) King; on the contrary, according to the other three Evangelists, either about the same time (Luke ix. 18 f.) or still later (Matt xvi. 13 f.; Mark viii. 27 f.) the disciples could only report, on the opinions of the people respecting their master, that some said he was the resuscitated Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah or one of the old prophets: in reference to that passage of John, however, as also to the synoptical one, Matt xiv. 33, according to which, some time before Jesus elicited the above report of the popular opinion, the people who were with him in the ship when he had allayed the storm, fell at his feet and worshipped him as the Son of God, it may be observed that when Jesus had spoken or acted with peculiar impressiveness,) individuals, in the exaltation of the moment, might be penetrated with a conviction that he was the Messiah, while the general and calm voice of the people yet pronounced him to be merely a prophet But there is a more troublesome divergency relative to the disciples.) In John, Andrew, after his first interview with Jesus, says to hrs- brother, wihave found the Messiah, cvprjicafiw tov Mwalav (i. 42); and Philip describes him to Nathanael as the person foretold by Moses and the prophets (v. 46); Nathanael salutes him as the Son of God and King of Israel (v. 50); and the subsequent confession of Peter appearsmerely a renewed avowal of what had been long a familiar truth. In the synoptical Evangelists it is only after prolonged intercourse with Jesus, and shortly before his sufferings, that the ardent,Peter arrives at the conclusion that Jesus is the Xpioroç, o vioç tov 0eov tov £ü>vroç (NTatt xvi. 16, parall.). It is impossible that this confession should make so strong an impression on Jesus that, in consequence of it, he should pronounce Peter blessed, and his confession the fruit of immediate divine revelation, as Matthew narrates; or that, as all the three Evangelists inform us (xvi. 20, viii. 30, ix. 21), he should, as if alarmed, forbid the disciples to promulgate their conviction, unless it represented not an opinion long cherished in the circle of his disciples, but a new light, which had just flashed on the mind of Peter, and through him was communicated to his associates.
There is a third equally serious discrepancy, relative to the declarations of Jesus concerning his Messiahship. According to John he sanctions the homage which Nathanael renders to him as the Son of God and King of Israel, in the very commencement of his public career, and immediately proceeds to speak of himself under the messianic title, Son of Man (i. 51 f.): to the Samaritans also after his first visit to the passover (iv. 26, 39 ff.), and to the Jews on the second (v. 46), he makes himself known as the Messiah predicted by Moses. According to the sy 11 op t icaL.wiiters, on the contrary, he prohibits in the instance above cited and in many others, the dissemination of the doctrine of his Messiahship, beyond the circle of his adherents. Farther, when he àsks his disciples, Whom do men say that I am? (Matt xvi. 15) he seems to wish* that they should derive their conviction of his Messiahship from his discourses and actions, and when he ascribes the avowed faith of Peter to a revelation from his heavenly Father, he excludes the possibility of his having himself previously made this disclosure to his disciples, either in the manner described by John, or in the more indirect one attributed to him by Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount; unless we suppose that the disciples had not hitherto believed his assurance, and that hence Jesus referred the new-born faith of Peter to divine influence.
Thus, on the point under discussion the synoptical statement is contradictory, not only to that of John, but to itself; it appears therefore that it ougTnrto be unconditionally surrendered before that of John, which is consistent with itself and one of our critics has justly reproached it with deranging the messianic economy in the life of Jesus. But here again we must not lose sight of our approved canon, that in glorifying narratives, such as our gospels, where various statements are confronted, that is the least probable which best subserves the object of glorification. Now this is the case with John’s statement; according to which, from the commencement to the close of the public life of Jesus, his Messiahship shines forth in unchanging splendour, while, according to the synoptical writers, it is liable to a variation in its light But though this criterion of probability is in favour of the first three Evangelists, it is impossible that the order in which they make ignorance and concealment follow on plain declarations and recognitions of the Messiahship of Jesus can be correct; and we must suppose that they have mingled and confounded two separate periods of the life of Jesus, in the latter of which ‘ alone he presented himself as the Messiah. We find, in fact, that the watchword of Jesus on his first appearance differed not, even verbally, from that of John, who professed merely to be a forerunner; it is the same Repent, for the \ kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt iv. 17) with which John had roused the )j Jews (iii. 2); and indicates in neither the one nor the other an assumption of i the character of Messiah, with whose coming the kingdom of heaven was actually to commence, but merely that of a teacher who points to it as yet future. Hence the latest critic of the first gospel justly explains all those discourses and actions therein narrated, by which Jesus explicitly claims to be the Messiah, or, in consequence of which this dignity is attributed to him and accepted, if they occur before the manifestation of himself recorded in John v., or before the account of the apostolic confession (Matt xvi.), as offences of the writer against chronology or literal truth. We have only to premise, that as chronological confusion prevails throughout, the position of this confession shortly before the history of the Passion, in nowise obliges us to suppose that it was so late before Jesus was recognised as the Messiah among his disciples, since Peter’s avowal may have occurred in a much earlier period of their intercourse. This, however, is incomprehensible — that the same reproach should not attach even more strongly to the fourth gospel than to the first, or to the synoptical writers in general. For it is surely more pardonable that the first three Evangelists should give us the pre-messianic memoirs in the wrong place, than that the fourth should not give them at all; more endurable in the former, to mingle the two periods, than in the latter, quite to obliterate the earlier one.
\ If then Jesus did not lay claim to the Messiahship from the beginning of jnis public career, was this omission the result of uncertainty in his own mind; or had he from the first a conviction that he was the Messiah, but concealed it for certain reasons? In order to decide this question, a point already mentioned must be more carefully weighed. In the first three Evangelists,,but not so exclusively that the fourth has nothing similar, when Jesus effects; a miracle of healing he almost invariably forbids the person cured to promul- ‘ gate the event, in these or similar words, opa firjSevl cittç; e g the leper, Matt viii. 4, parall.; the blind men, Matt ix. 30; a multitude of the healed, Matt xii. 16; the parents of the resuscitated damsel, Mark v. 43; above all he enjoins silence on the demoniacs, Mark i. 34, iii. 12; and John v. 13, it is said, after tKe cure of the man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Thus also he forbade the three who were with him on the mount of the Transfiguration, to publish the scene they had witnessed (Matt xvii. 9); and after the confession of Peter, he charges the disciples to tell no man the conviction it expressed (Luke ix. 21). This prohibition of Jesus could hardly, as most commentators suppose, be determined by various circumstantial motives, at one time having relation to the disposition of the person healed, at another to the humour of the people, at another to the situation of Jesus: rather, as there is an essential similarity in the conditions under which hfe lays this injunction on the people, if we discern a probable motive for it on any occasion, we are warranted in applying the same motive to the remaining cases. This motive is scarcely any other than the desire that the belief that he was the Messiah should not be too widely spread. When (Mark i. 34) Jesus would not allow the ejected demons to speak because they knew him, when he charged the multitudes that they should not make him known (Matt xiL 16), he evidently intended that the former should not proclaim him in the character in which their more penetrative, demoniacal glance had viewed him, nor the latter in that revealed by the miraculous cure he had wrought on them — in short, they were not to betray their knowledge that he was the Messiah. As a reason for this wish on the part of Jesus, it has been alleged, on the strength of John vi. 15, that he sought to avoid awakening the political idea of the Messiah’s kingdom in the popular mind, with the disturbance which would be its inevitable result. This would be a valid reason; but the synoptical writers represent the wish, partly as the effect of humility; Matthew, in connexion with a prohibition of the kind alluded to, applying to Jesus a passage in Isaiah (xiii if.) where the servant of God is said to be distinguished by his stillness and unobtrusiveness: partly, and in a greater degree, as the effect of an apprehension that the Messiah, at least such an one as Jesus, would be at once proscribed by the Jewish hierarchy.
From all this it might appear that Jesus was restrained merely by external, motives, from the open declaration of his Messiahship, and that his own conviction of it existed from the first in equal strength; but this conclusion cannot be maintained in the face of the consideration above mentioned, that Jesus began his career with the same announcement as the Baptist, an announcement which can scarcely have more than one import — an exhorta- tion to prepare for a coming Messiah. The most natural supposition is that Jesus, first the discipTe of the.Blpttst, and afterwards his successor,.in preaching repentance and the approach of the kingdom of heaven, took originally ] the same position as his former master in relation to the messianic kingdom,, notwithstanding the greater reach and liberality of his mind, and only gradu- ‘ ally attained the elevation of thinking himself the Messiah. This supposition explains in the simplest manner the prohibition we have been considering,, especially that annexed to the fconfession of Peter.) For as often as the thought that he might be the Messiah suggested itself to others, and was presented to him from without, Jesus must have shrunk, as if appalled to [1 hear confidently uttered that which he scarcely ventured tourmis or which ® Had Blit recently become clear to himself. As, however, the Evangelist often put such prohibitions’ into the moutK of Jesus unseasonably (witness the occasion mentioned, Matt viii. 4, when, after a cure effected before a crowd of spectators, it was of little avail to enjoin secrecy on the cured), it is prob- able that evangelical tradition, enamoured of the mysteriousness that lay in this incognito of Jesus, unhistorically multiplied the instances of its adoption.
