Iu relation to the historical credibility of the narrative, it may certainly be held remarkable that so important a sanative institution as Bethesda is described to be by John, is not mentioned either by Josephus or the rabbins, especially if the popular belief connected a miraculous cure with this pool:  but this affords nothing decisive, It is true that in the description of the pool there lies a fabulous popular notion, which appears also to have been received by the writer (for even if v. 4 be spurious, something similar is contained in the words Kinprtc TOV vSaroç, v. 3, and rapaxtfiy v- 7)* But this proves nothing against the truth of the narrative, since even an eye-witness and a disciple of Jesus may have shared a vulgar error. To make credible, however, such a fact as that a man who had been lame eight-and-thirty years, so that he was unable to walk, and completely bed-ridden, should have been perfectly cured by a word, the supposition of psychological influence will not suffice, for the man had no knowledge whatever of Jesus, v. 13; nor will any physical analogy, such as magnetism and the like, serve the purpose: but if such a result really happened, we must exalt that by which it happened above all the limits of the human and the natural. On the other band, it ought never to have been thought a difficulty* that from among the multitude of the infirm waiting in the porches of the pool, Jesus selected one only as the object of his curative power, since the cure of him whose sufferings had been of the longest duration was not only particularly adapted, but also sufficient, to glorify the miraculous power of the Messiah. Nevertheless, it is this very trait which suggests a suspicion that the narrative has a mythical character. On a great theatre of disease, crowded with all kinds of sufferers, Jesus, the exalted and miraculously gifted physician, appears and selects the one who is afflicted with the most obstinate malady, that by his restoration he may present the most brilliant proof of his miraculous power. We have already remarked that the fourth gospel, instead of extending the curative agency of Jesus over large masses and to a great variety of diseases, as the synoptical gospels do, concentrates it on a few cases which proportionately gain in intensity: thus here, in the narrative of the cure of a man who had been lame thirty-eight years, it has far surpassed all the synoptical accounts of cures performed on persons with diseased limbs, among whom the longest sufferer is described in Luke xiii ii, only as a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. Without doubt the fourth Evangelist had received some inti’ mation (though, as we have gathered from other parts of his history, it was far from precise) of cures of this nature performed by Jesus, especially of that wrought on the paralytic, Matt ix. 2 ff parall, for the address to the patient, and the result of the cure are in this narrative in John almost verbally the same as in that case, especially according to Mark’s account There is even a vestige in this history of John, of the circumstance that in the synoptical narrative the cure appears in the light of a forgiveness of sins: for as Jesus in the latter consoles the patient, before the cure, with the assurance, thy sins are forgiven thee, so in the former, he warns him, after the cure, in the words, sin no more, etc. For the rest, this highly embellished history of a miraculous cure was represented as happening on the sabbath, probably because the command to take up the bed which it contained appeared the most suitable occasion for the reproach of violating the sabbath.

§ IOO.

RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.

The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.

The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt ix. 18 f. 23 — 26; Mark v. 22 ff.; Luke viii. 41 ff.). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally as âpuv cîç a certain ruler, without any name; the two others as a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describes the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and “Mark ii. 9: (H — cÙKow&repow, John v. 8: tyeipai, àpowrbv Kpdpparàp cov, elweîp — ) fyeipcu, k«U âpàp cov T6P Kpdp- KOI reptTarci. parop Kal TepiTdrei; 11 — : — ëyeipa koI âpop T&P Kpdpparb ffov kcU (hraye elf rbv OIK&P <TOV. fiarop e%rj\0cp cpoptIqp Tdrrw.

12 — : teal ijyépBy} eùâéws, teal &pas T6P Kpdfi- 9: K<xl cùBiun èyépero ùyify 6 drâpetrot, Kcd 1jpe T6P Kpdpparop aùrov teal repmrdiret.

Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.  But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthew aprt IrcXcvnprc mean, as Kuinol maintains, est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark, &rxara>ç cct, or of Luke an’cPviprjcc, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.

Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;  while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.  Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable’one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;A the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:  and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel of Nicodemas. Luke’s fwvoyevip (one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and the krw Su&Ka twelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance in treated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he dues more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language; — can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words as 17 mûç iyelpov, maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard the raXxOa kov/u of Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to the aJBa in the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.

In relation to the facts of the case, the natural interpretation speaks with more than its usual confidence, under the persuasion that it has on its side the assurance of Jesus himself, that the maiden was not really dead, but merely in a sleep-like swoon; and not only rationalists, like Paulus, and semi-rationa- lists, like Schleiermacher, but also decided supranaturalists, like Olshausen, believe, on the strength of that declaration of Jesus, that this was no resuscitation of the dead. The last-named commentator attaches especial importance to the antithesis in the speech of Jesus, and because the words owe &.irWav€) is not dead\ are followed by ôAÀà KaÔtvfei, but sleepeth, is of opinion that the former expression cannot be interpreted to mean merely, she is not dead, since I have resolved to restore her to life; strange criticism, — for it is precisely this addition which shows that she was only not dead in so far as it was in the power of Jesus to recall her to life. Reference is also made to the declaration of Jesus concerning Lazarus, John xi. 14, Aa£apo$ àW0àvc, Lazarus is dead\ which is directly the reverse of the passage in question, ovk air<0avc to Kopda-iov, the damsel is not dead. But Jesus had before said of Lazarus, avrq tf dcrOtvcm OVK ûrn vpoç Odvarov, this sickness is not unto death (v. 4), and Aa£apoç o <f>t’Aoç ij/wov jcckoi/mcu, our friend Lazarus sleepeth (v. 11). Thus in the case of Lazarus also, who was really dead, we have just as direct a denial of death, and affirmation of mere sleep, as in the narrative before us. Hence Fritzsche is undoubtedly right when he paraphrases the words of Jesus in our passage as follows: pueüam ne pro mortua habetote, sed dormire existimatote quippe in vitam mox redituram. Moreover, Matthew subsequently (xi. 5) makes Jesus say, vcKpol fyctpovrcu, the dead are raised up; and as he mentions no other instance of resuscitation by Jesus, he must apparently have had this in his mind.

But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless J esus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:  to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions, iKpdrq<r€ rrp \tipos avnjç, he took her by the hand, and rpfipBij TO Kopdxrtov, the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the words ctôca  and mpaxfnjfia in the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.  Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.

In the case cf resuscitation narrated by Luke alone (vii. 11 ff.) the natural explanation has not such a handle as was presented by the declaration of Jesus in the narrative just considered. Nevertheless, the rationalistic commentators take courage, and rest their hopes mainly on the circumstance that Jesus speaks to the young man lying in the coffin (v. 14). Now, say they, no one would speak to a dead person, but only to such an one as is ascertained or guessed to be capable of hearing.  But this rule would prove that all the dead whom Christ will raise at the last day are only apparently dead, as otherwise they could not hear his voice, which it is expressly said they will do (John v. 28; comp. 1 Thess iv. 16); it would therefore prove too much. Certainly one who is spoken to must be supposed to hear, and in a certain sense to be living; but in the present instance this holds only in so far as the voice of him who quickens the dead can penetrate even to the ears from which life has departed. We must indeed admit the possibility that with the bad custom which prevailed among the Jews of burying their dead a few hours after their decease, a merely apparent corpse might easily be carried to the grave;  but all by which it is attempted to show that this possibility was here a reality, is a tissue of fictions. In order to explain how Jesus, even without any intention to perform a miracle, came to join the funeral procession, and how the conjecture could occur to him that the individual about to be buried was not really dead, it is first imagined that the two processions, that of the funeral and that of the companions of Jesus, met precisely under the gate of the city, and as they impeded each other, halted for a while: — directly in opposition to the text, which makes the bearers first stand still when Jesus touches the bier. Affected by the peculiar circumstances of the case, which he had learned during the pause in his progress, Jesus, it is said, approached the mother, and not with any reference to a resurrection which he intended to effect, but merely as a consolatory address, said to her, Weep noi ls But what an empty, presuming comforter would he be, who, when a mother was about to consign her only son to the grave, should forbid her even the relief of tears, without offering to her either real help by recalling the departed one, or ideal, by suggesting grounds for consolation! Now the latter Jesus does not attempt: hence unless we would allow him to appear altogether heartless, he must be supposed to have resolved on the former, and for this he in fact makes every preparation, designedly touching the bier, and causing the bearers to stand still. Here, before the reanimating word of Jesus, the natural explanation inserts the circumstance that Jesus observed some sign of life in the youth, and on this, either immediately or after a previous application of medicaments,  spoke the words, which helped completely to awake him. But setting aside the fact that those intervening measures are only interpolated into the text, and that the strong words: vcavwr/cc, <rol Xeyoo, lytpdrjTL, Young man, I say unto thee arise! resemble rather the authoritative command of a miracle worker than the attempt of a physician to restore animation; how, if Jesus were conscious that the youth was alive when he met him, and was not first recalled to life by himself, could he with a good conscience receive the praise which, according to the narrative, the multitude lavished on him as a great prophet on account of this deed? According to Paulus, he was himself uncertain how he ought to regard the result; but if he were not convinced that he ought to ascribe the result to himself, it was his duty to disclaim all praise on account of it; and if he omitted to do this, his conduct places him in an equivocal light, in which he by no mean3 appears in the other evangelical histories, so far as they are fairly interpreted. Thus here also we must acknowledge that the Evangelist intends to narrate to us a miraculous resuscitation of the dead, and that according to him, Jesus also regarded his deed as a miracle.

In the third history of a resurrection, which is peculiar to John (chap xi.), the resuscitated individual is neither just dead nor being carried to his grave, but has been already buried several days. Here one would have thought there was little hope of effecting a natural explanation; but the arduousness of the task has only stimulated the ingenuity and industry of the rationalists in developing their conception of this narrative. We shall also see that together with the rigorously consequent mode of interpretation of the rationalists, — which, maintaining the historical integrity of the evangelical narrative throughout, assumes the responsibility of explaining every part naturally, there has appeared another system, which distinguishes certain features of the narrative as additions after the event, and is thus an advance towards the mythical explanation.

The rationalistic expositors set out here from the same premises as in the former narrative, namely, that it is in itself possible for a man who has lain in a tomb four days to come to life again, and that this possibility is strengthened in the present instance by the known custom of the Jews; propositions which we shall not abstractedly controvert. From this they proceed to a supposition which we perhaps ought not to let pass so easily,  namely, that from the messenger whom the sisters had sent with the news of their brother’s illness, Jesus had obtained accurate information of the circumstances of the disease; and the answer which he gave to the messenger, This sickness is not unto death (v. 4), is said to express, merely as an inference which he had drawn from the report of the messenger, his conviction that the disease was not fatal. Such a view of his friend’s condition would certainly accord the best with his conduct in remaining two days in Peræa after the reception of the message (v. 6); since, according to that supposition, he could not regard his presence in Bethany as a matter of urgent necessity. But how comes it that after the lapse of these two days, he not only resolves to journey thither (v. 8), but also has quite a different opinion of the state of Lazarus, nay, certain knowledge of his death, which he first obscurely (v. 10) and then plainly (v. 14) announces to his disciples? Here the thread of the natural explanation is lost, and the break is only rendered more conspicuous by the fiction of a second messenger,* after the lapse of two days, bringing word to Jesus that Lazarus had expired in the interim. For the author of the gospel at least cannot have known of a second messenger, otherwise he must have mentioned him, since the omission to do so gives another aspect to the whole narrative, obliging us to infer that Jesus had obtained information of the death of Lazarus in a supernatural manner. Jesus, when he had resolved to go to Bethany, said to the disciples, Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that 1 may awake him out of sleep (KtKolfjuffrat — c(virvi<ru — v. 11); this the naturalists explain by the supposition that Jesus must in some way have gathered from the statements of the messengers who announced the death of Lazarus, that the latter was only in a state of lethargy. But we can as little here as in the former case impute to Jesus the foolish presumption of giving, before he had even seen the alleged corpse, the positive assurance that he yet lived. From this point of view, it is also a difficulty that Jesus says to his disciples (v. 15) Jam glad for your sakes that J was not there, to the intent ye may believe (îva iriarevarp-t). Paulus explains these words to imply that Jesus feared lest the death, had it happened in his presence, might have shaken their faith in him; but, as Gabier  bas remarked, vurrcvv cannot mean merely the negative: not to lose faith, which would rather have been expressed by a phrase such as: tva prj iicktCvy rj rurriç vfiûv, that your faith fail not (see Luke xxii. 32); and moreover we nowhere find that the idea which the disciples formed of Jesus as the Messiah was incompatible with the death of a man, or, more correctly, of a friend, in his presence.

From the arrival of Jesus in Bethany the evangelical narrative is somewhat more favourable to the natural explanation. It is true that Martha’s address to Jesus (v. 21 f.), Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died, but I know that even now, whatsoeiter thou wilt ask of God, he will give it thee, àWà Kal vvv oTSa, oti, o<ra âv alnyoyj rov Otov, Swartt <roi o Otoç, appears evidently to express the hope that Jesus may be able even to recall the dead one to life. However, on the assurance of Jesus which follows, Thy brother shall rise again, wcurnyo-eTcu o <z8cA.«£<k <rov, she answers despondingly, Yes, at the last day. This is certainly a help to the natural explanation, for it seems retrospectively to give to the above declaration of Martha (v. 22) the general sense, that even now, although he has not preserved the life of her brother, she believes Jesus to be him to whom God grants all that he desires, that is, the favourite of the Deity, the Messiah. But the expression which Martha there uses is not irtcrrtvu but oîSa, and the turn of phrase: I know that this will happen if thou only wiliest it to be so, is a common but indirect form of petition, and is here the more unmistakable, because the object of the entreaty is clearly indicated by the foregoing antithesis. Martha evidently means, Thou hast not indeed prevented the death of our brother, but even now it is not too late, for at thy prayer God will restore him to thee and us. Martha’s change of mind, from the hope which is but indirectly expressed in her first reply (v. 24) to its extinction in the second, cannot be held very surprising in a woman who here and elsewhere manifests a very hasty disposition, and it is in the present case sufficiently explained by the form of the foregoing assurance of Jesus (v. 23). Martha had expected that Jesus would reply to her indirect prayer by a decided promise of its fulfilment, and when he answers quite generally and with an expression which it was usual to apply to the resurrection at the last day (dvcumprercu), she gives a half-impatient half-desponding reply. But that general declaration of Jesus, as well as the yet more indefinite one (v. 25 f.\ lam the resurrection and the life, is thought favourable to the rationalistic view: Jesus, it is said, was yet far from the expectation of an extraordinary result, hence he consoles Martha merely with the general hope that he, the Messiah, would procure for those who believed in him a future resurrection and a life of blessedness. As however Jesus had before (v. 11) spoken confidently to his disciples of awaking Lazarus, he must then have altered his opinion in the interim — a change for which no cause is apparent. Further, when (v. 40) Jesus is about to awake Lazarus, he says to Martha, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God? evidently alluding to v. 23, in which therefore he must have meant to predict the resurrection which he was going to effect That he does not declare this distinctly, and that he again veils the scarcely uttered promise in relation to the brother (v. 25) in general promises for the believing, is the effect of design, the object of which is to try the faith of Martha, and extend her sphere of thought.

When Mary at length comes out of the house with her companions, her weeping moves Jesus himself to tears. To this circumstance the natural interpretation appeals with unusual confidence, asking whether if he were already certain of his friend’s resurrection, he would not have approached his grave with the most fervent joy, since he was conscious of being able to call * Flatt, ut sup. 102 f.; De Wette, in loc.; Neander, s. 351 f.