§ 63.
JESUS, THE SON OF GOD.
In Luke i. 35, we find the narrowest and most literal interpretation of the expression, o vîoç rov 0cov; namely, as derived from his conception by means of the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, the widest moral and metaphorical sense is given to the expression in Matt v. 45, where those who imitate the love of God towards his enemies are called the sons of the Father in heaven. There is an intermediate sense which we may term the metaphysical, because while it includes more than mere conformity of will, it is distinct from the notion of actual paternity, and implies a spiritual community of being. In this sense it is profusely employed and referred to in the fourth gospel; as when Jesus says that he speaks and does nothing of himself, but only what as a son he has learned from the Father (v. 19, xii. 49, and elsewhere), who, moreover, is in him (xvii. 21), and notwithstanding his exaltation over him (xiv. 28), is yet one with him (x. 30). There is yet a fourth sense in which the expression is presented. When (Matt iv. 3) the devil challenges Jesus to change the stones into bread, making the supposition, If thou be the Son of God; when Nathanael says to Jesus, Thou art the Son of God\ the King of Israel (John i. 49); when Peter confesses, Thou art the Christ\ the Son of the living God (Matt xvi. 16; comp. John vi. 69); when Martha thus expresses her faith in Jesus, I believe that thou art the Christy the Son of God (John xL 27); when the high priest adjures Jesus to tell him if he be the Christ\ the Son of God (Matt xxvi. 63): it is obvious that the devil means nothing more than, If thou be the Messiah; and that in the other passages the vîoç TOV Ocov, united as it is with X/motoç and /ïcurtAevs, is but an appellation of the Messiah.
In Hos xi. 1; Exod iv. 22, the people of Israel, and in 2 Sam viL 14; Ps ii. 7 (comp, lxxxix. 28), the king of that people, are called the son and the first-born of God. The kings (as also the people) of Israel had this appellation, in virtue of the love which Jehovah bore them, and the tutelary care which he exercised over them (2 Sam vii. 14); and from the second psalm we gather the farther reason, that as earthly kings choose their sons to reign with or under them, so the Israelitish kings were invested by Jehovah, the supreme ruler, with the government of his favourite province. Thus the designation was originally applicable to every Israelitish king who adhered to the principle of the theocracy; but when the messianic idea was developed, it was pre-eminently assigned to the Messiah, as the best-beloved Son, and the most powerful vicegerent of God on earth.
If, then, such was the original historical signification of the epithet, Son of God\ as applied to the Messiah, we have to ask: is it possible that Jesus used it of himself in this signification only, or did he use it also in either of the three senses previously adduced? The narrowest, the merely physical import of the term is not put into the mouth of Jesus, but into that of the annunciating angel, Luke i. 35; and for this the Evangelist alone is responsible. In the intermediate, metaphysical sense, implying unity of essence and community of existence with God, it might possibly have been understood by Jesus, supposing him to have remodelled in his own conceptions the theocratic interpretation current among his compatriots. It is true that the abundant expressions having this tendency in the Gospel of John, appear to contradict those of Jesus on an occasion recorded by the synoptical writers (Mark x. 17 f.; Luke xviii. 18 f.), when to a disciple who accosts him as Good Master, he replies: Why callest thou me good f there is none good but one, that is God. Here Jesus so tenaciously maintains the distinction between himself and God, that he renounces the predicate of (perfect) goodness, and insists on its appropriation to God alone. Olshausen supposes that this rejection related solely to the particular circumstances of the disciple addressed, who, regarding Jesus as a merely human teacher, ought not from his point of view to have given him a divine epithet, and that it was not intended by Jesus as a denial that he was, according to a just estimate of his character, actually the àyaâoç in whom the one good Being was reflected as in a mirror; but this is to take for granted what is first to be proved, namely, that the declarations of Jesus concerning himself in the fourth gospel are on a level as to credibility with those recorded by the synoptical writers. Two of these writers cite some words of Jesus which have an important bearing on our present subject: All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither hnoweth any man the Father, but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him, Matt xi. *27. Taking this passage in connexion with the one before quoted, we must infer that Jesus had indeed an intimate communion of thought and will with God, but under such limitations, that the attribute of perfect goodness, as well as of absolute knowledge (e g., of the day and hour of the last day, Mark xiii. 32 parall.) belonged exclusively to God, and hence the boundary line between divine and human was strictly preserved. Even in the fourth gospel Jesus declares, My Father is greater than /, o ircm/p /tor /iet£o>v p ov lari (xiv. 28), but this slight echo of the synoptical statement does not remove the difficulty of conciliating the numerous discourses of a totally different tenor in the former, with the rejection of the epithet Ayaêoç in the latter. It is surprising, too, that Jesus in the fourth gospel appears altogether ignorant of the theocratic sense of the expression vvbs TOV Bwv, and can only vindicate his use of it in the metaphysical sense, by retreating to its vague and metaphorical application. When, namely (John x. 34 ff.), to justify his assumption of this tide, he adduces the scriptural application of the term 0cot to other men, such as princes and magistrates, we are at a loss to understand why Jesus should resort to this remote and precarious argument, when close at hand lay the far more cogent one, that in the Old Testament, a theocratic king of Israel, or according to the customary interpretation of the most striking passages, the Messiah, is called the Son of Jehovah, and that therefore he, having declared himself to be the Messiah (v. 25), might consistently claim this appellation.
With respect to the light in which Jesus was viewed as the Son of God by others, we may remark that in the addresses of well-affected persons the title is often so associated as to be obviously a mere synonym of Xpurroç, and this even in the fourth gospel; while on the other hand the contentious”I<w8auK of this gospel seem in their objections as ignorant as Jesus in his defence, of the theocratic, and only notice the metaphysical meaning of the expression.
It is true that, even in the synoptical gospels, when Jesus answers affirmatively the question whether he be the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt xxvi. 65, paralL), the high priest taxes him with blasphemy; but he refers merely to what he considers the unwarranted arrogation of the theocratic dignity of the Messiah, whereas in the fourth gospel, when Jesus represents himself as the Son of God (v. 17 f., x. 30 ff.), the Jews seek to kill him for the express reason that he thereby makes himself urov tc£ 0cu, nay even iavrov 0cov. According to the synoptical writers, the high pnest so unhesitatingly considers the idea of the Son of God to pertain to that of the Messiah, that he associates the two titles as if they were interchangeable, in the question he addresses to Jesus: on the contrary the Jews in the Gospel of John regard the one idea as so far transcending the other, that they listen patiently to the declaration of Jesus that he is the Messiah (x. 25), but as soon as he begins to claim to be the Son of God, they take up stones to stone him. In the synoptical gospels the reproach cast on Jesus is, that being a common man» he gives himself out for the Messiah; in the fourth gospel, that being a mere man9 he gives himself out for a divine being. Hence Olshausen and others have justly insisted that in those passages of the latter gospel to which our remarks have reference, the vïoç rov 0cov is not synonymous with Messiah, but is a name far transcending the ordinary idea of the Messiah; they are not, however, warranted in concluding that therefore in the first three Evangelists also the fcame expression imports more than the Messiah. For the only legitimate interpretation of the high priest’s question in Matthew makes o — vcoç rov $€ov a synonym of 6 Xpurroç, and though in the parallel passage of Luke, the judges first ask Jesus if he be the Christ (xxii. 67)? and when he declines a direct answer, — predicting that they will behold the Son of man seated at the right hand of God, — hastily interrupt him with the question, Art thou the Son of God t (v. 70); yet, after receiving what they consider an affirmative answer, they accuse him before Pilate as one who pretends to be Christ, a king (xxiiL 2), thus clearly showing that Son of man, Son of God, and Messiah, must have been regarded as interchangeable terms. It must therefore be conceded that there is a discrepancy on this point between the synoptical writers and John, and perhaps-ftlse an inconsistency of the latter with himself; for in several addresses to Jesus he retains the customary form, which associated Son of God with Christ or King of Israel\ without being conscious of the distinction between the signification which vîoç r. 6. must have in such a connexion, and that in which he used it elsewhere — a want of perception which habitual forms of expression are calculated to induce. We have before cited examples of this oversight in the fourth Evangelist (John i. 49» vi- 69, xi. 27).
The author of the Probabilia reasonably considers it suspicious that, in the fourth gospel, Jesus and his opponents should appear entirely ignorant of the theocratic sense which is elsewhere attached to the expression o’ vloç rov 0cov, and which must have been more familiar to the Jews than any other, unless we suppose some of them to have partaken of Alexandrian culture. To such, we grant, as well as to the fourth Evangelist, judging from his prologue, the metaphysical relation of the Xoyos /toKoycvs to God would be the most cherished association. s BibL Comm. 2, & 130, 253.
Olshausen, ut sup. 1, s. 108 ff.
§ 64.
THE DIVINE MISSION AND AUTHORITY OF JESUS. HIS PRE-EXISTENCE.
The four Evangelists are in unison as to the declaration of Jesus concerning his divine mission and authority. Like every prophet, he is sent by God (Matt x. 40; John v. 23 f., 56 f.), acts and speaks by the authority, and under the immediate guidance of God (John v. 19 ff.), and exclusively possesses an adequate knowledge of God, which it is his office to impart to men (Matt xi. 27; John iii. 13). To him, as the Messiah, all power is given (Matt xi. 27); first, over the kingdom which he is appointed to found and to rule with all its members (John x. 29, xvil 6); next, over mankind in general (John xvii. 2), and even external nature (Matt, xxviii. 18); consequently, should the interests of the messianic kingdom demand it, power to effect a thorough revolution in the whole world. At the future commencement of his reign, Jesus, as Messiah, is authorized to awake the dead (John v. 28), and to sit as a judge, separating those worthy to partake of the heavenly kingdom from the unworthy (Matt xxv. 31 ff.; John v. 22, 29); offices which Jewish opinion attributed to the Messiah, and which Jesus, once convinced of his Messiahship, would necessarily transfer to himself.
The Evangelists are not equally unanimous on another point According to the synoptical writers, Jesus claims, it is true, the highest human dignity, and the most exalted relation with God, for the present and future, but he never refers to an existence anterior to his earthly career: in the fourth gospel, on the contrary, we find several discourses of Jesus which contain the repeated assertion of such a pre-existence. We grant that when Jesus describes himself as coming’down from Tieaven (John iii. 13, xvi. 28), the expression, taken alone, may be understood as a merely figurative intimation of his superhuman origin. It is more difficult, but perhaps admissible, to interpret, with the Socinian Crell, the declaration of Jesus, Before Abraham was, I am$ irplv ‘Afipaàfi yevccrfltu, cyo> tlfu (John viii. 58), as referring to a purely ideal existence in the pre-determination of God; but scarcely possible to consider the prayer to the Father (John xvii. 5) to confirm the Safa (glory) which Jesus had with Him before the world was, vpo tov tov Kooyxov cTrai, as an entreaty for the communication of a glory predestined for Jesus from eternity. But the language of Jesus, John vi. 62, where he speaks of the Son of man reascending àvapaivtiv where he was before ottov rjv to 7rpar€pov, is in its intrinsic meaning, as well as in that which is reflected on it from other passages, unequivocally significative of actual, not merely ideal, pre-existence.
It has been already conjectured* that these expressions, or at least the adaptation of them to a real pre-existence, are derived, not from Jesus, but from the author of the fourth gospel, with whose opinions, as propounded in his introduction, they specifically agree; for if the Word was in the beginning with God (Iv dpxfi irpos rov 0cov), Jesus, in whom it was made flesh, might attribute to himself an existence before Abraham, and a participation of glory with the Father before the foundation of the world. Nevertheless, we are not warranted in adopting this view, unless it can be shown that neither was the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah extant among the Jews of Palestine before the time of Jesus, nor is it probable that Jesus attained such a notion, independently of the ideas peculiar to his age and nation.
The latter supposition, that Jesus spoke from his own memory of his prehuman and pre-mundane existence, is liable to comparison with dangerous parallels in the history of Pythagoras, Ennius, and Apollonius of Tyana, whose alleged reminiscences of individual states which they had experienced prior to their birth,® are now generally regarded either as subsequent fables, or as enthusiastic self-delusions of those celebrated men. For the other alternative, that the idea in question was common to the Jewish nation, a presumption may be found in the description, already quoted from Daniel, of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, since the author, possibly, and, at all events, many readers, imagined that personage to be a superhuman being, dwelling beforehand with God, like the angels. But that every one who referred this passage to the Messiah, or that Jesus in particular, associated with it the notion of a pre-exfefence, is not to be proved; for, if we exclude the representation of John,/Jesus depicts his coming in the clouds of heaven, not as if he had come as a visitant to earth from his home in heaven, but, according to Matt xxvi. 65 (comp xxiv. 25), as if he, the earth-born, after the completion of his earthly course, would be received into heaven, ana from thence would return to establish his kingdom: thus making the coming from heaven not necessarily include the idea of pre-existence. J We find in the Proverbs, in Sirach, and the Book of Wisdom, the idea or a personified and even hypostasized Wisdom of God, and in the Psalms and Prophets, strongly marked personifications of the Divine word; and it is especially worthy of note, that the later Jews, in their horror of anthropomorphism in the idea of the Divine being, attributed his speech, appearance, and immediate agency, to the Word (tnD’D) or the dwelling place (xn2’3P) of Jehovah, as may be seen in the venerable* Targum of Onkelos. These expressions, at first mere paraphrases of the name of God, soon received the mystical signification of a veritable hypostasis, of a being at once distinct from, and one with God. As most of the revelations and interpositions of God, whose organ this personified Word was considered to be, were designed in favour of the Israelitish people, it was natural for them to assign to the manifestation which was still awaited from Him, and which was to be the crowning benefit of Israel, — the manifestation, namely, of the Messiah, — a peculiar relation with the Word or Shechina. From this germ sprang the opinion that with the Messiah the Shechina would appear, and that what was ascribed to the Shechina pertained equally to the Messiah: an opinion not confined to the Rabbins, but sanctioned by the Apostle PauL According to it, the Messiah was, even in the wilderness, the invisible guide and benefactor of God’s people (1 Cor x. 4, 9); he was with our first parents in Paradise;’ he was the agent in creation (Col. L 16); he even existed before the creation, and prior to his incarnation in Jesus, was in a glorious fellowship with God ( Phil iL 6).
Porphyr. Vita Pythag., 26 f. Tamblkh. 14, 63. Diog. Laert viil 4 f. 14. Baur, Apollonius von Tyana, pp. 64 L 98 1. 185 f.
See a notification and exposition of the passages in Lücke, Comm, zum Ev. Joh., I, s. 211 ff.
Winer, de Onkeloso, p. 10. Comp. De Wette, Einleit in das A. T., § 58.
6 — Bertholdt, Christol. Judaeor., §§ 23-25. Comp. Liicke at sup., s. 244, note.
7 — Schottgen, ii s. 6 f.
8 — Targ. Jes. XVL I: Iste (Messias) in deserio fuit rupts ecclesia Zionis. In Bertholdt, ut SUD. p. I45.
* — Sohar chadasch f lxxxii. 4, ap. Schottgen, ii s. 440.
10 — Nezach Israel c xxxv f. xlviii. 1. Schmidt, Bibl fur Kritik u. Exegese, I, s. 38: imn nm Sohar Levit f. xiv. 56. Schottgen, ii s. 436: Septem (lumina condiia sunt, antequam mundus conderetur), nimirum... et lumen Afessia. Here we have the pre-existence of the Messiah represented as a real one: for a more ideal conception of it, see Bereschith Rabba, sect. 1, f iii. 3 (Schottgen).
As it is thus evident that, immediately after the time of Jesus, the idea of a pre-existence of the Messiah was incorporated in the higher Jewish theology, it is no far-fetched conjecture, that the same idea was afloat when the mind of Jesus was maturing, and that in his conception of himself as the Messiah, this attribute was included. But whether Jesus were as deeply initiated in the speculations of the Jewish schools as Paul, is yet a question, and as the author of the fourth gospel, versed in the Alexandrian doctrine of the Aoyoç, stands alone in ascribing to Jesus the assertion of a pre-existence, we are unable to decide whether we are to put the dogma to the account of Jesus, or of his biographer.
§ 65.
THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS.’ INDICATIONS OF A POLITICAL ELEMENT.
The Baptist pointed to a future individual, and Jesus to himself, as the founder of the kingdom of heaven. The idea of that messianic kingdom belonged to the Israelitish nation; did Jesus hold it in the form in which it existed among his cotemporaries, or under modifications of his own?
The idea of the Messiah grew up amongst the Jews in soil half religious, half political: it was nurtured by national adversity, and in the time of Jesus, according to the testimony of the gospels, it was embodied in the expectation that the Messiah would ascend the throne of his ancestor David, free the Jewish people from the Roman yoke, and found a kingdom which would last for ever (Luke i. 32 f., 68 ff.; Acts i. 6). Hence our first question must be this. Did Jesus include this political elemenin his messianic plan?