 Flatt, ut sup.; Liicke, Tholuck and De Wette, in loc. him again living from the grave in the next moment? In this view the words IvtfiptfjafrraTo (v. 33) and luPpiputfiwos (v. 38) are understood of a forcible repression of the sorrow caused by the death of his friend, which subsequently found vent in tears (&utpv<rcy). But both by its etymology, according to which it signifies fremere in aliquem or in se, and by the analogy of its use in the New Testament, where it appears only in the sense of increpare aliquem (Matt ix. 30; Mark i. 43, xiv. 5), iftftpipatrOai is determined to imply an emotion of anger, not of sorrow; where it is united, not with the dative of another person, but with r<5 nrcv/uirt and iv iavr<j>, it must be understood of a silent, suppressed displeasure. This sense would be very appropriate in v. 38, where it occurs the second time; for in the foregoing observation of the Jews, Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not haite died f there lies an intimation that they were scandalized, the prior conduct of Jesus perplexing them as to his present demeanour, and vice versâ. But where the word ippptpwcrtiai is first used v. 33, the general weeping seems to have been likely to excite in Jesus a melancholy, rather than an angry emotion: yet even here a strong disapproval of the want of faith (dXiyomrrui) which was manifested was not impossible. That Jesus then himself broke out into tears, only proves that his indignation against the faithless generation around him dissolved into melancholy, not that melancholy was his emotion from the beginning. Lastly, that the Jews (v. 36) in relation to the tears which Jesus shed, said among themselves, Behold, how he loved him! appears to be rather against than for those who regard the emotion of Jesus as sorrow for the death of his friend, and sympathy with the sisters; for, as the character of the narrative of John in general would rather lead us to expect an opposition between the real import of the demeanour of Jesus, and the interpretation put upon it by the spectators, so in particular the Jews in this gospel are always those who either misunderstand or pervert the words and actions of Jesus. It is true that the mild character of Jesus is urged, as inconsistent with the harshness which displeasure on his part at the very natural weeping of Mary and the rest would imply; but such a mode of thinking is by no means foreign to the Christ of John’s gospel. He who gave to the /SacriAticoç, when preferring the inoffensive request that he would come to his house and heal his son, the rebuke, Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe; he who, when some of his disciples murmured at the hard doctrines of the sixth chapter, assailed them with the cutting question, Doth this offend you? and Will je also go away? (vi 61, 67); he who repulsed his own mother, when at the wedding at Cana she complained to him of the want of wine, with the harsh Teply, What have I to do with thee, Woman? (ii. 4) — who thus was always the most displeased when men, not comprehending his higher mode of thought or action, showed themselves desponding or importunate, — would here find peculiar reason (or this kind of displeasure. If this be the true interpretation of the passage, and if it be not sorrow for the death of Lazarus which Jesus here exhibits, there is an end to the assistance which the natural explanation of the entire event is thought to derive from this particular feature; meanwhile, even on the other interpretation, a momentary emotion produced by sympathy with the mourners is quite reconcilable with the foreknowledge of the resurrection.* And how could the words of the Jews v. 37, serve, as rationalistic commentators think, to excite in Jesus the hope that God would now perhaps perform something extraordinary for him? The #i Lücke, 2, s. 388.

 Flatt, ut sup s. 104 f.; Lücke, ut sup.

Jews did not express the hope that he could awake the dead, but only the conjecture that he might perhaps have been able to preserve his friend’s life; Martha therefore had previously said more when she declared her belief that even now the Father would grant him what he asked; so that if such hopes were excited in Jesus from without, they must have been excited earlier, and especially before the weeping of Jesus, to which it is customary to appeal as the proof that they did not yet exist Even supranaturalists admit tnat the expression of Martha when Jesus commanded that the stone should be taken away from the grave, Ku/xc, 17&7 ofa (v. 39), is no proof at all that decomposition had really commenced, nor consequently that a natural resuscitation was impossible, since it may have been a mere inference from the length of time since the burial But more weight roust be attached to the words with which Jesus, repelling the objections of Martha, persists in having the tomb opened (v. 40): Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God f How could he say this unless he was decidedly conscious of his power to resuscitate Lazarus? According to Paulus, this declaration only implied generally that those who have faith will, in some way or other, experience a glorious manifestation of the divinity. But what glorious manifestation of the divinity was to be seen here, on the opening of the grave of one who had been buried four days, unless it were his restoration to life? and what could be the sense of the words of Jesus, as opposed to the observation of Martha, that her brother was already within the grasp of decay, but that he was empowered to arrest decay? But in order to learn with certainty the meaning of the words rrjv âo&u’ rov Btov in our present passage we need only refer to v. 4, where Jesus had said that the sickness of Lazarus was not unto death, vpoç Odvarov, but for the glory of God, vrrtp rÇç rov 6 ov. Here the first member of the antithesis, not unto death, clearly shows that the 3o£a rov 0<ou signifies the glorification of God by the life of Lazarus, that is, since he was now dead, by his resurrection: a hope which Jesus could not venture to excite in the roost, critical moment, without having a superior assurance that it would be fulfilled. After the opening of the grave, and before he says to the dead man, Come forth / he thanks the Father for having heard his prayer. This is adduced, in the rationalistic point of view, as the most satisfactory proof that he did not first recall Lazarus to life by those words, but on looking into the grave found him already alive again. Truly, such an argument was not to be expected from theologians who have some insight into the character of John’s gospel. These ought to have remembered how common it is in this gospel, as for example in the expression glorify thy son9 to represent that which is yet to be effected or which is only just begun, as already performed; and in the present instance it is especially suited to mark the certainty of obtaining fulfilment, that it is spoken of as having already happened. And what invention does it further require to explain, both how Jesus could perceive in Lazarus the evidences of returning life, and how the latter could have come to life again! Between the removal of the stone, says Paulus, and the thanksgiving of Jesus, lies the critical interval when the surprising result was accomplished; then must Jesus, yet some steps removed from the grave, have discerned that Lazarus was living. By what means? and how so quickly and unhesitatingly? and why did he and no one else discern it? He may have discerned it by the movements of Lazarus, it is conjectured. But how easily might he deceive himself with respect to a dead body lying in a dark cavern: how precipitate was he, if without having examined more nearly, he so quickly and decidedly declared his conviction that Lazarus lived! Or, if the’ movements of the supposed corpse were strong and not to be mistaken, how could they escape the notice of the surrounding spectators? Lastly, how could Jesus in his prayer represent the incident about to take place as a sign of his divine mission, if he was conscious that he had not effected, but only discovered, the resuscitation of Lazarus? As arguments for the natural possibility of a return of life in a man who had been interred four days, the rationalistic explanation adduces our ignorance of the particular circumstances of the supposed death, the rapidity of interment among the Jews, afterwards the coolness of the cave, the strong fragrance of the spices, and lastly, the reanimating draught of warm air, which on the rolling away of the stone streamed into the cave. But all these circumstances do not produce more than the lowest degree of possibility, which coincides with the highest degree of improbability: and with this the certainty with which Jesus predicts the result must remain irreconcilable.

These decided predictions are indeed the main hindrance to the natural interpretation of this chapter; hence it has been sought to neutralize them, still from the rationalistic position, by the supposition that they did not proceed from Jesus, but may have been added ex eventu by the narrator. Paulus himself found the words cfwmo-co avrov (v. 11) quite too decided, and therefore ventured the conjecture that the narrator, writing with the result in his mind, had omitted a qualifying perhaps, which Jesus had inserted. This expedient has been more extensively adopted by Gabier. Not only does he partake the opinion of Paulus as to the above expression, but already in v. 4, he is inclined to lay the words \nrkp rvjs Sofrp tov Ocov for the glory of God\ to the account of the Evangelist: again v. 15, he conjectures that in the words yaipiû hC vfias, iva vurrtwrrjrt, ori ovk rjfirpr IkcI, J am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe, there is a slight exaggeration resulting from John’s knowledge of the issue; lastly, even in relation to the words of Martha v. 22, dWà Kal vvv oUa k r. A. he admits the idea of an addition from the pen of the writer. By the adoption of this expedient, the natural interpretation avows its inability by itself to cope with the difficulties in John’s narrative. For if, in order to render its application possible, it is necessary to expunge the most significant passages, it is plain that the narrative in its actual state does not admit of a natural explanation. It is true that the passages, the incompatibility of which with the rationalistic mode of explanation is confessed by their excision, are very sparingly chosen; but from the above observations it is clear, that if all the features in this narrative which are really opposed to the natural view of the entire event were ascribed to the Evangelist, it would in the end be little short of the whole that must be regarded as his invention. Thus, what we have done with the two first narratives of resuscitations, is with the last and most remarkable history of this kind, effected by the various successive attempts at explanation themselves, namely, to reduce the subject to the alternative: that we either receive the event as supernatural, according to the representation of the evangelical narrative; or, * Compare on this subject, especially Flatt and Liicke.

 Comm. 4, s. 437; in the L. J. I, b, s. 57, and 2, b, s. 46, this conjecture is no longer employed.

“Ut sup s. 272ff. Even Neander shows himself not disinclined to such a conjecture as far as regards v. 4 (s. 349)- As Gabier believes that these expressions cannot have come from Jesus, but only from John, so Dieffenbach, in Bertholdt’s Krit. Journal, 5, s. 7 £f., maintains that they cannot have proceeded from John, and as he holds that the rest of the gospel is the production of that apostle, he pronounces those passages to be interpolations. if we find it incredible as such, deny that the narrative has an historical character.

In order, in this dilemma, to arrive at a decision, with respect to all the three narratives, we must refer to the peculiar character of the kind of miracles which we have now before us. We have hitherto been ascending a ladder of miracles; first, cures of mental disorders, then, of all kinds of bodily maladies, in which, however, the organization of the sufferer was not so injured as to cause the cessation of consciousness and life; and now, the revivification of bodies, from which the life has actually departed. This progression in the marvellous is, at the same time, a gradation in inconceivability. We have indeed been able to represent to ourselves how a mental derangement, in which none of the bodily organs were attacked beyond the nervous system, which is immediately connected with mental action, might have been removed, even in a purely psychical manner, by the mere word, look, and influence of Jesus: but the more deeply the malady appeared to have penetrated into the entire corporeal system, the more inconceivable to us was a cure of this kind. Where in insane persons the brain was disturbed to the extent of raging madness, or where in nervous patients the disorder was so confirmed as to manifest itself in periodical epilepsy; there we could scarcely imagine how permanent benefit could be conferred by that mental influence; and this was yet more difficult where the disease had no immediate connection with the mind, as in leprosy, blindness, lameness, etc. And yet, up to this point, there was always something present, to which the miraculous power of Jesus could apply itself; there was still a consciousness in the objects, on which to make an impression — a nervous life to be stimulated. Not so with the dead. The corpse from which life and consciousness have flown has lost the last fulcrum for the power of the miracle worker; it perceives him no longer — receives no impression from him; for the very capability of receiving impressions must be conferred on him anew. But to confer this, that is, to give life in the proper sense, is a creative act, and to think of this as being exercised by a man, we must confess to be beyond our power.

But even within the limits of our three histories of resurrections, there is an evident climax. Woolston has remarked with justice, that it seems as if each of these narratives were intended to supply what was wanting in the preceding. The daughter of Jairus is restored to life on the same bed on which she had just expired; the youth of Nain, when already in his coffin, and on his way to interment; lastly, Lazarus, after four days’ abode in the tomb. In the first history, a word was the only intimation that the maiden had fallen under the powers of the grave; in the second, the fact is imprinted on the imagination also, by the picture of the young man being already carried out of the city towards his grave; but in the third, Lazarus, who had been some time inclosed in the grave, is depicted in the strongest manner as an inhabitant of the nether world: so that, if the reality of the death could be doubted in the first instance, this would become more difficult in the second, and in the third, as good as impossible. With this gradation, there is a corresponding increase in the difficulty of rendering the three events conceivable; if, indeed, when the fact itself is inconceivable, there can exist degrees of inconceivableness between its various modifications. If, however, the resurrection of a dead person in general were possible, it must rather be possible in the case of one just departed, and yet having some remains of vital warmth, than in that of a corpse, cold and being carried to the grave; and again, in this, rather than in the case of one who had already lain four days in the grave, and in which decay is supposed to have commenced, nay, with respect to which, this supposition, if not confirmed, is at least not denied.

But, setting aside the miraculous part of the histories in question, each succeeding one is both intrinsically more improbable, and externally less attested, than the foregoing. As regards the internal improbability, one element of this, which indeed lies in all, and therefore also in the first, is especially conspicuous in the second. As a motive by which Jesus was induced to raise the young man at Nain, the narrative mentions compassion for the mother (v. 13). Together with this we are to include, according to Olshausen, a reference to the young man himself. For, he observes, man as a conscious being can never be treated as a mere instrument, which would be the case here, if the joy of the mother were regarded as the sole object of Jesus in raising the youth. This remark of Olshausen demands our thanks, not that it removes the difficulty of this and every other resuscitation of the dead, but that it exhibits that difficulty in the clearest light. For the conclusion, that what in itself, or according to enlightened ideas, is not allowable or fitting, cannot be ascribed to Jesus by the Evangelists, is totally inadmissible. We should rather (presupposing the purity of the character of Jesus) conclude that when the evangelical narratives ascribe to him what is not allowable, they are incorrect. Now that Jesus, in his resuscitations of the dead, made it a consideration whether the persons to be restored to life might, from the spiritual condition in which they died, derive advantage from the restoration or the contrary, we find no indication; that, as Olshausen supposes, the corporeal awakening was attended with a spiritual awakening, or that such a result was expected, is nowhere said. These resuscitated individuals, not excepting even Lazarus, recede altogether from our observation after their return to life, and hence Woolston was led to ask why Jesus rescued from the grave precisely these insignificant persons, and not rather John the Baptist,’or some other generally useful man. Is it said, he knew it to be the will of Providence that these men, once dead, should remain so? But then, it should seem, he must have thought the same of all who had once died, and to Woolston’s objection there remains no answer but this: as it was positively known concerning celebrated men, that the breach which their deaths occasioned was never filled up by their restoration to life, legend could not annex the resurrections which she was pleased to narrate to such names, but must choose unknown subjects, in relation to which she was not under the same control.