That Jesus aspired to be a temporal ruler, has at all times been an allegation of the adversaries of Christianity, but has been maintained by none with so much exegetlcal acumen as by the author of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments, who, be it observed, by no means denies to Jesus the praise of aiming at the moral reformation of his nation. According to this writer, the first indication of a political plan on the part of Jesus is, that he unambiguously announced the approaching messianic kingdom, and laid down the conditions on which it was to be entered, without explaining what this kingdom was, and wherein it consisted, as if he supposed the current idea of its nature to be correct Now the fact is, that the prevalent conception of the messianic reign had a strong political bias; hence, when Jesus spoke of the Messiah’s kingdom without a definition, the Jews could only think of an earthly dominion, and as J esus could not have presupposed any other interpretation or tiis words, he must have wished to be so understood. But in opposition to this it may be remarked, that in the Parables by which Jesus shadowed forth the kingdom of heaven; in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he illustrates the duties of its citizens; and lastly, in his whole demeanour and course of action, we have sufficient evidence, that his idea of the messianic kingdom waspeculiar to himself. There is not so rtSllji a counterpoise tor the difficulty, that Jesus senWie aposues, with whose conceptions he could not be unacquainted, to announce the Messiah’s kingdom throughout the land (Matt x.). These, who disputed which of them should be greatest in the kingdom of their master (Matt, xviii. 1; Luke xxii. 24); of whom two petitioned for the seats at the right and left of the messianic king (Mark x. 35 ff.); who, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus, expected a restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts L 6); — these had clearly from the beginning to the end of their inter.- course with Jesus, no other than the popular notion of the Messiah; when, therefore, Jesus despatched them as heralds of his kingdom, it seems necessarily a part of his design, that they should disseminate in all places their political messianic idea.
Among the discourses of Jesus there is one especially worthy of note in Matt xix. 28 (comp. Luke xxii. 30). In reply to the question of Peter, We have left all and followed thee; what shall we have thereforet Jesus promises to his disciples that in the vaXtyymaCoj when the Son of man shall sit on his throne, they also shall sit on twelve thronek judging the twelve tribes of Israel\ That the literal import of this promise /formed part of the tissue of the messianic hopes cherished by the Jews of that period, is not to be controverted. It is argued, however, that Jesus spoke figuratively on this occasion, and only employed familiar Jewish images to convey to the apostles an assurance, that the sacrifices they had made here would be richly compensated in their future life by a participation in his glory. But the disciples must have understood the promise literally when, even after the resurrection of Jesus, they harboured anticipations of worldly greatness; and as Jesus had had many proofs of this propensity, he would hardly have adopted such language, had he not intended to nourish their temporal hopes. The supposition that he did so merely to animate the courage of his disciples, without himself sharing their views, imputes duplicity to Jesus; — a duplicity in this case quite gratuitous, since, as Olshausen justly observes, Peter’s question would have been satisfactorily answered by any other laudatory acknowledgment of the devotion of the disciples. Hence it appears a fair inference, that Jesus hira- - self shared the Jewish expectations which he here sanctions: but expositors *N have made the most desperate efforts to escape from this unwelcome conclusion. Some have resorted to an arbitrary alteration of the reading; others to the detection of irony, directed against the disproportion between the pretensions of the disciples, and their trivial services; others to different expedients, but all more unnatural than the admission, that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish ideas, here promises his disciples the dignity of being his assessors in hi$ visible messianic judgment, and that he thus indicates the existence of a national element in his notion of the Messiah’s kingdom. It is observable, too, that in the Acts (i. 7), Jesus, even after his resurrection, does not deny that he will restore the kingdom to Israel, but merely discour- ages curiosity as to the times and seasonsx>f its restoration. \
‘ Among the actions of Jesus, his last «i£ry into JerusalemMatt xxi iff.) is especially appealed to as a proof that his plan was pardy political. According to the Fragmentist, all the circumstances point to a political design: the time which Jesus chose, — after a sufficiently long preparation of the people in the provinces; the Passover, which they visited in great numbers; the animal on which he rode, and by which, from a popular interpretation of a passage in Zechariah, he announced himself as the destined King of Jerusalem; the approval which he pronounces when the people receive him rith a royal greeting; the violent procedure which he hazards in the temple j and finally, his severe philippic on the higher class of the Jews (Matt xxiiL), at the close of which he seeks to awe them into a reception of him as their messianic king, by the threat that he will show himself to them no more in any other guise.
§66.
DATA FOR THE PURE SPIRITUALITY OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS.
BALANCE.
Nowhere in our evangelical narratives is there a trace of Jesus having sought to form a political party. On the contrary, he withdraws from the eagerness of the people to make him a king (John vi. 15); he declares that the messianic kingdom comes not with observation, but is to be sought for in the recesses of the soul (Luke xvii. 20 f.); it is his principle to unite obedience to God with obedience to temporal authority, even when heathen (Matt, xxii. 21); on his solemn entry into the capital, he chooses to ride the animal of peace, and afterwards escapes from the multitude, instead of using their excitement for the purposes of his ambition; lastly, he maintains before his judge, that his kingdom is not from hence ovk IrrtvOtv, is not of this world ovk « rov Kocrfxov tovtov (John xvi. 36), and we have no reason in this instance to question either his or the Evangelist’s veracity.
Thus we have a series of indications to counterbalance those detailed in the 1 preceding section. The adversaries of Christianity have held exclusively to | the arguments for a political, or rather a revolutionary, project, on the part I of Jesus, while the orthodox theologians adhere to those only which tell for I the pure spirituality of his plan: and each party has laboured to invalidate 1 by hermeneutical skill the passages unfavourable to its theory. It has of 1 late been acknowledged that both are equally partial, and that there is need \ of arbitration between them, j This has been attempted chiefly by supposing an earlier and a later form I * of the plan of Jesus. Although, it has been said, the moral improvement and L „ religious elevation of his people were from the first the primary object of Jesus, he nevertheless, in the beginning of his puBïic life, cherîshecT tfie hoper of reviving, by means of this internal regeneration, the External glories, of the theocracy, when he should be acknowledged by his nation as the Messiah, and thereby be constituted the supreme authority in the state. But in the disappointment of this hope, he recognised the divine rejection of every political element in his plan, and thenceforth refined it into pure spirituality.
It is held to be a presumption in favour of such a change in the plan of Jesus, that there is a gladness diffused over his first appearance, which gives place to melancholy in the latter period of his ministry; that instead of the acceptable year of the Lord, announced in his initiative address at Nazareth, sorrow is the burthen of his later discourses, and he explicitly says 6f Jerusalem) that J he had attempted to save it, but that now its fall, both religidus and political, was inevitable, As, however, the evangelists do not keep the events and discourses proper to these distinct periods within their respective limits, but happen to give the two most important data for the imputation of a political design to Jesus (namely the promise of the twelve thrones and the public entrance into the capital), near the close of his life; we must attribute to these writers a chronological confusion, as in the case of the relation which the views of Jesus bore to the messianic idea in general: unless as an alternative it be conceivable, that Jesus uttered during the same period the declarations which seem to indicate, and those which disclaim, a political design.
This, in our apprehension, is not inconceivable; for Jesus might anticipate a Ka6%e<r$ai brl dpovovs for himself and his disciples, not regarding the means of its attainment as a political revolution, but as a revolution to be effected by the immediate interposition of God. That such was his view may be inferred Trom his placing that judiciary appearance of his disciples in the ira\iyy€Ÿ€<rÙL; for this was not a political revolution, any more than a spiritual regeneration, — it was a resurrection of the dead, which God was to effect. through the agency of the Messiah, and which was to usher in the messianic times.* Jesus certainly expected to restore the throne of David, and with his disciples to govern a liberated people; in no degree, however, did he rest his hopes on the sword of human adherents (Luke xxii. 38; Matt xxvi. 52), but on the legions of angels, which his heavenly Father could send him (Matt xxvi 53). Wherever he speaks of coming in his messianic glory, he depicts ‘ himself surrounded by angels and heavenly powers (Matt xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 £, xxv* 3 > John i. 52); before the majesty of the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven, all nations are to bow without the coercion of the sword, and at the sound of the angel’s trumpet, are to present themselves, with the awakened dead, before the judgment-seat of the Messiah and his twelve apostles. All this Jesus would not bring to pass of his own will, but he Jwaited for a signal from his heavenly Father, who alone knew the appropriate I ‘time for this catastrophe (Mark xiii. 32), and he apparently was not disconcerted when his end approached without his having received the expected intimation. They who shrink from this view, merely because they conceive. that it makes Jesus an enthusiast, will do well to reflect how closely such hopes corresponded with the long cherished messianic idea of the Jews, and jhow easily, in that day of supernaturalism, and in a nation segregated by the /peculiarities of its faith, an idea, in itself extravagant, if only it were consist* lent, and had, (in some of its aspects,.-truth and dignity, might allure even a ‘reasonable man beneath its influence, y With respect to that which awaits the righteous after judgment, — everlasting life in the kingdom of the Father, — it is true that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish notions, compares it to a feast (Matt viii. 11, xxii. 2 ff.), at which he hopes himself to taste the fruit of the vine (Matt xxvi. 29), and to celebrate the Passover (Luke xxii. 16); but his declaration that in the alùv /itWw the organic relation between the sexes will cease, and men will be like the angels (to-ayycXot, Luke xx. 35 ff.), seems more or less to reduce the above discourses 10 a merely symbolical significance.
Thus we conclude that the messianic hope of Jesus was not political, nor even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated- earth); as little was it a purely spiritual hope, in the modern sense- of the term, for it included important and unprecedented changes in the external condition of things: but it was the national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar moral and religious views.
§67.’
THE RELATION OF JESUS TO THE MOSAIC LAW.
The Mosaic institutions were actually extinguished in the church of which Jesus was the founder; hence it is natural tosuppose that their abolition formed a part of his design: — a reach vision, beyond the horizon of the ceremonial worship of his age and countfyv-f which apologists have been ever anxious to prove that he was possessed. Neither are there wanting speeches and actions ôf Jesus which seem to favour their effort. Whenever he details the conditions of participation in the kingdom of heaven, as in the Sermon on the Mount, he insists, not on the observance of the Mosaic ritual, but on the spirit of religion and morality; he attaches no value to fasting, praying, and almsgiving, unless accompanied by a corresponding bent of mind (Matt vi. 1-18); the two main elements of the Mosaic worship, sacrifice and the keeping of sabbaths and feasts, he not only nowhere enjoins, but puts a marked slight on the former, by commending the scribe who declared that the love of God and one’s neighbour was more than whole bumt-offerings and sacrifices as one not far from the kingdom of God (Mark xii. 23 f.), and he ran counter in action as well as in speech to the customary mode of celebrating the Sabbath (Matt xii. 1-13; Mark ii. 23-28, iii. 1-5; Luke vi. 1-10, xiii. 10 ff., xiv. 1 ff.; John v. 5 ff., vii. 22, ix. 1 ff.), of which in his character of Son of Man he claimed to be Lord. The Jews, too, appear to have expected a revision of the Mosaic law by their Messiah.* A somewhat analogous sense is couched in the declarations attributed by the fourth Evangelist to Jesus (ii. 19); Matthew (xxvi. 61) and Mark (xiv. 58) represent him as being accused by false witnesses of saying, I am able to destroy (John, destroy) the temple of God (Mark, that is made with hands), and to build it in three days (Mark, 1 will build another made without hands). The author of the Acts has something similar as an article of accusation against Stephen, but instead of the latter half of the sentence it is thus added, and (he, i e. Jesus) shall change the customs which Moses delivered us; and perhaps this may be regarded as an authentic comment on the less explicit text. In general it may be said that to one\ who, like Jesus, is so far alive to the absolute value of the internal compared ‘ with the external, of the bent of the entire disposition compared with isolated acts, that he pronounces the love of God and our neighbour to be the essence / of the law (Matt xxil 36 ff.), — to him it cannot be a secret, that all precepts of the law which do not bear on these two points are unessential. But the argument apparently most decisive of a design on the part of Jesus to abolish the Mosaic worship, is furnished by his prediction that the temple, the centre of Jewish worship (Matt xxiv. 2 par all.), would be destroyed, and that the adoration of God would be freed from local fetters, and become purely spiritual (John iv. 21 ff.).
The above, however, presents only one aspect of the position assumed by Jesus towards the Mosaic law; there are also data for the belief that he did not meditate the overthrow of the ancient constitution of his country. This side of the question has been, at a former period, and from easily-conceived reasons, the one which the enemies of Christianity in its ecclesiastical form, have chosen to exhibit; but it is only in recent times that, the theological horizon being extended, the unprejudiced expositors of the church have acknowledged its existence. In the first place, during his life Jesus remains faithful to te paternal law; he attends the synagogue on the sabbath, journeys to Jerusalem at the time of the feast, and eats of the paschal lamb with his disciples. It is true that he heals on the sabbath, allows his disciples to pluck ears of com (Matt xii. 1 ff.), and requires no fasting or washing before meat in his society (Matt iv. 14, xv. 2). But the Mosaic law concerning the sabbath simply prescribed cessation from common labour, — (Exod xx.
8. ff., xxxi. 12 ff., Deut v. 12 ff.), including ploughing, reaping (Exod xxxiv. 21), gathering of sticks (Num xv. 32 ff.), and similar work, and it was only the spirit of petty observance, the growth of a later age, that made it an offence to perform cures, or pluck a few ears of corn. The washing of hands before eating was but a rabbinical custom; in the law one general yearly fast was alone prescribed (Lev xvi. 29 ff., xxiii. 27 ff.) and no private fasting re- / qui red; hence Jesus cannot be convicted of infringing the precepts of Moses.
In that very Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus exalts spiritual religion so \ far above all ritual, he clearly presupposes the continuation of sacrifices (Matt \ v. 23 f.), and declares that he is not come to destroy the law and the prophets, T>ut, to fulfil (Matt v. 17). ‘Even if irXrjpSxrat, in all probability, refers chiefly to the accomplishment of the Old Testament prophecies, OVK rj\$ov xaraXwrai must at the same time be understood of the conservation of the Mosaic law, since in the context, perpetuity is promised to its smallest letter, and he who represents its lightest precept as not obligatory, is threatened with the lowest rank in the kingdom of heaven.! In accordance with this, the apostles (adhered strictly to the Mosaic law ybven after the feast of Pentecost; they went at the hour of prayer into the temple (Acts iii. 1), clung to the synagogues and to the Mosaic injunctions respecting food (x. 14), and were unable to appeal to any express declaration of Jesus as a sanction for the procedure of Barnabas and Paul, when the judaizing party complained of their baptizing Gentiles without laying on them the burthen of the Mosaic law.
This apparent contradiction in the conduct and language of Jesus has been apologetically explained by the supposition, that not only the personal obedience of Jesus to the law, but also his declarations in its favour, were a /necessary concession to the views of his cotemporaries, who would-at once have withdrawn their confidence from him, had he announced himself as the destroyer of their holy and venerated law. We allow that the obedience of Jesus to the law in his own person, might be explained in the same way as that of Paul, which, on his own showing, was a measure of mere expediency (1 Cor ix. 20, comp. Acts xvi. 3). But the strong declarations of Jesus concerning the perpetuity of the law, and the guilt of him who dares to violate its lightest precept, cannot possibly be derived from the principle of concession; for to pronounce that indispensable, which one secretly holds superfluous, and which one even seeks to bring gradually into disuse, would, leaving honesty out of the question, be in the last degree injudicious.
Hence others have made a distinction between the moral and the ritual law, and referred the declaration of Jesus that he wished not to abrogate the law, to the former alone, which he extricated from a web of trivial cere- monies, and embodied in his own example. But such a distinction is not found in those striking passages from the Sermon on the Mount; rather in the vofjvos and — 1, the law and the prophets, we have the most comprehensive designation of the whole religious constitution of the Old Testament, and under the most trivial commandment, and the smallest letter of the law, alike pronounced imperishable, we cannot well understand anything else than the ceremonial precepts.
A happier distinction is that between really Mosaic institutes, and their traditional amplifications. It is certain that the sabbath cures of Jesus, his neglect of the pedantic ablutions before eating, and the like, ran counter, not to Moses, but to later rabbinical requirements, and several discourses of Jesus turn upon this distinction. Matt xv. 3 ft, Jesus places the commandment of God in opposition to the tradition of the elders, and Matt xxiii. 23, he declares that where they are compatible, the former may be observed without rejecting the latter, in which case he admonishes the people to do all that the scribes and Pharisees enjoin; where, on the contrary, either the one or the other only can be respected, he decides that it is better to transgress the tradition of the elders, than the commandment of God as given by Moses (Matt xv. 3 ff.). He describes the mass of traditional precepts, as a burthen grievous to be borne, which he would remove from the oppressed people, substituting his own light burthen and easy yoke; whence it may be seen, that with all his forbearance towards existing institutions, so far as they were not positively pernicious, it was his intention that all these command- ments of men, as plants which his heavenly Father had not planted, should be 1 rooted up (xv. 9, 13). The majority of the Pharisaical precepts referred to externals, and had the effect of burying the noble morality of the Mosaic law un3er a heap of ceremonial observances; a gift to the temple sufficed to absolve the giver from his filial duties (xv. 5), and the payment of tithe of anise and cummin superseded justice, mercy, and faith (xxiii. 23). Hence this distinction is in some degree identical with the former, since in the rabbinical institutes it was their merely ceremonial tendency that Jesus censured, while, in the Mosaic law, it was the kernel of religion and morality that he chiefly valued. It must only not be contended that he regarded the Mosaic law as permanent solely in its spiritual part, for the passages quoted, especially from the Sermon on the Mount, clearly show that he did not contemplate the abolition of the merely ritual precepts.