The above difficulty is common to all the three narratives, and is only rendered more prominent in the second by an accidental expression: but the third narrative is full of difficulties entirely peculiar to itself, since the conduct of Jesus throughout, and, to a considerable extent, that of the other parties, is not easily to be conceived. When Jesus receives the information of the death of Lazarus, and the request of the sisters implied therein, that he would come to Bethany, he remains still two days in the same place, and does not set out toward Judea till after he is certain of the death. Why so? That it was not because he thought the illness attended with no danger, has been already shown; on the contrary, he foresaw the death of Lazarus. That indifference was not the cause of the delay, is expressly remarked by the Evangelist (v. 5). What then? Lücke conjectures that Jesus was then occupied with a particularly fruitful ministry in Peræa, which he was not willing to interrupt for the sake of Lazarus, holding it his duty to postpone his less important call as a worker of miracles and a succouring friend, to his higher M 1, s. 276 f. call as a teacher. But he might here have very well done the one, and not have left the other undone; he might either have left some disciples to carry forward his work in that country, or remaining there himself, have still cured Lazarus, whether through the medium of a disciple, or by the power of his will at a distance. Moreover, our narrator is entirely silent as to such a cause for the delay of Jesus. This view of it, therefore, can be listened to only on the supposition that no other motive for the delay is intimated by the Evangelist, and even then as nothing more than a conjecture. Now another motive is clearly indicated, as Olshausen has remarked, in the declaration of Jesus, v. 15, that he is glad he was not present at the death of Lazarus, because, for the object of strengthening the faith of the disciples, the resurrection of his friend would be more effectual than his cure. Thus Jesus had designedly allowed Lazarus to die, that by his miraculous restoration to life, he might procure so much the more faith in himself. Tholuck and Olshausen on the whole put the same construction on this declaration of Jesus; but they confine themselves too completely to the moral point of view, when they speak of Jesus as designing, in his character of teacher, to perfect the spiritual condition of the family at Bethany and of his disciples;  since, according to expressions, such as tva 8o£ci<rûÿ o vioç t. 0. (v. 4), his design was rather the messianic one of spreading and confirming faith in himself as the Son of God, though principally, it is true, within that narrow circle. Here Lücke exclaims: by no means 1 never did the Saviour of the needy, the noblest friend of man, act thus arbitrarily and capriciously; and De Wette also observes, that Jesus in no other instance designedly brings about or increases his miracles. The former, as we have seen, concludes that something external, preoccupation elsewhere, detained Jesus; a supposition which is contrary to the text, and which even De Wette finds inadequate, though he points out no other expedient. If then these critics are correct in maintaining that the real Jesus cannot have acted thus; while, on the other hand, they are incorrect in denying that the author of the fourth gospel makes his Jesus act thus: nothing remains but with the author of the Probabilia, from this incongruity of the Christ in John’s gospel with the Christ alone conceivable as the real one, to conclude that the narrative of the fourth Evangelist is unhistoricaL

The alleged conduct of the disciples also, v. 12 f., is such as to excite surprise. If Jesus had represented to them, or at least to the three principal among them, the death of the daughter of Jairus as a mere sleep, how could they, when he said of Lazarus, he sleeps, I will awake him, KtKoCfirfrat, c£inrvurui avrov, think that he referred to a natural sleep? -One would not awake a patient out of a healthy sleep; hence it must have immediately occurred to the disciples that here sleep (koi/«7oxç) was spoken of in the same sense as in the case of the maiden. That, instead of this, the disciples understand the deep expressions of Jesus quite superficially, is entirely in the fourth Evangelist’s favourite manner, which we have learned to recognise by many examples. If tradition had in any way made known to him, that to speak of death as a sleep was part of the customary phraseology of Jesus, there would immediately spring up in his imagination, so fertile in this kind of antithesis, a misunderstanding corresponding to that figure of speech.

* * Comm. 2, s. 376. Also Neander, s. 346.

* * Tholuck, s. 202; Olshausen, 2, s. 26a  Ut sup.

 Andachtsbuch, 1, s. 292 f. Exeg. Handb. I, 3, s. 134.

M S. 59 f. 79.

40 — Comp, de Wette, exeg. Handb. 1, 3, s. 135.

The observation of the Jews, v. 37, is scarcely conceivable, presupposing the truth of the synoptical resuscitations of the dead. The Jews appeal to the cure of the man born blind (John ix.), and draw the inference, that he who had restored sight to this individual, must surely have been able to avert the death of Lazarus. How came they to refer to this heterogeneous and inadequate example, if there lay before them, in the two resuscitations of the dead, miracles more analogous, and adapted to give hope even in this case of actual death? It is certain that the Galilean resuscitations were prior to this of Lazarus, since Jesus after this period went no more into Galilee; neither could those events remain unknown in the capital,  especially as we are are expressly told that the fame of them went abroad into all that land\ throughout all Judœa, and throughout all the country round about. To the real Jews therefore these cases must have been well known; and as the fourth Evangelist makes his Jews refer to something less to the point, it is probable that he knew nothing of the above events: for that the reference belongs to him, and not to the Jews themselves, is evident from the fact, that he makes them refer to the very cure which he had last narrated.

A formidable difficulty lies also in the prayer which is put into the mouth of Jesus, v. 41 f. After thanking the Father for hearing his prayer, he adds, that for himself he knew well that the Father heard him always, and that he uttered this special thanksgiving only for the sake of the people around him, in order to obtain their belief in his divine mission. Thus he first gives his address a relation to God, and afterwards reduces this relation to a feigned one, intended to exist only in the conceptions of the people. Nor is the sense of the words such as Liicke represents it, namely, that Jesus for his own part would have prayed in silence, but for the benefit of the people uttered his prayer aloud (for in the certainty of fulfilment there lies no motive for silent prayer); they imply that for himself he had no need to thank the Father for a single result, as if surprised, since he was sure beforehand of having his wish granted, so that the wish and the thanks were coincident; that is, to speak generally, his relation to the Father did not consist in single acts of prayer, fulfilment, and thanks, but in a continual and permanent interchange of these reciprocal functions, in which no single act of gratitude in and by itself could be distinguished in this manner. If it may be admitted that in relation to the necessities of the people, and out of sympathy with them, such an isolated act could have taken place on the part of Jesus; yet, if there be any truth in this explanation, Jesus must have been entirely borne away by sympathy, must have made the position of the people his own, and thus in that moment have prayed from his own impulse, and on his own behalf. But, here, scarcely has he begun to pray when the reflection arises that he does this from no need of his own; he prays therefore from no lively feeling, but out of cold accommodation, and this must be felt difficult to conceive, nay, even revolting. He who in this manner prays solely for the edification of others, ought in no case to tell them that he prays from their point of view, not from his own; since an audible prayer cannot make any impression on the hearers, unless they suppose the speaker’s whole soul to be engaged. How then could Jesus make his prayer ineffective by this addition? If he felt impelled to lay before God a confession of the true state of the case, he might have done this in silence; that he uttered the confession aloud, and that we in consequence read it, could only happen on a calculation of advantage to later Christendom, to the readers of the gospel. While the thanksgiving was, for obvious reasons, needful to awake the faith of the spectators, the more developed faith which the fourth gospel presupposes, might regard it as a difficulty; because it might possibly appear to proceed from a too subordinate, and more particularly, a too little constant relation between the Father and the Son. Consequently the prayer which was necessary for the hearers, must be annulled for readers of a later period, or its value restricted to that of a mere accommodation. But this consideration cannot have been present in the mind of Jesus: it could belong only to a Christian who lived later. This has been already felt by one critic, who has hence proposed to throw v. 42 out of the text, as an unauthenticated addition by a latter hand. But as this judgment is destitute of any external reason, if the above passage could not have been uttered by Jesus, we must conclude that the Evangelist only lent the words to Jesus in order to explain the preceding, v. 41; and 10 this opinion Liicke has shown himself not altogether disinclined. Assuredly we have here words, which are only lent to Jesus by the Evangelist: but if it be so with these words, what is our security that it is so only with these? In a gospel in which we have already detected many discourses to be merely lent to the alleged speakers — in a narrative which presents historical improbabilities at all points, — the difficulty contained in a single verse is not a sign that that verse does not belong to the rest, but that the whole taken together does not belong to the class of historical compositions.

As regards the gradation in the external testimony to the three narratives, it has already been justly observed by Woolston, that only the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, in which the miraculous is the least marked, appears in three Evangelists; the two others are each related by one Evangelist only:  and as it is far less easy to understand the omission in the other gospels in relation to the resurrection of Lazarus, than in relation to the raising of the youth at Nain, there is here again a complete climax.

That the last-named event is mentioned by the author of Luke’s gospel alone especially that Matthew and Mark have it not instead of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, or together with that narrative, — is a difficulty in more than one respect. Even viewed generally as a resuscitation of a dead person, one would have thought, as there were few of such miracles according to our gospels, and as they are highly calculated to carry conviction, it could not have been too much trouble to the Evangelists to recount it as a second instance; especially as Matthew has thought it worth while, for example, to narrate three cures of blindness, which nevertheless were of far less importance, and of which, therefore, he might have spared two, inserting instead of them either one or the other of the remaining resuscitations of the dead. But admitting that the two first Evangelists had some reason, no longer to be discovered, for not giving more than one history of a resurrection, they ought, one must think, to have chosen that of the youth at Nain far rather than that of the daughter of Jairus, because the former, as we have above observed, was a more indubitable and striking resurrection. As nevertheless they give only the latter, Matthew at least can have known nothing of the others; Mark, it is true, probably had it before him in Luke, but he had, as early as iii. 7, or 20, leaped from Luke vi. 12 (17) to Matt xii. 15; and only at 35 (I ft) returns to Luke viii. 22 (16 ff.); thus passing over the resurrection of the youfh (Luke vii. 11 ft). But now arises the second question: how can the resurrection of the youth, if ‘it really happened, have remained unknown to the author of the first gospel? Even apart from the supposition that this gospel had an apostolic origin, this question is fraught with no less difficulty than the former. Besides the people, there were present many of his disciples, fmOvfral ucavol; the place, Nain, according to the account which Josephus gives of its position relative to Mount Tabor, cannot have been far from the ordinary Galilean theatre of the ministry of Jesus;  lastly, the fame of the event, as was natural, was widely disseminated (v. 17). Schleiermacher is of opinion that the authors of the first sketches from the life of Jesus, not being within the apostolic circle, did not generally venture to apply to the much occupied apostles, but rather sought the friends of Jesus of the second order, and in doing so they naturally turned to those places where they might hope for the richest harvests, — to Capernaum and Jerusalem; events which, like the resuscitation in question, occuired in other places, could not so easily become common property. But first, this conception of the case is too subjective, making the promulgation of the most important deeds of Jesus, dependent on the researches of amateurs and collectors of anecdotes, who went about gleaning, like Papias, at a later period; secondly, (and these two objections are essentially connected,) there lies at its foundation the erroneous idea that such histories were fixed, like inert bodies once fallen to the ground, in the places to which they belonged, guarded there as lifeless treasures, and only exhibited to those who took the trouble to resort to the spot: instead of which, they were rather like the light-winged inhabitants of the air, flying far away from the place which gave them birth, roaming everywhere, and not seldom losing all association with their original locality. We see the same thing happen daily; inumerable histories, both true and false, are represented as having occurred at the most widely different places. Such a narrative, once formed, is itself the substance, the alleged locality, the accident: by no means can the locality be the substance, to which the narrative is united as the accident, as it would follow from Schleier- macher’s supposition. Since then it cannot well be conceived that an incident of this kind, if it really happened, could remain foreign to the general tradition, and hence unknown to the author of the first gospel: the fact of this author’s ignorance of the incident gives rise to a suspicion that it did not really happen.

But this ground of doubt falls with incomparably greater weight, on the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus in the fourth gospel. If the authors or collectors of the three first gospels knew of this, they could not, for more than one reason, avoid introducing it into their writings. For, first, of all the resuscitations effected by Jesus, nay, of all his miracles, this resurrection of Lazarus, if not the most wonderful, is yet the one in which the marvellous presents itself the most obviously and strikingly, and which therefore, if its historical reality can be established, is a pre-eminently strong proof of the extraordinary endowments of Jesus as a divine messenger;U whence the 48 — Saunier, iiber die quellen des Markus, s. 66 ff.

49 — Comp. Winer bibl. Realw d. A.

50 — Let the reader recollect the well-known expression of Spinoza.

Evangelists, although they had related one or two other instances of the kind, could not think it superfluous to add this also. But, secondly, the resurrection of Lazarus had, according to the representation of John, a direct influence in the development of the fate of Jesus; for we learn from xi. 47 ff., that the increased resort to Jesus, and the credit which this event procured him, led to that consultation of the Sanhedrim in which the sanguinary counsel of Caiaphas was given and approved. Thus the event had a double importance — pragmatical as well as dogmatical; consequently, the synoptical writers could not have failed to narrate it, had it been within their knowledge. Nevertheless, theologians have found out all sorts of reasons why those Evangelists, even had the fact been known to them, should refrain from its narration. Some have been of opinion that at the time of the composition of the three first gospels, the history was still in every mouth, so that to make a written record of it was superfluous; others, on the contrary, have conjectured that it was thought desirable to guard against its further publication, lest danger should accrue to Lazarus and his family, the former of whom, according to John xii. 10, was persecuted by the Jewish hierardhy on account of the miracle which had been preformed in him; a caution for which there was no necessity at the later period at which John wrote his gospel. It is plain that these two reasons nullify each other, and neither of them is in itself worthy of a serious refutation; yet as similar modes of evading a difficulty are still more frequently resorted to than might be supposed, we ought not to think some animadversion on them altogether thrown away. The proposition, that the resurrection of Lazarus was not recorded by the synoptists because it was generally known in their circle, proves too much; since on this rule, precisely the most important events in the life of Jesus, his baptism, death, and resurrection, must have remained unwritten. Moreover, writings, which like our gospels, originate in a religious community, do not serve merely to make known the unknown; it is their office also to preserve what is already known. In opposition to the other explanation, it has been remarked by others, that the publication of this history among those who were not natives of Palestine, as was the case with those for whom Mark and Luke wrote, could have done no injury to Lazarus; and even the author of the first gospel, admitting that he wrote in and for Palestine, could hardly have withheld a fact in which the glory of Christ was so peculiarly manifested, merely out of consideration to Lazarus, who, supposing the more improbable case that he was yet living at the time of the composition of the first gospel, ought not, Christian as he doubtless was, to refuse to suffer for the name of Christ; and the same observation would apply to his family. The most dangerous time for Lazarus according to John xii. 10, was that immediately after his resurrection, and a narrative which appeared so long after, could scarcely have heightened or renewed this danger; besides, in the neighbourhood of Bethany and Jerusalem whence danger was threatened to Lazarus, the event must have been so well- known and remembered that nothing was to be risked by its publication.

It appears then that the resurrection of Lazarus, since it is not narrated by the synoptists, cannot have been known to them; and the question arises, how was this ignorance possible? Hase gives the mysterious answer, that the reason of this omission lies hid in the common relations under which the synoptists in general were silent concerning all the earlier incidents in Judæa; but this leaves it uncertain, at least so far as the expressions go, whether we ought to decide to the disadvantage of the fourth gospel or of its predecessors. The latest criticism of the gospel of Matthew has cleared up the ambiguity in Hase’s answer after its usual manner, determining the nature of those common relations which he vaguely adduces, thus: Every one of the synoptists, by his ignorance of a history which an apostle must have known, betrays himself to be no apostle. But this renunciation of the apostolic origin of the first gospel, does not by any means enable us to explain the ignorance of its author and his compeers of the resurrection of Lazarus. For besides the remarkable character of the event, its occurrence in the very heart of Judæa, the great attention excited by it, and its having been witnessed by the apostles, — all these considerations render it incomprehensible that it should not have entered into the general tradition, and from thence into the synoptical gospels. It is argued that these gospels are founded on Galilean legends, i e oral narratives and written notices by the Galilean friends and companions of Jesus; that these were not present at the resurrection of Lazarus, and therefore did not include it in their memoirs; and that the authors of the first gospels, strictly confining themselves to the Galilean sources of information, likewise passed over the event But there was not such a wall of partition between Galilee and Judæa, that the fame of an event like the resurrection of Lazarus could help sounding over from the one to the other. Even if it did not happen during a feast time, when (John iv. 45) many Galileans might be eye-witnesses, yet the disciples, who were for the greater part Galileans, were present (v. 16), and must, so soon as they returned into Galilee after the resurrection of Jesus, have spread abroad the history throughout this province, or rather, before this, the Galileans who kept the last passover attended by Jesus, must have learned the event, the report of which was so rife in the city. Hence even Liicke finds this explanation of Gabler’s unsatisfactory; and on his own side attempts to solve the enigma by the observation, that the original evangelical tradition, which the synoptists followed, did not represent the history of the Passion mainly in a pragmatical light, and therefore gave no heed to this event as the secret motive of the murderous resolve against Jesus, and that only John, who was initiated into the secret history of the Sanhedrim, was in a condition to supply this explanatory fact. This view of the case would certainly appear to neutralize one reason why the synoptists must have noticed the event in question, namely, that drawn from its pragmatical importance; but when it is added, that as a miracle regarded in itself, apart from its more particular circumstances, it might easily be lost among the rest of those narratives from which we have in the three first gospels a partly accidental selection, — we must reply, that the synoptical selection of miracles appears to be an accidental one only when that is at once assumed which ought first to be proved: namely, that the miracles in the fourth gospel are historical: and unless the selection be casual to a degree inconsistent with the slightest intelligence in the compilers, such a miracle cannot have been overlooked.

* Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspr., s. 10.

 Gabier, ut sup s. 240 f.; also Neander, s. 357.

16 — Comm z. Job. 2, s. 402.

*7 Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 3, s. 139. In Schleiermacher’s Lectures on the It has doubtless been these and similar considerations, which have led the latest writers on the controversy concerning the first gospel, to complain of the one-sidedness with which the above question is always answered to the disadvantage of the synoptists, especially Matthew, as if it were forgotten that an answer dangerous to the fourth gospel lies just as near at hand. For our own part, we are not so greatly alarmed by the fulminations of Liicke, as to be deterred from the expression of our opinion on the subject. This theologian, even in his latest editions, reproaches those who, from the silence of the synoptical writers, conclude that this narrative is a fiction and the gospel of John not authentic, with an unparalleled lack of discernment, and a total want of insight into the mutual relations of our gospels (that is, into those relations viewed according to the professional conviction of theologians, which is unshaken even by the often well-directed attacks of the author of the Probabilia). We, nevertheless, distinctly declare that we regard the history of the resurrection of Lazarus, not only as in the highest degree improbable in itself, but also destitute of external evidence; and this whole chapter, in connexion with those previously examined, as an indication of the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel.

If it is thus proved that all the three evangelical histories of resuscitations are rendered more or less doubtful by negative reasons: all that is now wanting to us is positive proof, that the tradition of Jesus having raised the dead might easily be formed without historical foundation. According to rabbinical, as well as New Testament passsages (e g. John v. 28 f., vi. 40, “; r Cor xv.; 1 Thess iv. 16), the resuscitation of the dead was expected of the Messiah at his coming. Now the vapovtria, the appearance of the Messiah Jesus on earth, was in the view of the early church broken by his death into two parts; the first comprised his preparatory appearance, which began with his human birth, and ended with the resurrection and ascension; the second was to commence with his future advent on the clouds of heaven, in order to open the almv /xe’AAcov, the age to come. As the first appearance of Jesus had wanted the glory and majesty expected in the Messiah, the great demonstrations of messianic power, and in particular the general resurrection of the dead, were assigned to his second, and as yet future appearance on earth. Nevertheless, as an immediate pledge of what was to be anticipated, even in the first advent some fore-splendours of the second must have been visible in single instances; Jesus must, even in his first advent, by awaking some of the dead, have guaranteed his authority one day to awake all the dead; he must, when questioned as to his messiahship, have been able to Life of Jesus (if I may be permitted to refer to a work not yet printed), the silence in question is explained in the following manner. The synoptical Evangelists in general were ignorant of the relations of Jesus with the family of Bethany, because perhaps the apostles did not wish an intimate personal connection of this kind to pass into the general tradition, from which those Evangelists drew; and ignorance of the relations of Jesus with the family in general, of course included ignorance of this particular fact connected with them. But what motive could the apostles have for such reserve? Are we to infer secret, or even, with Venturini, tender ties? Must not such a private relation in the case of Jesus have presented much to edify us? The intimations which John and Luke afford us on this subject contain in fact much of this description, and from the narrative which the latter gives of the visit of Jesus to Martha and Mary, we see also that the apostles, in furnishing their accounts, were by no mièans averse to allow something of these relations to appear, so far as they could retain a general interest. Now in this light, the resurrection of Lazarus, as a pre-eminent miracle, was incomparably more valuable than that visit with its single aphorism  One thing is needful,” and involved less of the private relations of Jesus with the family of Hethany; the supposed effort to keep these secret, could not therefore have hindered the promulgation of the resurrection of Lazarus.

M Kern, iiber den Ursprung des Evang. Matth., Tiibing. Zeitschrift, 1834, 2, s.110.

 Bertholdt. Christol. Jud. § 35. adduce among other criteria the fact that the dead were raised up by him (Matt xi. 5), and he must have imparted the same power to his disciples (Matt xi. 8, comp. Acts ix. 40, xx. 10) j but especially as a close préfiguration of the hour in which all that arc in, their graves shall hear his voice, and shall conic forth (John v. 28 f.), he must have cried with a loud voice, Come forth! to one who had lain in the grave four days (John xi. 17, 43). For the origination of detailed narratives of single resuscitations, there lay, besides, the most appropriate types in the Old Testament The prophets Elijah and Elisha (i Kings xvii. 17 ff.; 2 Kings iv. 18 ff.) had awaked the dead, and to these instances Jewish writings appealed as a type of the messianic time. The object of the resuscitation was with both these prophets a child, but a boy, while in the narrative common to the synoptists we have a girl; the two prophets revived him while he lay on the bed, as Jesus does the daughter of Jairus; both entered alone into the chamber of death, as Jesus excludes all save a few confidential friends; only, as it is fitting, the Messiah needs not the laborious manipulations by which the prophets attained their object. Elijah in particular raised the son of a widow, as Jesus did at Nain; he met the widow of Zarephath at the gate (but before the death of her son) as Jesus met the widow of Nain, under the gate of the city (after the death of her son); lastly, it is in both instances told in the same words how the miracle-worker restored the son to the mother. Even one already laid in his grave, like Lazarus, was restored to life by the prophet Elisha; with this difference, however, that the prophet himself had been long dead, and the contact of his bones reanimated a corpse which was accidentally thrown upon them (2 Kings xiii. 21). There is yet another point of similarity between the resuscitations of the dead in the Old Testament and that of Lazarus; it is that Jesus, while in his former resuscitation he utters the authoritative word without any preliminary, in that of Lazarus offers a prayer to God, as Elisha, anymore particularly Elijah, are said to have done. While Paulus extends totKese narratives in the Old Testament, the natural explanation which he has applied to those in the New, theologians of more enlarged views have long ago remarked, that the resurrections in the New Testament are nothing more than mythi, which had their origin in the tendency of the early Christian church, to make her Messiah agree with the type of the “prophets, and with the messianic ideal.

®° See the passages quoted from Tanchuma, Vol. I. § 14.

 I Kings xvii. 23, LXX. teaI fdtaxey aùrà rjj pyjrpl avrov, Luke vii. 15: kcU Mwkcv avrb* rÿ fujrpl aùrov.

 Thus the author of the Abhandlung über die verschiedenen RUcksichten, in welchen der Biograph Jesu arbeiten kann, in Bertholdt’s krit. Joum., 5, s. 237 f., Kaiser, bibl. Theol. I, s. 202. — A resuscitation strikingly similar to that of the young man at Nain is narrated by Philostratus, of Apollonius of Tyana. “As according to Luke, it was a young man, the only son of a widow, who was being carried out of the city; so, in Philostratus, it is a young maiden already betrothed, whose bier Apollonius meets. The command to set down the bier, the mere touch, and a few words, are sufficient here, as there, to bring the dead to life” (Baur, Apollonius v. Tyana und Christus, s. 145). I should like to know whether Paulus, or any other critic, would be inclined to explain this naturally; if, however, it ought to be regarded as an imitation of the evangelical narrative (a conclusion which can hardlv be avoided), we must have a preconceived opinion of the character of the books of the Mew Testament, to evade the consequence, that the resuscitations of the dead which they contain are only less designed imitations of those in the Old Testament; which are themselves to be derived from the belief of antiquity, that a victorious power over death was imparted to the favourites of the gods (Hercules, Esculapius, etc.), ana more immediately, from the Jewish idea of a prophet § IOI.

ANECDOTES HAVING RELATION TO THE SEA.

As in general, at least according to the representations of the three first Evangelists the country around the Galilean sea was the chief theatre of the ministry of Jesus; so a considerable number of his miracles have an immediate reference to the sea. One of this class, the miraculous draught of fishes granted to Peter, has already presented itself for our consideration; besides this, there are the miraculous stilling of the storm which had arisen on the sea while Jesus slept, in the three synoptists; Matthew, Mark, and John; the summary of most of those, the walking of Jesus on the sea, likewise during a storm, in incidents which the appendix to the fourth gospel places after the resurrection; and lastly, the anecdote of the coin that was to be angled for by Peter, in Matthew.

The first-named narrative (Matt viii. 23 ff parall.) is intended, according to the Evangelist’s own words, to represent Jesus to us as him whom the winds and the sea obey, oi avefioi Kal rj ddXacrcra VTTOKOVOWTLV. Thus, to follow out the gradation in the miraculous which has been hitherto observed, it is here presupposed, not merely that Jesus could act on the human mind and living body in a psychological and magnetic manner; or with a revivifying power on the human organism when it was forsaken by vitality; nay, not merely as in the history of the draught of fishes earlier examined, that he could act immediately with determinative power, on irrational yet animated existences, but that he could act thus even on inanimate nature. The possibility of finding a point of union between the alleged supernatural agency of Jesus, and the natural order of phenomena, here absolutely ceases: here, at the latest, there is an end to miracles in the wider and now more favoured sense; and we come to those which must be taken in the narrowest sense, or to the miracle proper. The purely supranaturalistic view is therefore the first to suggest itself. Olshausen has justly felt, that such a power over external nature is not essentially connected with the destination of Jesus for the human race and for the salvation of man; whence he was led to place the natural phenomenon which is here controlled by Jesus in a relation to sin, and therefore to the office of Jesus. Storms, he says, are the spasms and convulsions of nature, and as such the consequences of sin, the fearful effects of which are seen even on the physical side of existence. But it is only that limited observation of nature which in noting the particular forgets the general, that can regard storms, tempests, and similar phenomena’ (which in connexion with the whole have their necessary place and beneficial influence) as evils and departure from original law: and a theory of the world in which it is seriously upheld, that before the fall there were no storms and tempests, as, on the other hand, no beasts of prey and poisonous plants, partakes — one does not know whether to say, of the fanatical, or of the childish. But to what purpose, if the above explanation will not hold, could Jesus be gifted with such a power over nature? As a means of awakening faith in him, it was inadequate and superfluous: because Jesus found individual adherents without any demonstration of a power of this kind, and general acceptance even this did not procure him. As little can it be regarded as a type of the original dominion of man over external nature, a dominion which he is destined to re- attain; for the value of this dominion consists precisely in this, that it is a mediate one, achieved by the progressive reflection and the unitéd efforts of 1 — BibL Comm. I, s. 2S7. ages, not an immediate and magical dominion, which costs no more than a word. Hence in relation to that part of nature of which we are here speaking the compass and the steam-vessel are an incomparably truer realization of man’s dominion over the ocean, than the allaying of the waves by a mere word. But the subject has another aspect, since the dominion of man over nature is not merely external and practical, but also immanent or theoretical, that is, man even when externally he is subjected to the might of the elements, yet is not internally conquered by them; but, in the conviction that the powers of physical nature can only destroy in him that which belongs to his physical existence, is elevated in the self-certainty of the spirit above the possible destruction of the body. This spiritual power, it is said, was exhibited by Jesus, for he slept tranquilly in the midst of the storm, and when awaked by his trembling disciples, inspired them with courage by his words. But for courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended: now for Jesus, supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, danger could in no degree exist: therefore he could not here give any proof of this theoretical power.

In both respects the natural explanation would find only the conceivable and the desirable attributed to Jesus in the evangelical narrative; namely, on the one hand, an intelligent observation of the state of the weather, and on the other, exalted courage in the presence of real peril. When we read that Jesus commanded the winds — rotç àvtpoiç, we are to understand simply that he made some remark on the storm, or some exclamations at its violence: and his calming of the sea we are to regard only as a prognostication, founded on the observation of certain signs, that the storm would soon subside. His address to the disciples is said to have proceeded, like the celebrated saying of Cæsar, from the confidence that a man who was to leave an impress on the world’s history, could not so lightly be cut short in his career by an accident. That those who were in the ship regarded the subsidence of the storm as the effect of the words of Jesus, proves nothing, for Jesus nowhere confirms their inference. But neither does he disapprove it, although he must have observed the impression which, in consequence of that inference, the result had made on the people;* he must therefore, as Venturini actually supposes, have designedly refrained from shaking their high opinion of his miraculous power, in order to attach them to him the more firmly. But, setting this altogether aside, was it likely that the natural presages of the storm should have been better understood by Jesus, who had never been occupied on the sea, than by Peter, James, and John, who had been at home on it from their youth upwards?

It remains then that, taking the incident as it is narrated by the Evangelists, we must regard it as a miracle; but to raise this from an exegeiical result to a real fact, is, according to the above remarks extremely difficult: whence there arises a suspicion against the historical character of the narrative. Viewed more nearly however, and taking Matthew’s account as the basis, there is nothing to object to the narrative until the middle of v. 26. It might really have happened that Jesus in one of his frequent passages across the Galilean sea, was sleeping when a storm arose; that the disciples awaked him with alarm, while he, calm and self-possessed, said to them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith f What follows — the commanding of the waves, which s Thus Paulus, exeg. Handb., I, b, s. 468 ff.; Venturini, 2, s. 166 ff; Kaiser, bibh Theol., 1, s. 197. Hase, also, § 74, thinks this view probable.

8 — Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 363, who for the rest here offers but a weak defence against the natural explanation.

 Hase, ut sup.

Mark, with his well-known fondness for such authoritative words, reproduces as if he were giving the exact words of Jesus in a Greek translation (crconra, fjuucro!) — might have been added in the propagation of the anecdote from one to another. There was an inducement to attribute to Jesus such a com- mand over the winds and the sea, not only in the opinion entertained of his person, but also in certain features of the Old Testament history. Here, in poetical descriptions of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, Jehovah is designated as he who rebuked the Red Sea, brerifirt rjj ipv$p$ Oakaxrojl (Psa cvl 9; LXX. comp. Nahum i. 4), so that it retreated. Now, as the instrument in this partition of the Red Sea was Moses, it was natural to ascribe to his great successor, the Messiah, a similar function; accordingly we actually find from rabbinical passages, that a drying up of the sea was ex- pected to be wrought by God in the messianic times, doubtless through the agency of the Messiah, as formerly through that of Moses.  That instead of drying up the sea Jesus is said only to produce a calm, may be explained, on the supposition that the storm and the composure exhibited by Jesus on the occasion were historical, as a consequence of the mythical having combined itself with this historical element; for, as according to this, Jesus and his disciples were on board a ship, a drying up of the sea would have been out of place.