Jesus, supposing that he had discerned morality and the spiritual worship of God to be the sole essentials in religion, must have rejected all which, being merely ritual and formal, had usurped the importance of a religious obligation, and under this description must fall a large proportion of the Mosaic precepts; but it is well known how slowly such consequences are deduced, when they come into collision with usages consecrated by antiquity. Even Samuel, apparently, was aware that obedience is better than sacrifice (1 Sam xv. 22), and Asaph, that an offering of thanksgiving is more acceptable to God than one of slain animals (Ps. 1.); yet how long after were sacrifices retained together with true obedience, or in its stead! Jesus was more thoroughly penetrated with this conviction than those ancients; with him, the true commandments of God in the Mosaic law were simply, Honour thy father and thy mother; Thou shalt not kill, etc., and above all, Thou shalt lave the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself But his deep-rooted respect for the sacred book of the law, caused him, for the sake of these essential contents, to honour the unessential; which was the more natural, as in comparison with the absurdly exaggerated pedantry of the traditional observances, the ritual of the Pentateuch must have appeared highly simple. To honour this latter part of the law as of Divine origin, but to declare it abrogated on the principle, that in the education of the human race, God finds necessary for an earlier period an arrangement which is superfluous for a later one, implies that idea of the law as a schoolmaster, vofAoç iraiSaywyos (Gal iii. 24), which seems first to have been developed by the-Apostle Paul; nevertheless, its germ lies in the declaration of Jesus, that God had permitted to the early Hebrews, on account of the hardness of their hearts (Matt xix. 8 f.), many things which, in a more advanced state of culture, were inadmissible.
A similar limitation of the duration of the law is involved in the predictions of Jesus (if indeed they were uttered by Jesus, a point which we have to discuss), that the temple would be destroyed at his approaching advent (Matt xxiv parall.), and that devotion would be freed from all local restrictions (John iv.); for with these must fall the entire Mosaic system of external worship. This is not contradicted by the declaration that the law would endure until heaven and earth should pass away (Matt v. 18), for the Hebrew associated the fall of his state and sanctuary with the end of the old world or dispensation, so that the expressions, so long as the temple stands, and so long as the world stands, were equivalent It is true that the words of Jesus, Luke xvi. 16, o VO/AOS teal ol TrpcKptrjrai co>ç IoKW’ot>, seem to imply, that the appearance of the Baptist put an end to the validity of the law; but this passage loses its depreciatory sense when compared with its parallel, Matt xi. 13. On the other hand, Luke xvi. 17 controls Matt v. 18, and reduces it to a mere comparison between the stability of the law, and that of heaven and earth. The only question then is, in which of the gospels are the two passages more correctly stated? As given in the first, they intimate that the law would retain its supremacy until, and not after, the close of the old dispensation. With this agrees the prediction, that the temple would be destroyed; for the spiritualization of religion, and, according to Stephen’s interpretation, the abolition ôf the Mosaic law, which were to be the results of that event, were undoubtedly identified by Jesus with the commencement of the aiwv fitWwv of the Messiah. Hence it appears, that the only difference between the view of Paul and that of Jesus is this: that the latter anticipated the extinction of the Mosaic system as a concomitant of his glorious advent or return to the regenerated earth, while the former believed its abolition permissible on the old, unregenerated earth, in virtue of the Messiah’s first advent.
§ 68.
SCOPE OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. RELATION TO THE GENTILES.
Although the church founded by Jesus did, in fact, early extend itself beyond the limits of the Jewish people, there are yet indications which might induce a belief that he did not contemplate such an extension. When he sends the twelve on their first mission, his command is, Go not into the way of the Gentiles — Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt x. 5 f.). That Matthew alone has this injunction, and not the two other synoptists, is less probably explained by the supposition that the Hebrew author of the first gospel interpolated it, than by the opposite one, namely, that it was wilfully omitted by the Hellenistic authors of the second and third gospels. For, as the judaizing tendency of Matthew is not so marked that he assigns to Jesus the intention of limiting the messianic kingdom to the Jews; as, on the contrary, he makes Jesus unequivocally foretell the calling of the Gentiles (viii. 11 f., xxi. 33 ff., xxii. 1 ff., xxviii. 19 f.): he had no motive for fabricating this particularizing addition; but the two other Evangelists had a strong one for its omission, in the offence which it would cause to the Gentiles already within the fold. Its presence in Matthew, however, demands an explanation, and expositors have thought to furnish one by supposing the injunction of Jesus to be a measure of prudence. It is unquestionable that, even if the plan of Jesus comprehended the Gentiles as well as the Jews, he must at first, if he would not for ever ruin his cause with his fellow-countrymen, adopt, and prescribe to the disciples, a rule of national exclusiveness. This necessity on his part might account for his answer to the Canaanitish woman, whose daughter he refuses to heal, because he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt xv. 24), were it not that the boon which he here denies is not a reception into the messianic kingdom, but a temporal benefit, such as even Elijah and Elisha had conferred on those who were not Israelites (1 Kings xvii. 9 ff.; 2 Kings v. 1 ff.) — examples to which Jesus elsewhere appeals (Luke iv. 25 ff.). Hence the disciples thought it natural and unobjectionable to grant the woman’s petition, and it could not be prudential considerations that withheld Jesus, for a time, from compliance. That an aversion to the Gentiles may not appear to be his motive, it has been conjectured that Jesus, wishing to preserve an incognito in that country, avoided the performance of any messianic work. But such a design of concealment is only mentioned by Mark (vii. 25), who represents it as being defeated by the entreaties of the woman, contrary to the inclinations of Jesus; and as this Evangelist omits the declaration of Jesus, that he was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, we must suspect that he was guided by the wish to supply a less offensive motive for the conduct of Jesus, rather than by historical accuracy. Had Jesus really been influenced by the motive which Mark assigns, he must at once have alleged it to his disciples instead of a merely ostensible one, calculated to strengthen their already rigid exclusiveness. We should therefore rather listen to the opinion that Jesus sought, by his repeated refusal, to prove the faith of the woman, and furnish an occasion for its exhibition, if we could find in the text the slightest trace of mere dissimulation; and none of a real change of mind. Even Mark, bent as he was on softening the features of the incident, cannot have thought of a dissimulation of this kind; otherwise, instead of omitting the harsh words and making the inadequate addition, and would have no man knew it, he would have removed the offence in the most satisfactory manner, by an observation such as, he said this to prove her (comp. John vi. 6). Thus it must be allowed that Jesus in this case seems to share the antipathy of his countrymen towards the Gentiles, nay, his antipathy seems to be of a deeper stamp than that of his disciples; unless their advocacy of the woman be a touch from the pencil of tradition, for the sake of contrast and grouping.
This narrative, however, is neutralized by another, in which Jesus is said to act in a directly opposite manner. The centurion of Capernaum, also a Gentile (as we gather from the remarks of Jesus), has scarcely complained of a distress similar to that of the Canaanitish woman, when Jesus himself volunteers to go and heal his servant (Matt viii. 5). If, then, Jesus has no hesitation, in this instance, to exercise his power of healing’in favour of a heathen, how comes it that he refuses to do so in another quite analogous case? Truly if the relative position of the two narratives in the gospels have any weight, he must have shown himself more harsh and narrow at the later period than at the earlier one. Meanwhile, this single act of benevolence to a Gentile, standing as it does in inexplicable contradiction to the narrative above examined, cannot prove, in opposition to the command expressly given to the disciples, not to go to the Gentiles, that Jesus contemplated their admission as such into the messianic kingdom.
Even the prediction of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven would be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, does not prove this. In the above interview with the centurion of Capernaum, Jesus declares that many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom (obviously the Jews), for whom it was originally designed, will be cast out (Matt viii. 11 f.). Yet more decidedly, when applying the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, he warns his countrymen that the kingdom of God shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt xxi. 43). All this may be understood in the sense intended by the prophets, in their promises that the messianic kingdom would extend to all nations; namely, that the Gentiles would turn to the worship of Jehovah, embrace the Mosaic religion in its entire form, and afterwards be received into the. Messiah’s kingdom. It would accord very well with this expectation, that, prior to such a conversion, Jesus should forbid his disciples to direct their announcement of his kingdom to the Gentiles.
But in the discourses concerning his re-appearance, Jesus regards the publication of the gospel to all nations as one of the circumstances that must precede that event (Matt xxiv. 14; Mark xiii. 10); and after his resurrection, according to the synoptists, he gave his disciples the command, Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. (Matt, xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47); i e go to them with the offer of the Messiah’s kingdom, even though they may not beforehand have become Jews. Not only, however, do the disciples, after the first Pentecost, neglect to execute this command, but when a case is thrust on them which offers them an opportunity for compliance with it, they act as if they were altogether ignorant that such a direction had been given by Jesus (Acts x., xi.). The heathen centurion Cornelius, worthy, from his devout life, of a reception into the messianic community, is pointed out by an angel to the Apostle Peter. But because it was not hidden from God, with what difficulty the apostle would be induced to receive a heathen, without further preliminary, into the Messiah’s kingdom, he saw it needful to prepare him for such a step by a symbolical vision. In consequence of such an admonition Peter goes to Cornelius; but to impel him to baptize him and his family, he needs a second sign, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost on these uncircumcised. When, subsequently, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem call him to account for this reception of Gentiles, Peter appeals in his justification solely to the recent vision, and to the Holy Ghost given to the centurion’s family. Whatever judgment we may form of the credibility of this history, it is a memorial of the many deliberations and contentions which it cost the apostles after the departure of Jesus, to convince themselves of the eligibility of Gentiles for a participation in the kingdom of their Christ, and the reasons which at last brought them to a decision. Now if Jesus had given so explicit a command as that above quoted, what need was there of a vision to encourage Peter to its fulfilment? or, supposing the vision to be a legendary investiture of the natural deliberations of the disciples, why did they go about in search of the reflection, that all men ought to be baptized, because before God all men and all animals, as his creature are clean, if they could have appealed to an express injunction of Jesus?/ Here, then, is the alternative: if Jesus himself gave this command, the disciples cannot have been led to the admission of the Gentiles by the means narrated in Acts x., xi.; if, on the other hand, that narrative is authentic, the alleged command of Tesus cannot be historical. Our canon decides for the latter proposition zFor that the subsequent practice and pre-eminent distinction of the Christian Church, its accessibility to all nations/ and its indifference to circumcision or uncircumcision, should, have lain in the mind of its founder, is the view best adapted to exalt and adorn. Jesus; while that, after his death, and through the gradual development of relations, the church, which its Founder had designed for the Gentiles only in so far as they became Jews, should break through these limits, is in the simple, natural, aiiJliïêïeWTti the probable course of things.
§ 69.
RELATION OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS TO THE SAMARITANS. HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.
There is the same apparent contradiction in the position which Jesus took, and prescribed to his cÜsciples, towards the inhabitants of Samaria. While in his instructions to his disciples (Matt x. 5), he forbids them to visit any city of the Samaritans, we read in John (iv.) that Jesus himself in his journey through Samaria laboured as the Messiah with great effect, and ultimately stayed two days in a Samaritan town; and in the Acts (i. 8), that before his ascension he charged the disciples to be his witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and in all Judea, but also in Samaria. That Jesus did not entirely shun Samaria, as that prohibition might appear to intimate, is evident from Luke ix. 52 (comp xvii. 11), where his disciples bespeak lodgings for him in a Samaritan village, when he has determined to go to Jerusalem; a circumstance which accords with the information of Josephus, that those Galileans who journeyed to the feasts usually went through Samaria. That Jesus was not unfavourable to the Samaritans, nay, that in many respects he acknowledged their superiority to the Jews, is evident from his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 30 ff.); he also bestows a marked notice on the case of a Samaritan, who, among ten cleansed, was the only one that testified his gratitude (Luke xvii. 16); and, if we may venture on such a conclusion from John iv. 25, and subsequent records, the inhabitants of Samaria themselves had some tincture of the messianic idea.
However natural it may appear that Jesus should avail himself of this susceptible side of the Samaritans, by opportunely announcing to them the messianic kingdom; the aspect which the four Evangelists bear to each other on this subject must excite surprise. Matthew has no occasion on which Jesus comes in contact with the Samaritans, or even mentions them, except in the prohibition above quoted; Mark is more neutral than Matthew, and has not even that prohibition; Luke has two instances of contact, one of them unfavourable, the other favourable, together with the parable in which Jesus presents a Samaritan as a model, and his approving notice of the gratitude of one whom he had healed; John, finally, has a narrative in which Jesus appears in a very intimate and highly favourable relation to the Samaritans. Are all these various accounts well founded? If so, how could Jesus at one time prohibit his disciples from including the Samaritans in the messianic plan, and at another time, himself receive them without hesitation? Moreover, if the chronological order of the Evangelists deserve regard, the ministry of Jesus in Samaria must have preceded the prohibition contained in his instructions to his disciples on their first mission. For the scene of that mission being Galilee, and there being no space for its occurrence during the short stay which, according to the fourth Evangelist, Jesus made in that province before the first Passover (ii. 1-13), it must be placed after that Passover; and, as the visit to Samaria was made on his journey, after that visit also. How, then, could Jesus, after having with the most desirable issue, personally taught in Samaria, and presented himself as the Messiah, forbid his disciples to carry thither their messianic tidings? On the other hand, if the scenes narrated by John occurred after the command recorded by Matthew, the disciples, instead of wondering that Jesus talked so earnestly with a woman (John iv. 27), ought rather to have wondered that he held any converse with a Samaritan?
Since then of the two extreme narratives at least, in Matthew and John, neither presupposes the other, we must either doubt the authenticity of the exclusive command of Jesus, or of his connexion with the inhabitants of Samaria.
In this conflict between the gospels, we have again the advantage of appealing to the Book of Acts as an umpire. Before Peter, at the divine instigation, had received the firstfruits of the Gentiles into the Messiah’s kingdom, Philip the deacon, being driven from Jerusalem by the persecution of which Stephen’s death was the commencement, journeyed to the city of Samaria, where he preached Christ, and by miracles of all kinds won the Samaritans to the faith, and to the reception of baptism (Acts viii. 5 ff.). This narrative is a complete contrast to that of the first admission of the Gentiles: while in the one there was need of a vision, and a special intimation from the Spirit, to bring Peter into communication with the heathens; in the other, Philip, without any precedent, unhesitatingly baptizes the Samaritans. And lest it should be said that the deacon was perhaps of a more liberal spirit than the apostle, we have Peter himself coming forthwith to Samaria in company with John, — an incident which forms another point of opposition between the two narratives; for, while the first admission of the Gentiles makes a highly unfavourable impression on the mother church at Jerusalem, the report that Samaria had received the ward of God meets with so warm an approval there, that the two most distinguished apostles are commissioned to confirm and consummate the work begun by Philip. The tenor of this proceeding makes it not improbable that there was a precedent for it in the conduct of Jesus, or at least a sanction in his expressions.
The narrative in the fourth Gospel (iv.) would form a perfect precedent in the conduct of Jesus, but we have yet to examine whether it bears the stamp of historical credibility. We do not, with the author of the Probabilia, stumble at the designation of the locality, and the opening of the conversation between Jesus and the woman; but from v. 16 inclusively, there are, as impartial expositors confess, many grave difficulties. The woman had entreated Jesus to give her of the water which was for ever to extinguish thirst, and Jesus immediately says, Go, call thy husband. Why so? It has been said that Jesus, well knowing that the woman had no lawful husband, sought to shame her, and bring her to repentance. Liicke, disapproving the imputation of dissimulation to Jesus, conjectures that, perceiving the woman’s dulness, he hoped by summoning her husband, possibly her superior in intelligence, to create an opportunity for a more beneficial conversation. But if Jesus, as it presently appears, knew that the woman had not at the time any proper husband, he could not in earnest desire her to summon him; and if, as Liicke allows, he had that knowledge in a supernatural manner, it could not be hidden from him, who knew what was in man, that she would be little inclined to comply with his injunction. If, however, he had a prescience that what he required would not be done, the injunction was a feint, and had some latent object But that this object was the penitence of the woman there is no indication in the text, for the ultimate effect on her is not shame and penitence, but faith in the prophetic insight of Jesus (v. 19). And this was doubtless what Jesus wished, for the narrative proceeds as if he had attained his purpose with the woman, and the issue corresponded, to the design. The difficulty here lies, not so much in what Liicke terms dissimulation, — since this comes under the category of blameless temptation (ircipofciv), elsewhere occurring, — as in the violence with which Jesus wrests, an opportunity for the display of his prophetic gifts.