Still it is altogether without any sure precedent, that a mythical addition should be engrafted on the stem of a real incident, so as to leave the latter totally unmodified. And there is one feature, even in the part hitherto assumed to be historical, which, more narrowly examined, might just as probably have been invented by the legend as have really happened. That Jesus, before the storm breaks out, is sleeping, and even when it arises, does not immediately awake, is not his voluntary deed, but chance; it is this very chance, however, which alone gives the scene its full significance, for Jesus sleeping in the storm is by the contrast which he presents, a not less emblematical image than Ulysses sleeping when, after so many storms, he was about to land on his island home. Now that Jesus really slept at the time that a storm broke out, may indeed have happened by chance in one case out of ten; but in the nine cases also, when this did not happen, and Jesus only showed himself calm and courageous during the storm, I am inclined to think that the legend would so far have understood her interest, that, as she had represented the contrast of the tranquillity of Jesus with the raging of the elements to the intellect, by means of the words of Jesus, so she would depict it for the imagination, by means of the image of Jesus sleeping in the ship (or as Mark has it,  on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship). If then that which may possibly have happened in a single case, must certainly have been invented by the legend in nine cases; the expositor must in reason prepare himself for the undeniable possibility, that we have before us one of the nine cases, instead of that single case.  If then it be granted that nothing further remains as an historical foundation for our narrative, than that Jesus exhorted his disciples to show the firm courage of faith in opposition to the raging waves of the sea, it is certainly possible that he may once have done this in a storm at sea; but just as he said: if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye may say to4his mountain, Be thou removed, and cast into the sea (Matt xxi. 21), or to this tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea (Luke xvii. 6), and both shall be done (#cal vm/Kowrcv v/uv, Luke): so he might, not merely on the sea, but in any situation, make use of the figure, that to him who has faith, winds and waves shall be obedient at a word (ore #cai roîç aycfUHÇ imrda’trii teal t<3 vSart, #ca! v7ra#covowiv avra>, Luke). If we now take into account what even Olshausen remarks, and Schneckenburger has shown, that the contest of the kingdom of God with the world was in the early times of Christianity commonly compared to a voyage through a stormy ocean; we see at once, how easily legend might come to frame such a narrative as the above, on the suggestions afforded by the parallel between the Messiah and Moses, the expressions of Jesus, and the conception of him as the pilot who steers the little vessel of the kingdom of God through the tumultuous waves of the world. Setting this aside, however, and viewing the matter only generally, in relation to the idea of a miracle-worker, we find a similar power over storms and tempests, ascribed, for example, to Pythagoras.

We have a more complicated anecdote connected with the sea, wanting in Luke, but contained in John vi. 16 ff., as well as in Matt xiv. 22 ff., and Mark vi. 45 ff., where a storm overtakes the disciples when sailing by night, and Jesus appears to their rescue, walking towards them on the sea. Here, again, the storm subsides in a marvellous manner on the entrance of Jesus into the ship; but the peculiar difficulty of the narrative lies in this, that the body of Jesus appears so entirely exempt from a law which governs all other human bodies without exception, namely, the law of gravitation, that he not only does not sink under the water, but does not even dip into it; on the contrary, he walks erect on the waves as on firm land. If we are to represent this to ourselves, we must in some way or other, conceive the body of Jesus as an ethereal phantom, according to the opinion of the Docetæ; a conception which the Fathers of the Church condemned as irreligious, and which we must reject as extravagant. Olshausen indeed says, that in a superior corporeality, impregnated with the powers of a higher world, such an appearance need not create surprise: but these are words to which we can attach no definite idea. If the spiritual activity of Jesus which refined and perfected his corporeal nature, instead of being conceived as that which more and more completely emancipated his body from the psychical laws of passion and sensuality, is understood as if by its means the body was exempted from the physical law of gravity: — this is a materialism of which, as in a former case, it is difficult to decide whether it be more fantastical or childish. If Jesus did not sink in the water, he must have been a spectre, and the disciples in our narrative would not have been wrong in taking him for one. We must also recollect that on his baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus did not exhibit this property, but was submerged like an ordinary man. Now had he at that time also the power of sustaining himself on the surface of the water, and only refrained from using it? and did he thus increase or reduce his specific gravity by an act of his will? or are we to suppose, as Olshausen would perhaps say, that at the time of his baptism he had not attained so far in the process of subtilizing his body, as to be freely borne up by the water, and that he only reached this point at a later period? These are questions which Olshausen justly calls absurd: nevertheless they serve to open a glimpse into the abyss of absurdities in which we are involved by the supranaturalistic interpretation, and particularly by that which this theologian gives of the narrative before us.

To avoid these, the natural explanation has tried many expedients. The boldest is that of Paulus, who maintains that the text does not state that Jesus walked on the water; and that the miracle in this passage is nothing but a philological mistake, since irtparartlv brl rrjç Oakaaovp is analogous to the expression crrparoircSciW hrl rrjs laXcurcrqs, Exod xiv. 2, and signifies to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea, that is, on the elevated seashore. According to the meaning of the words taken separately, this explanation is possible: its real applicability in this particular instance, however, must be determined by the context. Now this represents the disciples as having rowed twenty-five or thirty furlongs (John), or as being in the midst of the sea (Matthew and Mark), and then it is said that Jesus came towards the ship, and so near that he could speak to them, ircpunnw hrt -nfc faAaoxnp. How could he do this if he remained on the shore? To obviate this objection, Paulus conjectures that the disciples in that stormy night probably only skirted the shore; but the words Iv fUcrv Trp $aXAxr<rq<;, in the midst of the sea, though not, we grant, to be construed with mathematical strictness, yet, even taken according to the popular mode of speaking, are too decidedly opposed to such a supposition for it to be worth our further consideration. But this mode of interpretation encounters a fatal blow in the passage where Matthew says of Peter, that having come down out of the ship he walked on the water, xaraàç àwo tov ttXoLov frcptcrranprcv cirt rà vâara (v. 29); for as it is said shortly after that Peter began to sink (KarcurovTx&crflcu), walking merely on the shore cannot have been intended here; and if not here, neither can it have been intended in the former instance relating to Jesus, the expressions being substantially the same.

But if Peter, in his attempt to walk upon the waters, irc/Kirarcir Ivl rà v8ara, began to sink, may we not still suppose that both he and Jesus merely swam in the sea, or waded through its shallows? Both these suppositions have actually been advanced.  But the act of wading must have been expressed by 7repiTraT€tv 3tà *ri}ç OaXaxTfnyt, and had that of swimming been intended, one or other of the parallel passages would certainly have substituted the precise expression for the ambiguous one: besides, it must be alike impossible either to swim from twenty-five to thirty furlongs in a storm, or to wade to about the middle of the sea, which certainly was beyond the shallows; a swimmer could not easily be taken for a spectre; and, lastly, the prayer of Peter for special permission to imitate Jesus, and his failure in it from want of faith, point to something supernatural.

The reasoning on which the natural mode of interpretation rests here, as elsewhere, has been enunciated by Paulus in connexion with this passage in a form which reveals its fundamental error in a particularly happy manner. The question, he says, in such cases is always this: which is more probable, that the evangelical writer should use an expression not perfectly exact, or that there should be a departure from the course of nature? It is evident that the dilemma is falsely stated, and should rather be put thus: Is it more probable that the author should express himself inaccurately (rather, in direct contradiction to the supposed sense), or that he should mean to narrate a departure from the course of nature? For only what he means to narrate is the immediate point of inquiry; what really happened is, even according to the distinction of the judgment of a writer from the fact that he states, on which Paulus everlastingly insists, an altogether different question. Because according to our views a departure from the course of nature cannot have taken place, it by no means follows, that a writer belonging to the primitive age of Christianity could not have credited and narrated such a case; and therefore to abolish the miraculous, we must not explain it away from the narrative, but rather inquire whether the narrative itself, either in whole or in part, must not be excluded from the domain of history. In relation to this inquiry, first of all, each of our three accounts has peculiar features which in an historical light are suspicious.

The most striking of these features is found in Mark v. 48, where he says of Jesus that he came walking on the sea towards the disciples, and would have passed by them, Kal jjlcAc mptkOtiv avrovç, but that he was constrained by their anxious cries to take notice of them. With justice Fritzsche interprets Mark’s meaning to be, that it was the intention of Jesus, supported by divine power, to walk across the whole sea as on firm land. But with equal justice Paulus asks, Could anything have been more useless and extravagant than to perform so singular a miracle without any eye to witness it? We must not however on this account, with the latter theologian, interpret the words of Mark as implying a natural event, namely, that Jesus, being on the land, was going to pass by the disciples who were sailing in a ship not far from the shore, for the miraculous interpretation of the passage is perfectly accordant with the spirit of our Evangelist Not contented with the representation of his informant, that Jesus, on this one occasion, adopted this extraordinary mode of progress with special reference to his disciples, he aims by the above addition to convey the idea of walking on the water being so natural and customary with Jesus, that without any regard to the disciples, whenever a sheet of water lay in his road, he walked across it as unconcernedly as if it had been dry land. But such a mode of procedure, if habitual with Jesus, would presuppose most decidedly a subtilization of his body such as Olshausen supposes; it would therefore presuppose what is inconceivable. Hence this particular of Mark’s presents itself as one of the most striking among those by which the second Evangelist now and then approaches to the exaggerations of the apocryphal gospels.

In Matthew, the miracle is in a different manner, not so much heightened as complicated; for there, not only Jesus, but Peter also makes an experiment in walking on the sea, not indeed altogether successful. This trait is rendered suspicious by its intrinsic character, as well as by the silence of the two other narrators. Immediately on the word of Jesus, and in virtue of the faith which he has in the beginning, Peter actually succeeds in walking on the water for some time, and only when he is assailed by fear and doubt does he begin to sink. What are we to think of this? Admitting that Jesus, by means * * See the excellent passage in Fritzsche, Comm, in Matth., p. 505.

17 — Mark’s inclination to exaggerate shows itself also in his concluding sentence, v. 51, (comp vii. 37): and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure and wondered; whicn will scarcely be understood to import, as Paulus supposes (2, s. 266), a disapproval of the excessive astonishment. of his etherealized body, could walk on the water, how could he command Peter, who was not gifted with such a body, to do the same? or if by a mere word he could give the body of Peter a dispensation from the law of gravitation, can he have been a man? and if a God, would he thus lighdy cause a suspension of natural laws at the caprice of a man? or, lastly, are we to suppose that faith has the power instantaneously to lessen the specific gravity of the body of a believer? Faith is certainly said to have such a power in the figurative discourse of Jesus just referred to, according to which the believer is able to remove mountains and trees into the sea, — and why not ‘ also himself to walk on the sea? The moral that as soon as faith falters, power ceases, could not be so aptly presented by either of the two former figures as by the latter, in the following form: as long as a man has faith he is able to walk unharmed on the unstable sea, but no sooner does he give way to doubt than he sinks, unless Christ extend to him a helping hand. The fundamental thought, then, of Matthew’s episodical narrative is, that Peter was too confident in the firmness of his faith, that by its sudden failure he incurred great danger, but was rescued by Jesus; a thought which is actually expressed in Luke xxii. 31 f., where Jesus says to Simon: Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. These words of Jesus have reference to Peter’s coming denial; this was the occasion when his faith, on the strength of which he had just before offered to go with Jesus to prison and to death, would have wavered, had not the Lord by his intercession, procured him new strength.

If we add to this the above-mentioned habit of the early Christians to represent the persecuting world under the image of a turbulent sea, we cannot fail, with one of the latest critics, to perceive in the description of Peter courageously volunteering to walk on the sea, soon, however, sinking from faintheartedness, but borne up by Jesus, an allegorical and mythical representation of that trial of faith which this disciple who imagined himself so strong, met so weakly, and which higher assistance alone enabled him to surmount But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar features, which betray an unhistorical character. It has ever been a cross to harmonists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship was only in the middle of the sea when Jesus reached it: according to John, it immediately after arrived at the opposite shore; that while, according to the former, Jesus actually entered into the ship, and the storm thereupon subsided: according to John, on the contrary, the disciples did indeed wish to take him into the ship, but their actually doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate arrival at the place of disembarkation. It is true that here also abundant methods of reconciliation have been found. First, the word rjOcXov, they wished,\ added to Xafitîv, to receive, is said to be a mere redundancy of expression; then, to signify simply the joyfulness of the reception, as if it had been said, cléWrcç tkafiov; then, to describe the first impression which the recognition of Jesus made on the disciples, his reception into the ship, which really followed, not being mentioned.  But the sole reason for such an interpretation lies in the unauthorized comparison with the synoptical accounts: in the narrative of John, taken separately, there is no ground for it, nay, it is excluded. For the succeeding sentence: cûtfcwç TO vXoiov cycVcro €7rt rrjs yrjs, cfe fjv vnyjyov, immediately the ship was at the land whither they went,> though it is united, not by but by #cai, can nevertheless only be taken antithetically, in the sense that the reception of Jesus into the ship, notwithstanding the readiness of the disciples, did not really take place, because they were already at the shore. In consideration of this difference, Chrysostom held that there were two occasions on which Jesus walked on the sea. He says that on the second occasion, which John narrates, Jesus did not enter into the ship, in order that the miracle might be greater Iva TO 6avjia fitiÇov IpyajtrrfTaL. This view we may transfer to the Evangelist, and say: if Mark has aggrandized the miracle, by implying that Jesus intended to walk past the disciples across the entire sea; so John goes yet farther, for he makes him actually accomplish this design, and without being taken into the ship, arrive at the opposite shore. Not only, however, does the fourth Evangelist seek to aggrandize the miracle before us, but also to establish and authenticate it more securely. According to the synoptists, the sole witnesses were the disciples, who saw Jesus come towards them, walking on the sea: John adds to these few immediate witnesses, a multitude of mediate ones, namely, the people who were assembled when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes. These, when on the following morning they no longer find Jesus on the same spot, make the calculation, that Jesus cannot have crossed the sea by ship, for he did not get into the same boat with the disciples, and no other boat was there (v. 22); while, that he did not go by land, is involved in the circumstance that the people when they have forthwith crossed the sea, find him on the opposite shore (v. 25), whither he could hardly have arrived by land in the short interval. Thus in the narrative of the fourth gospel, as all natural means of passage are cut off from Jesus, there remains for him only a supernatural one, and this consequence is in fact inferred by the multitude in the astonished question which they put to Jesus, when they find him on the opposite shore: Rabbi’ when earnest thou hither? As this chain of evidence for the miraculous passage of Jesus depends on the rapid transportation of the multitude, the Evangelist hastens to procure other boats aAAa irXotapia for their service (v. 23). Now the multitude who take ship (v. 22, 26 ff.) are described as the same whom Jesus had miraculously fed, and these amounted (according to v. 10) to about 5000. If only a fifth, nay, a tenth of these passed over, there needed for this, as the author of the Probabilia has justly observed, a whole fleet of ships, especially if they were fishing boats; but even if we suppose them vessels of freight, these would not all have been bound for Capernaum, or have changed their destination for the sake of accommodating the crowd. This passage of the multitude, therefore, appears only to have been invented, on the one hand, to confirm by their evidence the walking of Jesus on the sea; on the other, as we shall presently see, to gain an opportunity for making Jesus, who according to the tradition had gone over to the opposite shore immediately after the multiplication of the loaves, speak yet further with the multitude on the subject of this miracle.

After pruning away these offshoots of the miraculous which are peculiar to the respective narratives, the main stem is still left, namely, the miracle of Jesus walking on the sea for a considerable distance, with all its attendant improbabilities as above exposed. But the solution of these accessory particulars, as it led us to discover the causes of their unhistorical origin, has facilitated the discovery of such causes for the main narrative, and has thereby w Homil in Joann. 43.