By a transition equally abrupt, the woman urges the conversation to a point at which the Messiahship of Jesus may become fully evident As soon as she has recognised Jesus to be a prophet, she hastens to consult him on the controversy pending between the J ews and Samaritans, as to the place appropriated to the true worship of God (v. 2o)w That so vivid an interest in this national and religious question is not consistent with the limited mental and circumstantial condition of the woman, the majority of modern commentators virtually confess, by their adoption of the opinion, that her drift in this remark was to turn away the conversation from her own affairs. ]f then the implied query concerning the place for the true worship of God, had no serious interest for the woman, but was prompted by a false shame calculated to hinder confession and repentance, those expositors should remember what they elsewhere repeat to satiety, that in the Gospel of John the answers of Jesus refer not so much to the ostensible meaning of questions, as to the under current of feeling of which they are the indications. In accordance with this method, Jesus should not have answered the artificial question of the woman as if ic had been one of deep seriousness; he ought rather to have evaded it, and recurred to the already detected stain on her conscience, which she was now seeking to hide, in order if possible to bring her to a full conviction and open avowal of her guilt. But the fact is that the object of the Evangelist was to show that Jesus had been recognised, not merely as a prophet, but as the Messiah, and he believed that to turn the conversation to the question of the legitimate place for the worship of God, the solution of which was expected from the Messiah, would best conduce to that end Jesus evinces (v. 17) an acquaintance with the past history and present position of the woman. The rationalists have endeavoured to explain this by the supposition, that while Jesus sat at the well, and the woman was advancing from the city, some passer-by hinted to him that he had better not engage in conversation with her, as she was on the watch to obtain a sixth husband. But not to insist on the improbability that a passer-by should hold a colloquy with Jesus on the character of an obscure woman, the friends as well as the enemies of the fourth gospel now agree, that every natural explanation of that knowledge on the part of Jesus, directly counteracts the design of the Evangelist. For, according to him, the disclosure which Jesus makes of his privity to the woman’s intimate concerns, is the immediate cause, not only of her own faith in him, but of that of many inhabitants of the city (v. 39), and he obviously intends to imply that they were not too precipitate in receiving him as a prophet, on that ground alone. Thus in the view of the Evangelist, the knowledge in question was an effluence of the higher nature of Jesus, and modern supranaturalists adhere to this explanation, adducing in its support the power which John attributes to him (ii. 24 f.), of discerning what is in man without the aid of externa] testimony. But this does not meet the case; for Jesus here not only knows what is in the woman, — her present equivocal state of mind towards him who is not her husband, — he has cognizance also of the extrinsic fact that she has had five husbands, of whom we cannot suppose that each had left a distinct image in her mind traceable by the observation of Jesus. That by means of the penetrative acumen with which he scrutinized the hearts of those with whom he had to do, Jesus should also have a prophetic insight into his own messianic destiny, and the fortunes of his kingdom, may under a certain view of his person appear probable, and in any case must be deemed in the highest degree dignified; but that he should be acquainted, even to the most trivial details, with the adventitious history of obscure individuals, is an idea that degrades him in proportion to the exaltation of his prophetic dignity. Such empirical knowingness (not omniscience) would moreover annihilate the human consciousness which the orthodox view supposes to co-exist in Jesus. But the possession of this knowledge, however it may clash with our conception of dignity and wisdom, closëîÿorresponds to the Jewish notion of a prophet, more especially of the, Messiah: in the Old Testament, Daniel recites a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which that monarch himself had forgotten (Dan ii.); in the Clementine Homilies, the true prophet is o wuvtotc iravra ci&of rà fitv ytyovora a>ç cycvcro, rà Sc yivofiÆva > <î>ç ytWai, rà 8c &ro/icva a* ccrrat; and the rabbins number such a knowledge of personal secrets among the signs of the Messiah, and observe that from the want of it, Bar-Cocheba was detected to be a pseudo-Messiah.
Farther on (v. 23) Jesus reveals to the woman what Hase terms the sublimest principle of his religion, namely, that the service of God consists in a life of piety; tells her that all ceremonial worship is about to be abolished; and that he is the personage who will effect this momentous change, that is, the Messiah. We have already shown it to be improbable that Jesus, who did not give his disciples to understand that he was the Messiah until a comparatively late period, should make an early and distinct disclosure on the subject to a Samaritan woman. In what respect was she worthy of a communication more explicit than ever fell to the lot of the disciples? What could induce Jesus to send roaming into the futurity of religious history, the contemplation of a woman, whom he should rather have induced to examine herself, and to ponder on (he corruptions of her own heart? Nothing but the wish to elicit from her, at any cost, and without regard to her moral benefit, an acknowledgment, not only of his prophetic gifts, but of his Messiahship; to which end it was necessary to give the conversation the above direction. But so contracted a design can never be imputed to Jesus, who» on other occasions, exemplifies a more suitable mode of dealing with mankind: it is the design of the glorifying legend, or of an idealizing biographer.
Meanwhile, continues the narrative (v. 27), the disciples of Jesus returned from the city with provisions, and marvelled that he talked with a woman, contrary to rabbinical rule. While the woman, excited by the last disclosure of Jesus, hastens homeward to invite her fellow-citizens to come and behold the Messiah-like stranger, the disciples entreat him to partake of the food they have procured; he answers, I have meat to eat that ye know not of (v. 32). They, misunderstanding his words, imagine that some person has supplied him with food in their absence: one of those carnal interpretations of expressions intended spiritually by Jesus, which are of perpetual recurrence in the fourth gospel, and are therefore suspicious. Then follows a discourse on sowing and reaping (v. 35 ff.), which, compared with v. 37, can only mean that what Jesus has sown, die disciples will reap. We admit that this is susceptible of the general interpretation, that the germ of the kingdom of God, which blossomed and bore fruit under the cultivation of the apostles, was first deposited in the world by Jesus: but it cannot be denied that a special application is also intended. Jesus foresees that the woman, who is hastening towards the city, will procure him an opportunity of sowing the seed of the gospel in Samaria, and he promises the disciples that they at a future time shall reap the fruits of his labours. Who is not here reminded of the propagation of Christianity in Samaria by Philip and the apostles, as narrated in the Acts? That, even abstracting all supernaturalism from our idea of the person of Jesus, he might have foreseen this progress of his cause in Samaria from his knowledge of its inhabitants, is not to be denied; but as the above figurative prediction forms part of a whole more than improbable in an historical point of view, it is equally liable to suspicion, especially as it is easy to show how it might originate without any foundation in fact According to the prevalent tradition of the early church, as recorded in the synoptical gospels, Jesus laboured personally in Galilee, Judea, and Perea f only, — not in Samaria, which, however, as we learn from the Acts, embraced / the gospel at no remote period from his death. How natural the tendency; to perfect the agency of Jesus, by representing him to have sown the heavenly seed in Samaria, thus extending his ministry through all parts of Palestine; to limit the glory of the apostles and other teachers to that of being the mere reapers of the harvest in Samaria; and to put this distinction, on a suitable occasion, into the mouth of Jesus!
The result, then, of our examination of John’s Samaritan narrative is, that we cannot receive it as a real history: and the impression which it leaves as a whole tends to the same conclusion. Since Heracleon and Origen, the more ancient commentators have seldom refrained from giving the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria an allegorical interpretation, on the ground that the entire scene has a legendary and poetic colouring. Jesus is seated at a well, — that idyllic locality with which the old Hebrew legend associates so many critical incidents; at the identical well, moreover, which a tradition, founded on Gen xxxiii. 19, xlviii. 22; Josh xxiv. 32, reported to have been given by Jacob to his son Joseph; hence the spot, in addition to its idyllic interest, has the more decided consecration of national and patriarchal recollections, and is all the more worthy of being trodden by the Messiah. At the well Jesus meets with a woman who has come out to draw water, just as, in the Old Testament, the expectant Eliezer encounters Rebekah with her pitcher, and as Jacob meets with Rachel, the destined ancestress of Israel, or Moses with his future wife. Jesus begs of the woman to let him drink; so does Eliezer of Rebekah; after Jesus has made himself known to the woman as the Messiah, she runs back to the city, and fetches her neighbours: so Rebekah, after Eliezer has announced himself as Abraham’s steward, and Rachel, after she has discovered that Jacob is her kinsman, hasten homeward to call their friends to welcome the honoured guest. It is, certainly, not one blameless as those early mothers in Israel, whom Jesus here encounters; for this woman came forth as the representative of an impure people, who had been faithless to their marriage bond with Jehovah, and were then living in the practice of a false worship; while her good-will, her deficient moral strength, and her obtuseness in spiritual things, /perfectly typify the actual state of the Samaritans. Thus, the interview of f Jesus with the woman of Samaria is only a poetical representation of his ministry among the Samaritans narrated in the sequel; and this is itself a legendary prelude to the propagation of the gospel in Samaria after the death v of Jesus.
Renouncing the event in question as unhistorical, we know nothing of any connexion formed by Jesus with the Samaritans, and there remain as indications of his views regarding them, only his favourable notice of an individual from among them (Luke xvii. 16); his unpropitious reception in one of their villages (Luke ix. 53); the prohibition with respect to them, addressed to his disciples (Matt x. 5); the eulogistic parable (Luke x. 30 ff.); and his valedictory command, that the gospel should be preached in Samaria (Acts L 8). This express command being subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus, its reality mu$t remain problematical for us until we have examined the evidence for that capital fact; and it is to be questioned whether without it, and notwithstanding the alleged prohibition, the unhesitating conduct of the apostles, Acts viii., can be explained. Are we then to suppose on the part of the apostolic history, a cancelling of hesitations and deliberations that really occurred; or on the part of Matthew, an unwarranted ascription of national bigotry to Jesus; or, finally, on the part of Jesus, a progressive enlacement of view?
19 — Comm, in Joan, tom. 13.