11 — In De Wette’s objection, that the opinion of an exaggeration of the miracle in John, is discountenanced by the addition that they were immediately at the land (ex. Handb. I, 3, s. 79), there appears to me only a misunderstanding; but his assertion that in John t* e manner in which Jesus goes over the sea is not represented as a miracle (s. 78), is to me thoroughly incomprehensible.

* * Bretschneider, Probab., p. 81. rendered possible the solution of this also. We have seen, by an example already adduced, that it was usual with the Hebrews and early Christians, to represent the power of God over nature, a power which the human spirit when united to him was supposed to share, under the image of supremacy over the raging waves of the sea. In the narrative of the Exodus this supremacy is manifested by the sea being driven out of its place at a sign, so that a dry path is opened to the people of God in its bed; in the New Testament narrative previously considered, the sea is not removed out of its place, but only so far laid to rest that Jesus and his disciples can cross it in safety in their ship: in the anecdote before us, the sea still remains in its place as in the second, but there is this point of similarity to the first, that the passage is made on foot, not by ship, yet as a necessary consequence of the other particular, on the surface of the sea, not in its bed. Still more immediate inducements to develop in such a manner the conception of the power of the miracle-worker over the waves, may be found both in the Old Testament, and in the opinions prevalent in the time of Jesus. Among the miracles of Elisha, it is not only told that he divided the Jordan by a stroke of his mantle, so that he could go through it dry shod (2 Kings ii. 14), but also that he caused a piece of iron which had fallen into the water to swim (2 Kings vi. 6); an ascendancy over the law of gravitation which it would be imagined the miracle-worker might be able to evince in relation to his own body also, and thus to exhibit himself, as it is said of Jehovah, Job ix. 8, LXX., 7rcptiraT(iv a* hr c8a<£ovç hrl tfoXooxn??, walking upon the sea as upon a pavement. In the time of Jesus much was told of miracle-workers who could walk on the water. Apart from conceptions exclusively Grecian, the Greco-oriental legend feigned that the hyperborean Abaris possessed an arrow, by means of which he could bear himself up in the air, and thus traverse rivers, seas, and abysses, and popular superstition attributed to many wonder-workers the power of walking on water. Hence the possibility that with all these elements and inducements existing, a similar legend should be formed concerning Jesus, appears incomparably stronger, than that a real event of this kind should have occurred: — and with this conclusion we may dismiss the subject.

The manifestation Qavcpwris of Jesus at the sea of Tiberias hrl OaXamn trp TtjSepiaSoç narrated John xxi has so striking a resemblance to the sea anecdotes hitherto considered, that although the fourth gospel places it in the period after the resurrection, we are induced, as in an earlier instance we brought part of it under notice in connexion with the narrative of Peter’s draught of fishes, so here to institute a comparison between its other features, and the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea. In both cases, Jesus is perceived by the disciples in the twilight of early morning; only in the latter instance he does not, as in the former, walk on the sea, but stands on the shore, and the disciples are in consternation, not because of a storm, but because of the fruitlessness of their fishing. In both instances they are afraid of him; in the one, they take him for a spectre, in the other, not one of them ventures to ask him who he is, knowing that it is the Lord. But especially the scene with Peter, peculiar to the first gospel, has its corresponding one in the present passage. As, there, when Jesus walking on the sea makes himself known to his disciples, Peter entreats permission to go to him on the water: so here, as soon as Jesus is recognized standing on the shore, Peter throws himself into the water that he may reach him the shortest way by >s See the passages in Wetstein, p. 417 f.

14 — Jamblich, vita Pythagorae, 136; comp. Porphyr. 29.

“Lucian; Philopseudes, 13. swimming. Thus, that which in the earlier narrative was the miraculous act of walking on the sea, becomes in the one before us, in relation to Jesus, the simple act of standing on the shore, in relation to Peter, the natural act of swimming; so that the latter history sounds almost like a rationalistic paraphrase of the former: and there have not been wanting those who have maintained that at least the anecdote about Peter in the first gospel, is a traditional transformation of the incident in John xxi. 7 into a miracle. Modern criticism is restrained from extending this conjecture to the anecdote of Jesus walking on the sea, by the fact that the supposed apostolic fourth gospel itself has this feature in the earlier narrative (vi. 16 ff.). But from our point of view it appears quite possible, that the history in question either came to the author of this gospel in the one form, and to the author of the appendix in the other; or that it came to the one author of both in a double form, and was inserted by him in separate parts of his narrative. Meanwhile, if the two histories are to be compared, we ought not at once to assume that the one, John xxi., is the original, the other, Matt xiv paralL, the secondary; we must first ask which of the two bears intrinsic marks of one or the other character. Now certainly if we adhere to the rule that the more miraculous narrative is the later, that in John xxi appears, in relation to the manner in which Jesus approaches the disciples, and in which Peter reaches Jesus, to be the original But this rule is connected in the closest manner with another; namely, that the more simple narrative is the earlier, the more complex one the later, as the conglomerate is a later formation than the homogeneous stone; and according to this rule, the conclusion is reversed, and the narrative in John xxi is the more traditional, for in it the particulars mentioned above are interwoven with the miraculous draught of fishes, while in the earlier narrative they form in themselves an independent whole. It is indeed true, that a greater whole may be broken up into smaller parts; but such fragments have not at all the appearance of the separate narratives of the draught of fishes and the walking on the sea, since these, on the contrary, leave the impression of being each a finished whole. From this interweaving with the miracle of the draught of fishes, — to which we must add the circumstance that the entire circle of events turns upon the risen Jesus, who is already in himself a miracle, — it is apparent how, contrary to the general rule, the oft-named particulars could lose their miraculous character, since by their combination with other miracles they were reduced to mere accessories, to a sort of natural scaffolding. If then the narrative in John xxi is entirely secondary, its historical value has already been estimated with that of the narratives which furnished its materials.

If, before we proceed further, we take a retrospect of the series of sea- anecdotes hitherto examined, we find, it is true, that the two extreme anecdotes are altogether dissimilar, the one relating mainly to fishing, the other to a storm; nevertheless, on a proper arrangement, each of them appears to be connected with the preceding by a common feature. The narrative of the call of the fishers of men (Matt iv. 18 ff par.) opens the series; that of Peter’s draught of fishes (Luke v. 1 ff.) has in common with this the saying about the fishers of men, but the fact of the draught of fishes is peculiar to it; this fact reappears in John xxi., where the circumstances of Jesus standing on the shore in the morning twilight, and the swimming of Peter towards him, are added; these two circumstances are in Matt xiv. 22 ff parall metamorphosed into the act of walking on the sea on the part of Jesus and of Peter, and at the same time a storm, and its cessation on the Schneckenburger, iiber den Urspr., s. 68. entrance of Jesus into the ship, are introduced; lastly, in Matt viii. 23 ff parall., we have an anecdote single in its kind, namely, that of the stilling of the storm by Jesus.

We come to a history for which a place is less readily found in the foregoing series, in Matt xvii. 24 ff. It is true that here again there is a direction of Jesus to Peter to go and fish, to which, although it is not expressly stated, we must suppose that the issue corresponded: but first, it is only one fish which is to be caught, and with an angle; and secondly, the main point is, that in its mouth is to be found a piece of gold to serve for the payment of the temple tribute for Jesus and Peter, from the latter of whom this tax had been demanded. This narrative as it is here presented has peculiar difficulties, which Paulus well exhibits, and which Olshausen does not deny. Fritzsche justly remarks, that there are two miraculous particulars presupposed: first, that the fish had a coin in its mouth; secondly, that Jesus had a foreknowledge of this. On the one hand, we must regard the former of these particulars as extravagant, and consequently the latter also; and on the other, the whole miracle appears to have been unnecessary. Certainly, that metals and other valuables have been found in the bodies of fish is elsewhere narrated, and is not incredible; but that a fish should have a piece of money in its mouth, and keep it there while it snapped at the bait — this even Dr. Schnappinger found inconceivable. Moreover, the motive of Jesus for performing such a miracle could not be want of money, for even if at that time there was no store in the common fund, still Jesus was in Capernaum, where he had many friends, and where consequently he could have obtained the needful money in a natural way. To exclude this possibility, we must with Olshausen confound borrowing with begging, and regard it as inconsistent with the decorum dvuinum which must have been observed by Jesus. Nor after so many proofs of his miraculous power, could Jesus think this additional miracle necessary to strengthen Peter’s belief in his messiahship.

Hence we need not wonder that rationalistic commentators have attempted to free themselves at any cost from a miracle which even Olshausen pronounces to be the most difficult in the evangelical history, and we have only to see how they proceed in this undertaking. The pith of the natural explanation of the fact lies in the interpretation of the word «u/nprctç, thou shalt find, in the command of Jesus, not of an immediate discovery of a stater in the fish, but of a mediate acquisition of this sum by selling what was caught. It must be admitted that the above word may bear this signification also; but if we are to give it this sense instead of the usual one, we must in the particular instance have a clear intimation to this effect in the context. Thus, if it were said in the present passage: Take the first fine fish, carry it to the market, xdxci cfynprctç oTcmJpa, and there thou shalt find a stater, this explanation would be in place; as however instead of this, the word cvpipretç is preceded by âvo£(aç TO OTOJULCL avrov, when thou hast opened his mouth, — as, therefore, no place of sale, but a place inside the fish, is mentioned, as that on the opening of which the coin is to be obtained, — we can only understand an immediate discovery of the piece of money in this part of the fish. Besides, to what purpose would the opening of the fish’s mouth be mentioned, unless the desideratum were to be found there? Paulus sees in this only the injunction to release the fish from the hook without delay, in order to keep S See the examples in Wetstein, in loc.

* Dieh. Schrift desn. Bundes, 1, s. 314, 2te Aufl.

* Paulus, ex. Handb. 2, 502 ff. Comp. Hase, L. J. $ in.

80 — Comp. Storr, in Flatt’s Magazin, 2, s. 68 ff. it alive, and thus to render it more saleable. The order to open the mouth of the fish might indeed, if it stood alone, be supposed to have the extraction of the hook as its object and consequence; but as it is followed by cvpfrre« <rrarrjpa, thou shalt find a stater, it is plain that this is the immediate end of opening the mouth. The perception that, so long as the opening of the fish’s mouth is spoken of in this passage, it will be inferred that the coin was to be found there, has induced the rationalistic commentators to try whether they could not refer the word arrofia, mouth, to another subject than the fish, and no other remained than the fisher, Peter. But as oro/ia appeared to be connected with the fish by the word avrov, which immediately followed it, Dr. Paulus, moderating or exaggerating the suggestion of a friend, who proposed to read àvOtufn/ja-tiç, instead of — avrov, cvpa-ac — allowed avrov to remain, but took it adverbially, and translated the passage thus: thou hast then only to open thy mouth to offer the fish for sale, and thou wilt on the spot (avrov) receive a stater as its price. But, it would still be asked, how could a single fish fetch so high a price in Capernaum, where fish were so abundant? Hence Paulus understands the words, tov avaftavra irpStrov tydvv &pov, take up the fish that first cometh up, collectively thus: continue time aJfter time to take the fish that first comes to thee, until thou hast caught as many as will be worth a stater.

If the series of strained interpretations which are necessary to a natural explanation of this narrative throw us back on that which allows it to contain a miracle; and if this miracle appear to us, according to our former decision, both extravagant and useless, nothing remains but to presume that here also there is a legendary element. This view has been combined with the admission, that a real but natural fact was probably at the foundation of the legend: namely, that Jesus once ordered Peter to fish until he had caught enough to procure the amount of the temple tribute; whence the legend arose that the fish had the tribute money in its mouth. But, in our opinion, a more likely source of this anecdote is to be found in the much-used theme of a catching of fish by Peter, on the one side, and on the other, the well-known stories of precious things having been found in the bodies of fish. Peter, as we learn from Matt, iv., Luke v., John xxi., was the fisher in the evangelical legend to whom Jesus in various forms, first symbolically, and then literally, granted the rich draught of fishes. The value of the capture appears here in the shape of a piece of money, which, as similar things are elsewhere said to have been found in the belly of fishes, is by an exaggeration of the marvel said to be found in the mouth of the fish. That it is the stater, required for the temple tribute, might be occasioned by a real declaration of Jesus concerning his relation to that tax; or conversely, the stater which was accidentally named in the legend of the fish angled for by Peter, might bring to recollection the temple tribute, which amounted to that sum for two persons, and the declaration of Jesus relative to this subject.

With this tale conclude the sea anecdotes.

§ I-

THE MIRACULOUS MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES.

As, in the histories last considered, Jesus determined and mitigated the motions of irrational and even of inanimate existences; so, in the narratives which we are about to examine, he exhibits the power of multiplying not only S Kaiser, bibl. Theol i, s. 200. Comp. Hase, ut sup. natural objects, but also productions of nature which had been wrought upon by art That Jesus miraculously multiplied prepared articles of food, feeding a great multitude of men with a few loaves and fishes, is narrated to us with singular unanimity by all the Evangelists (Matt xiv. 13 ff.; Mark vi 30 ff.; Luke ix.

10 — ff.; John vi. 1 ff.). And if we helieve the two first, Jesus did not do this merely once; for in Matt xv. 32 ff.; Mark viii. 1 ff we read of a second multiplication of loaves and fishes, the circumstances of which are substantially the same as those of the former. It happens somewhat later; the place is rather differently described, and the length of time during which the multitude stayed with Jesus is differently stated; moreover, and this is a point of greater importance, the proportion between the stock of food and the number of men is different, for, on the first occasion, five thousand men are satisfied with five loaves and two fishes, and, on the second, four thousand with seven loaves and a few fishes; on the first twelve baskets are filled with the fragments, on the second only seven. Notwithstanding this, not only is the substance of the two histories exactly the same — the satisfying of a multitude of people with disproportionately small means of nourishment; but also the description of the scene in the one, entirely corresponds in its principal features to that in the other. In both instances, the locality is a solitary region in the vicinity of the Galilean sea; Jesus is led to perform the miracle because the people have lingered too long with him; he manifests a wish to feed the people from his own stores, which the disciples regard as impossible; the stock of food at his disposal consists of loaves and fishes; Jesus makes the people sit down, and, after giving thanks, distributes the provisions to them through the medium of the disciples; they are completely satisfied, and yet a disproportionately great quantity of fragments is afterwards collected in baskets; lastly, in the one case as in the other, Jesus after thus feeding the multitude, crosses the sea.

This repetition of the same event creates many difficulties. The chief of these is suggested by the question: Is it conceivable that the disciples, after they had themselves witnessed how Jesus was able to feed a great multitude with a small quantity of provision, should nevertheless on a second occasion of the same kind, have totally forgotten the first, and have asked, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to feed so great a multitude f To render such an obliviousness on the part of the disciples probable, we are reminded that they had, in just as incomprehensible a manner, forgotten the declarations of Jesus concerning his approaching sufferings and death, when these events occurred;  but it is equally a pending question, whether after such plain predictions from Jesus, his death could in fact have been so unexpected to the disciples. It has been supposed that a longer interval had elapsed between the two miracles, and that during this there had occurred a number of similar cases, in which Jesus did not think fit to afford miraculous assistance: but, on the one hand, these are pure fictions; on the other, it would remain just as inconceivable as ever, that the striking similarity of the circumstances preceding the second feeding of the multitude to those preceding the first, should not have reminded even one of the disciples of that former event. Paulus therefore is right in maintaining, that had Jesus once already fed the multitude by a miracle, the disciples, on the second occasion, when he expressed his determination not to send the people away fasting, would confidently have called upon him for a repetition of the former miracle.

In any case then, if Jesus on two separate occasions fed a multitude with disproportionately small provision, we must suppose, as some critics have done, that many features in the narrative of the one incident were transferred to the other, and thus the two, originally unlike, became in the course of oral tradition more and more similar; the incredulous question of the disciples especially having been uttered only on the first occasion, and not on the second. It may seem to speak in favour of such an assimilation, that the fourth Evangelist, though in his numerical statement he is in accordance with the first narrative of Matthew and Mark, yet has, in common with the second, the circumstances that the scene opens with an address of Jesus and not of the disciples, and that the people come to Jesus on a mountain. But if the fundamental features be allowed to remain, — the wilderness, the feeding of the people, the collection of the fragments, — it is still, even without that question of the disciples, sufficiently improbable that the scene should have been repeated in so entirely similar a manner. If, on the contrary, these general features be renounced in relation to one of the histories, it is no longer apparent, how the veracity of the evangelical narratives as to the manner in which the second multiplication of loaves and fishes took place can be questioned on all points, and yet their statement as to the fact of its occurrence be maintained as trustworthy, especially as this statement is confined to Matthew and his imitator Mark.

Hence later critics have, with more  or less  decision, expressed the opinion, that here one and the same fact has been doubled, through a mistake of the first Evangelist, who was followed by the second. They suppose that several narratives of the miraculous feeding of the multitude were current which presented divergencies from each other, especially in relation to numbers, and that the author of the first gospel, to whom every additional history of a miracle was a welcome prize, and who was therefore little qualified for the critical reduction of two different narratives of this kind into one, introduced both into his collection. This fully explains how on the second occasion the disciples could again express themselves so incredulously: namely, because in the tradition whence the author of the first gospel obtained the second history of a miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes, it was the first and only one, and the Evangelist did not obliterate this feature because, apparently, he incorporated the two narratives into his writing just as he read or heard them. Among other proofs that this was the case, may be mentioned the constancy with which he and Mark, who copied him, not only in the account of the events, but also in the subsequent allusion to them (Matt xvi. 9 f.; Mark viii. 19 f.), call the baskets in the first feeding, KOOW, in the second cnrvptScs. It is indeed correctly maintained, that the Apostle Matthew could not possibly take one event for two, and relate a new history which s Gratz, Comm z. Matth. 2, s. 90 f.; Sieffert, iiber den Ursprung, s 97.

 Thiesz, Krit. Commenter, i9 s. 168 fF.; Schulz, iiber das Abendmahl, s. 311. Comp. Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 523.

* — Schleiermacher, iiber den Lukas, s. 145; Sieffert, ut sup s. 95 ft; Hase, § 97. Neander is undecided, L. J. Chr., s. 372 ff., Anm.

6 — Comp. Saunier, ut sup s. 105. never happened:  but this proposition does not involve the reality of the second miraculous feeding of the multitude, unless the apostolic origin of the first gospel be at once presupposed, whereas this yet remains to be proved. Paulus further objects, that the duplication of the history in question could be of no advantage whatever to the design of the Evangelist; and Olshausen, developing this idea more fully, observes that the legend would not have left the second narrative as simple and bare as the first. But this argument, that a narrative cannot be fictitious, because if it were so it would have been more elaborately adorned, may very properly be at once dismissed, since its limits being altogether undefined, it might be repeated under all circumstances, and in the end would prove fable itself not sufficiently fabulous. But, in this case particularly, it is totally baseless, because it presupposes the narrative of the first feeding of the multitude to be historically accurate; now, if we have already in this a legendary production, the other edition of it, namely, the second history of a miraculous feeding, needs not to be distinguished by special traditionary features. But not only is the second narrative not embellished as regards the miraculous, when compared with the first; it even diminishes the miracle, for, while increasing the quantity of provision, it reduces the number of those whom it satisfied: and this retrogression in the marvellous is thought the surest proof that the second feeding of the multitude really occurred; for, it is said, he who chose to invent an additional miracle of this kind, would have made it surpass the first, and instead of five thousand men would have given, not four, but ten thousand.  This argument, also, rests on the unfounded assumption that the first narrative is of course the historical one; though Olshausen himself has the idea that the second might with probability be regarded as the historical basis, and the first as the legendary copy, and then the fictitious would have the required relation to the true — that of exaggeration. But when in opposition to this, he observes, how improbable it is that an unscrupulous narrator would place the authentic fact, being the less imposing, last, and eclipse it beforehand by the false one, — that such a writer would rather seek to outdo the truth, and therefore place his fiction last, as the more brilliant, — he again shows that he does not comprehend the mythical view of the biblical narratives, in the degree necessary for forming a judgment on the subject. For there is no question here of an unscrupulous narrator, who would designedly surpass the true history of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, and least of all is Matthew pronounced to be such a narrator: on the contrary, it is held that with perfect honesty, one account gave five thousand, another four, and that, with equal honesty, the first Evangelist copied from both; and for the very reason that he went to work innocently and undesignedly, it was of no importance to him which of the two histories stood first and which last, the more important or the less striking one; but he allowed himself to be determined on this point by accidental circumstances, such as that he found the one connected with incidents which appeared to him the earlier, the other with such as he supposed to be the later. A similar instance of duplication occurs in the Pentateuch in relation to the histories of the feeding of the Israelites with quails, and of the production of water out of the rock, the former of which is narrated both in Exod xvi and Num xi., the latter in Exod xvii and again in Num xx., in each instance with an alteration in time, place, and other circumstances.  Meanwhile, all this yields us only the negative result that the double narratives of the first gospels cannot have been founded on two separate events. To determine which of the two is historical, or whether either of them deserves that epithet, must be the object of a special inquiry.

To evade the pre-eminently magical appearance which this miracle presents, Olshausen gives it a relation to the moral state of the participants, and supposes that the miraculous feeding of the multitude was effected through the intermediation of their spiritual hunger. But this is ambiguous language, which, on the first attempt to determine its meaning, vanishes into nothing. For in cures, for example, the intermediation here appealed to consists in the opening of the patient’s mind to the influence of Jesus by faith, so that when faith is wanting, the requisite fulcrum for the miraculous power of Jesus is also wanting: here therefore the intermediation is real. Now if the same kind of intermediation took place in the case before us,’ so that on those among the multitude who were unbelieving the satisfying power of Jesus had no influence, then must the satisfaction of hunger here (as, in the above cases, the cure) be regarded as something effected by Jesus directly in the body of the hungry persons, without any antecedent augmentation of the external means of nourishment But such a conception of the matter, as Paulus justly remarks, and as even Olshausen intimates, is precluded by the statement of the Evangelists, that real food was distributed among the multitude; that each enjoyed as much as he wanted; and that at the end the residue was greater than the original store. It is thus plainly implied that there was an external and objective increase of the provisions, as a preliminary to the feeding of the multitude. Now, this cannot be conceived as effected by means of the faith of the people in a real manner, in the sense that that faith co-operated in producing the multiplication of the loaves. The intermediation which Olshausen here supposes, can therefore have been only a teleological one, that is, we are to understand by it, that Jesus undertook to multiply the loaves and fishes for the sake of producing a certain moral condition in the multitude. But an intermediation of this kind affords me not the slightest help in forming a conception of the event; for the question is not why, but how it happened Thus all which Olshausen believes himself to have done towards rendering this miracle more intelligible, rests on the ambiguity of the expression, intermediation; and the inconceivableness of an immediate influence of the will of Jesus on irrational nature, remains chargeable upon this history as upon those last examined.

But there is another difficulty which is peculiar to the narrative before us. We have here not merely, as hitherto, a modification or a direction of natural objects, but a multiplication of them, and that to an enormous extent Nothing, it is true, is more familiar to our observation than the growth and multiplication of natural objects, as presented to us in the parable of the sower, and the grain of mustard seed, for example. But, first, these phenomena do not take place without the co-operation of other natural agents, as earth, water, air, so that here, also, according to the well-known principle of physics, there is not properly speaking an augmentation of the substance, but only a change in the accidents; secondly, these processes of growth and multiplication are carried forward so as to pass through their various stages in corresponding intervals of time. Here, on the contrary, in the multiplication of the loaves and fishes by Jesus, neither the one rule nor the other is observed: the bread in the hand of Jesus is no longer, like the stalk on which the corn grew, in communication with the maternal earth, nor is the multiplication gradual, but sudden.

But herein, it is said, consists the miracle, which in relation to the last point especially, may be called the acceleration of a natural process. That which comes to pass in the space of three quarters of a year, from seed-time to harvest, was here effected in the minutes which were required for the distribution of the food; for natural developments are capable of acceleration, and to how great an extent we cannot determine.  It would, indeed, have been an acceleration of a natural process, if in the hand of Jesus a grain of com had borne fruit a hundred-fold, and brought it to maturity, and if he had shaken the multiplied grain out of his hands as they were filled again and again, that the people might grind, knead, and bake it, or eat it raw from the husk in the wilderness where they were; — or if he had taken a living fish, suddenly called forth the eggs from its body, and converted them into full-grown fish, which then the disciples or the people might have boiled or roasted, this, we should say, would have been an acceleration of a natural process. But it is not corn that he takes into his hand, but bread; and the fish also, as they are distributed in pieces, must have been prepared in some way, perhaps, as in Luke xxiv. 42, comp. John xxi. 9, broiled or salted. Here then, on both sides, the production of nature is no longer simple and living, but dead and modified by art: so that to introduce a natural process of the above kind, Jesus must; in the first place, by his miraculous power have metamorphosed the bread into corn again, the roasted fish into raw and living ones; then instantaneously have effected the described multiplication; and lastly, have restored the whole from the natural to the artificial state. Thus the miracle would he composed, 1st, of a revivification, which would exceed in miraculousness all other instances in the gospels; secondly, of an extremely accelerated natural process; and thirdly, of an artificial process, effected invisibly, and likewise extremely accelerated, since all the tedious proceedings of the miller and baker on the one hand, and of the cook on the other, must have been accomplished in a moment by the word of Jesus. How then can Olshausen deceive himself and the believing reader, by the agreeably sounding expression, accelerated natural process} when this nevertheless can designate only a third part of the fact of which we are speaking?

But how are we to represent such a miracle to ourselves, and in what stage of the event must it be placed? In relation to the latter point, three opinions are possible, corresponding to the number of the groups that act in our narrative; for the multiplication may have taken place either in the hands of Jesus, or in those of the disciples who dispensed the food, or in those of the people who received it. The last idea appears, on the one hand, puerile even to extravagance, if we are to imagine Jesus and the apostles distributing, with great carefulness, that there might be enough for all, little crumbs which in the hands of the recipients swelled into considerable pieces: on the other hand, it would have been scarcely a possible task, to get a particle, however small, for every individual in a multitude of five thousand men, out of five loaves, which, according to Hebrew custom, and particularly as they were carried by a boy, cannot have been very large; and still less out of two fishes. Of the two other opinions I think, with Olshausen, the one most suitable is that which supposes that the food was augmented under the creative hands of Jesus, and that he time after time dispensed new quantities to the disciples.’ We may then endeavour to represent the matter to ourselves in two ways: first we may suppose that as fast as one loaf or fish was gone, a new one came out of the hands of Jesus, or secondly, that the single loaves and fishes grew, so that as one piece was broken off, its loss was repaired, until on a calcula- tion the turn came for the next loaf or fish. The first conception appears to be opposed to the text, which as it speaks of fragments ru>v Wvrc a/ww, of the five loaves (John vi. 13), can hardly be held to presuppose an increase of this number; thus there remains only the second, by the poetical description of which Lavater has done but a poor service to the orthodox view. For this miracle belongs to the class which can only appear in any degree credible so long as they can be retained in the obscurity of an indefinite conception: no sooner does the light shine on them, so that they can be examined in all their parts, than they dissolve like the unsubstantial creations of the mist Loaves, which in the hands of the distributors expand like wetted sponges, — broiled fish, in which the severed parts are replaced instantaneously, as in the living crab gradually, — plainly belong to quite another domain than that of reality.

What gratitude then do we not owe to the rationalistic interpretation, if it be true that it can free us, in the easiest manner, from the burden of so unheard-of a miracle? If we are to believe Dr. Paulus, the Evangelists had no idea that they were narrating anything miraculous, and the miracle was first conveyed into their accounts by expositors. What they narrate is, according to him, only thus much: that Jesus caused his small store of provisions to be distributed, and that in consequence of this the entire multitude obtained enough to eat. Here, in any case, we want a middle term, which would distinctly inform us, how it was possible that, although Jesus had so little food to offer, the whole multitude obtained enough to eat A very natural middle term however is to be gathered, according to Paulus, out of the historical combination of the circumstances. As, on a comparison with John vl 4, the multitude appear to have consisted for the greater part of a caravan on its way to the feast, they cannot have bem qu’te destitutejof provisions, and probably a few indigent persons only had’ exhausted their stores. In order then to induce the better provided to share their food with those who were in want, Jesus arranged that they should have a meal, and himself set the example of imparting what he and his disciples could spare from their own little store; this example was imitated, and thus the distribution of bread by Jesus having led to a general distribution, the whole multitude were satisfied. It is true that this natural middle tenn must be first mentally interpolated into the text; as, however, the supernatural middle term which is generally received is just as little stated expressly, and both alike depend upon inference, the reader can hardly do otherwise than decide for the natural one. Such is the reasoning of Dr. Paulus: but the alleged identity in the relation of the two middle terms to the text does not in fact exist For while the natural explanation requires us to suppose a new distributing subject (the better provided among the multitude), and a new distributed object (their provisions), together with the act of distributing these provisions: the supranatural explanation contents itself with the subject actually present in the text (Jesus and his disciples), with the single object there given (their little store), and the described distribution of this; and only requires us to supply from our imagination the means by which this store could be made sufficient to satisfy the hunger of the multitude, namely its miraculous augmentation under the hands of Jesus (or of his disciples). How can it be yet maintained that neither of the two middle terms is any more suggested by the text than the other? That the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes is not expressly men-

 Jesus Messias, 2, Bd. No. 14, 15 and 20.

“For this reason Neander (s. 377) passes over the miracle with a few entirely general remarks.

14 — Exeg. Handb. 2, s. 205 ff.

K K tioned, is explained by the consideration that the event itself is one of which no clear conception can be formed, and therefore it is best conveyed by the result alone. But how will the natural theologian account for nothing being said of the distribution, called forth by the example of Jesus, on the part of those among the multitude who had provisions? It is altogether arbitrary to insert that distribution between the sentences, He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitude (Matt xiv. 19), and, they did all eat and were filled (v. 20); while the words, *at toÙç Svo Ix&vas c/xcpio-c iracrt, and the two fishes divided he among them all (Mark vi. 41), plainly indicate that only the two fishes — and consequently only the five loaves — were the object of distribution for all. But the natural explanation falls into especial embarrassment when it comes to the baskets which, after all were satisfied, Jesus caused to be filled with the fragments that remained. The fourth Evangelist says: <rwrjyayov ovv, Kal iycfJLurav SœSeica Ko<j>ivov<s KkacrfidruiV ôc tw ttcktc aprrtav TMV KpiOCvtav, a «rcpiWewc roîç fieftpuKoo-iv, therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten (vi. 13). This seems clearly enough to imply that out of those identical five loaves, after five thousand men had been satisfied by them, there still remained fragments enough to fill twelve baskets, — more, that is, than the amount of the original store. Here, therefore, the natural expositor is put to the most extravagant contrivances in order to evade the miracle. It is true, when the synoptists simply say that the remnants of the meal were collected, and twelve baskets filled with them, it might be thought from the point of view of the natural explanation, that Jesus, out of regard to the gift of God, caused the fragments which the crowd had left from their own provisions to be collected by his disciples. But as, on the one hand, the fact that the people allowed the remains of the repast to lie, and did not appropriate them, seems to indicate that they treated the nourishment presented to them as the property of another; so, on the other hand, Jesus, when, without any preliminary, he directs his disciples to gather them up, appears to regard them as his own property. Hence Paulus understands the words rjpav K. t. X. of the synoptists, not of a collection first made after the meal, of that which remained when the people had been satisfied, but of the overplus of the little store belonging to Jesus and the disciples, which the latter, after reserving what was necessary for Jesus and themselves, carried round as an introduction and inducement to the general repast. But how, when the words tyayov Kal i)(opTacr6ri<rav irarrcç, they did all eat and werefilled, are immediately followed by Kal rjpav, and they took up, can the latter member of the verse refer to the time prior to the meal? Must it not then have necessarily been said at least rjpav yàp, for they took up? Further, how, after it had just been said that the people did eat and were filled, can to ircpuro-cv- a-av, that which remained, especially succeeded as it is in Luke by avroiç, to them, mean anything else than what the people had left? Lastly, how is it possible that out of five loaves and two fishes, after Jesus and his disciples had reserved enough for themselves, or even without this, there could in a natural manner be twelve baskets filled for distribution among the people? But still more strangely does the natural explanation deal with the narrative of John. Jesus here adds, as a reason for gathering up the fragments, Iva p rj TI àrrokrjraA., that nothing be lost; hence it appears impossible to divest the succeeding statement that they filled twelve baskets with the remains of the five loaves, of its relation to the time after the meal; and in this case, it would be impossible to get clear of a miraculous multiplication of the loaves. Paulus therefore, although the words <rvvrjyayov ovv Kal iycfxurav SSexa K(xf>ivov? K. t. A., therefore they gathered them together and filled twelve baskets, etc., form a strictly coherent whole, chooses rather to detach owYflayov ovf, and, by a still more forced construction than that which he employed with the synoptical text, makes the narrative pass all at once, without the slightest notice, into the pluperfect, and thus leap back to the time before the meal.

Here, then, the natural explanation once more fails to fulfil its task: the text retains its miracle, and if we have reason to think this incredible, we must inquire whether the narrative of the text deserves credence. The agreement of all the four Evangelists is generally adduced in proof of its distinguished credibility: but this agreement is by no means so perfect, There are minor differences, first between Matthew and Luke; then between these two and Mark, who in this instance again embellishes; and lastly, between the synoptists collectively and John, in the following points: according to the synoptists, the scene of the event is a desert place, according to John, a mountain; according to the former, the scene opens with an address from the disciples, according to John, with a question from Jesus (two particulars in which, as we have already remarked, the narrative of John approaches that of the second feeding in Matthew and Mark); lastly, the words which the three first Evangelists put into the mouth of the disciples indefinitely, the fourth in his individualizing manner ascribes to Philip and Andrew, and the same Evangelist also designates the bearer of the loaves and fishes as a boy (iraiSapiov). These divergencies however may be passed over as less essential, that we may give our attention only to one, which has a deeper hold. While, namely, according to the synoptical accounts, Jesus had been long teaching the people and healing their sick, and was only led to feed them by the approach of evening, and the remark of the disciples that the people needed refreshment: in John, the first thought of Jesus, when he lifts up his eyes and sees the people gathering round him, is that which he expresses in his question to Philip: Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? or rather, as he asked this merely to prove Philip, well knowing himself what he would do, he at once forms the resolution of feeding the multitude in a miraculous manner. But how could the design of feeding the people arise in Jesus immediately on their approach? They did not come to him for this, but for the sake of his teaching and his curative power. He must therefore have conceived this design entirely of his own accord, with a view to establish his miraculous power by so signal a demonstration. But did he ever thus work a miracle without any necessity, and even without any inducement, — quite arbitrarily, and merely for the sake of working a miracle? I am unable to describe strongly enough how impossible it is that eating should here have been the first thought of Jesus, how impossible that he could thus obtrude his miraculous repast on the people. Thus in relation to this point, the synoptical narrative, in which there is a reason for the miracle, must have the preference to that of John, who, hastening towards the miracle, overlooks the requisite motive for it, and makes Jesus create instead of awaiting the occasion for its performance. An eye-witness could not narrate thus;  and if, therefore, the account of that gospel to which the greatest authority is now awarded, must be rejected as unhistorical; so, with respect to the other narratives, the difficulties of the fact itself are sufficient to cast a doubt on their historical credibility, especially if in addition to these negative grounds we can discover positive reasons which render it probable that our narrative had an unhistorical origin.

Such reasons are actually found both within the evangelical history itself, and beyond it in the Old Testament history, and the Jewish popular belief. In relation to the former source, it is worthy of remark, that in the synoptical gospels as well as in John, there are more or less immediately appended to the feeding of the multitude by Jesus with literal bread, figurative discourses of Jesus on bread and leaven: namely, in the latter, the declarations concerning the bread of heaven, and the bread of life which Jesus gives (John vi. 27 ff.); in the former, those concerning the false leaven of the Pharisees and Saddu- cees, that is, their false doctrine and hypocrisy.  (Matt xvi. 5 ff.; Mark viii. 14 ff.; comp. Luke xii. 1); and on both sides, the figurative discourse of Jesus is erroneously understood of literal bread. It would not then be a very strained conjecture, that as in the passages quoted we find the disciples and the people generally, understanding literally what Jesus meant figuratively; so the same mistake was made in the earliest Christian tradition. If, in figura- tive discourses, Jesus had sometimes represented himself as him who was able to give the true bread of life to the wandering and hungering people, perhaps also placing in opposition to this, the leaven of the Pharisees: the legend, agreeably to its realistic tendency, may have converted this into the fact of a miraculous feeding of the hungry multitude in the wilderness by Jesus. The fourth Evangelist makes the discourse on the bread of heaven arise out of the miracle of the loaves: but the relation might very well have been the reverse, and the history owe its origin to the discourse, especially as the question which introduces John’s narrative, Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat? may be more easily conceived as being uttered by Jesus on the first sight of the people, if he alluded to feeding them with the word of God (comp. John iv. 32 ff.), to appeasing their spiritual hunger (Matt v. 6), in order to exercise (irupaZtw) the higher understanding of his disciples, than if he really thought of the satisfaction of their bodily hunger, and only wished to try whether his disciples would in this case confide in his miraculous power. The synoptical narrative is less suggestive of such a view; for the figurative discourse on the leaven could not by itself originate the history of the miracle. Thus the gospel of John stands alone with reference to the above mode of derivation, and it is more agreeable to the character of this gospel to conjecture that it has applied the narrative of a miracle presented by tradition to the production of figurative discourses in the Alexandrian taste, than to suppose that it has preserved to us the original discourses out of which the legend spun that miraculous narrative.

If then we can discover, beyond the limits of the New Testament, very powerful causes for the origination of our narrative, we must renounce the attempt to construct it out of materials presented by the gospels themselves.

And here the fourth Evangelist, by putting into the mouth of the people a reference to the manna, that bread of heaven which Moses gave to the fathers in the wilderness (v. 31), reminds us of one of the most celebrated passages in the early history of the Israelites (Exod xvi.), which was perfectly adapted to engender the expectation that its antitype would occur in the Messianic times; and we in fact learn from rabbinical writings, that among those functions of the first Goël which were to be revived in the second, a chief place was given to the impartation of bread from heaven. If the Mosaic manna presents itself as that which was most likely to be held a type of the bread miraculously augmented by Jesus; the fish which Jesus also multiplied miraculously, may remind us that Moses gave the people, not only a substitute for bread in the manna, but also animal food in the quails (Exod xvi. 8, xii. 13; Num xi. 4 ff.). On comparing these Mosaic narratives with our evangelical ones, there appears a striking resemblance even in details. The locality in both cases is the wilderness; the inducement to the miracle here as there, is fear lest the people should suffer from want in the wilderness, or perish from hunger; in the Old Testament history, this fear is expressed by the people in loud murmurs, in that of the New Testament, it results from the shortsightedness of the disciples, and the benevolence uf Jesus. The direction of the latter to his disciples that they should give the people food, a direction which implies that he had already formed the design of feeding them miraculously, may be paralleled with the command which Jehovah gave to Moses to feed the people with manna (Exod xvi. 4), and with quails (Exod xvi. 12; Num xi. 18-20). But there is another point of similarity which speaks yet more directly to our present purpose. As, in the evangelical narrative, the disciples think it an impossibility that provision for so great a mass of people should be procured in the wilderness, so, in the Old Testament history, Moses replies doubtingly to the promise of Jehovah to satisfy the people with flesh (Num xi. 21 f.). To Moses, as to the disciples, the multitude appears too great for the possibility of providing sufficient food for them; as the latter ask, whence they should have so much bread in the wilderness, so Moses asks ironically whether they should slay the flocks and the herds (which they had not). And as the disciples object, that not even the most impoverishing expenditure on their part would thoroughly meet the demand, so Moses, clothing the idea in another form, had declared, that to satisfy the people as Jehovah promised, an impossibility must happen (the fish of the sea be gathered together for them); objections which Jehovah there, as here Jesus, does not regard, but issues the command that the people should prepare for the reception of the miraculous food.

But though these two cases of a miraculous supply of nourishment are thus analogous, there is this essential distinction, that in the Old Testament, in relation both to the manna and the quails, it is a miraculous procuring of food not previously existing which is spoken of, while in the New Testament it is a miraculous augmentation of provision already present, but inadequate; so that the chasm between the Mosaic narrative and the evangelical one is too great for the latter to have been derived immediately from the former. If we search for an intermediate step, a very natural one between Moses and the Messiah is afforded by the prophets. We read of Elijah, that through him and for his sake, the little store of meal and oil which he found in the possession of the widow of Zarephath was miraculously replenished, or rather was made to suffice throughout the duration of the famine (1 Kings xvii. 8-16). This species of miracle is developed still further, and with a greater resemblance to the evangelical narrative, in the history of Elisha (2 Kings iv. 42 ff.). As Jesus fed five thousand men in the wilderness with five loaves and two fishes, so this prophet, during a famine, fed a hundred men with twenty loaves, (which like those distributed by Jesus in John, are called barley loaves,) together with some ground corn (Ç» LXX. waXaOas); a disproportion between the quantity of provisions and the number of men, which his servant, like the disciples in the other instance, indicates in the question: What! should I set this before a hundred men? Elisha, like Jesus, is not diverted from his purpose, but commands the servant to give what he has to the people; and as in the New Testament narrative great stress is laid on the collection of the remaining fragments, so in the Old Testament it is specially noticed at the close of this story, that notwithstanding so many had eaten of the store, there was still an overplus.  The only important difference here is, that on the side of the evangelical narrative, the number of the loaves is smaller, and that of the people greater; but who does not know that in general the legend does not easily imitate, without at the same time surpassing, and who does not see that in this particular instance it was entirely suited to the position of the Messiah, that his miraculous power, compared with that of Elisha, should be placed, as it regards the need of natural means, in the relation of five to twenty, but as it regards the supernatural performance, in that of five thousand to one hundred? Paulus indeed, in order to preclude the inference, that as the two narratives in the Old Testament are to be understood mythically, so also is the strikingly similar evangelical narrative, extends to the former the attempt at a natural explanation which he has pursued with the latter, making the widow’s cruse of oil to be replenished by the aid of the scholars of the prophets, and the twenty loaves suffice for one hundred men by means of a praiseworthy moderation;  a mode of explanation which is less practicable here than with the New Testament narrative, in proportion as, by reason of the greater remoteness of these anecdotes, they present fewer critical (and, by reason of their merely mediate relation to Christianity, fewer dogmatical) motives for maintaining their historical veracity.

Nothing more is wanting to complete the mythical derivation of this history of the miraculous feeding of the multitude, except the proof, that the later Jews also believed of particularly holy men, that by their means a small amount of provision was made sufficient, and of this proof the disinterested industry of Dr. Paulus as a collector, has put us in possession. He adduces a rabbinical statement that in the time of a specially holy man, the amall quantity of shew-bread more than sufficed for the supply of the priests. To be consequent, this commentator should try to explain this story also naturally, — by the moderation of the priests, for instance: but it is not in the canon, hence he can unhesitatingly regard it as a fable, and he only so far admits its striking similarity to the evangelical narrative as to observe, that in consequence of the Jewish belief in such augmentations of food, attested by that rabbinical statement, the New Testament narrative may in early times have been understood by judaizing Christians in the same (miraculous) sense. But our examination has shown that the evangelical narrative was designedly composed so as to convey this sense, and if this sense was an element of the popular Jewish legend, then is the evangelical narrative without doubt a product of that legend.*.

§ 103.

JESUS TURNS WATER INTO WINE.

Next to the history of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, may be ranged the narrative in the fourth gospel (ii. 1 fF.), of Jesus at a wedding in Cana of Galilee turning water into wine. According to Olshausen, both miracles fall under the same category, since in both a substratum is present, the substance of which is modified. But he overlooks the logical distinction, that in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the modification is one of quantity merely, an augmentation of what was already existing, without any change of its quality (bread becomes more bread, but remains bread); whereas at the wedding in Cana the substratum is modified in quality — out of a certain substance there is made not merely more of the same kind, but something else (out of water, wine); in other words, a real transubstandation takes place. It is true there are changes in quality which are natural results, and the instantaneous effectuation of which by Jesus would be even more easy to conceive, than an equally rapid augmentation of quantity; for example, if he had suddenly changed must into wine, or wine into vinegar, this would only have been to conduct in an accelerated manner the same vegetable substratum, the vinous juice, through various conditions natural to it The miracle would be already heightened if Jesus had imparted to the juice of another fruit, the apple for instance, the quality of that of the grape, although even in this his agency would have been within the limits of the same kingdom of nature. But here, where water is turned into wine, there is a transition from one kingdom of nature to another, from the elementary to the vegetable; a miracle which as far exceeds that of the multiplication of the loaves, as if Jesus had hearkened to the counsel of the tempter, and turned stones into bread.

To this miracle, as to the former, Olshausen, after Augustine, applies his definition of an accelerated natural process, by which we are to understand that we have here simply the occurrence, in an accelerated manner, of that which is presented yearly in the vine in a slow process of development This mode of viewing the matter would have some foundation, if the substratum on which Jesus operated had been the same out of which wine is wont to be naturally produced; if he had taken a vine in his hand, and suddenly caused it to bloom, and to bear ripe grapes, this might have been called an accelerated natural process. Even then indeed we should still have no wine, and if Jesus were to produce this also from the vine which he took into his hand, he must add an operation which would be an invisible substitute for the winepress, that is, an accelerated artificial process; so that on this supposition the category of the accelerated natural process would already be insufficient. In fact, however, we have no vine as a substratum for this production of wine, but water, and in this case we could only speak with propriety of an accelerated natural process, if by any means, however gradual, wine were ever produced out of water. Here it is urged, that certainly out of water, out of the moisture produced in the earth by rain and the like, the vine draws its sap, which in due order it applies to the production of the grape, and of the wine therein contained; so that thus yearly, by means of a natural process, wine does actually come out of water. But apart from the fact that water is only one of the elementary materials which are required for the fructification of the vine, and that to this end, soil, air, and light, must concur; it could not be said either of one, or of all these elementary materials together, that they produce the grape or the wine, nor, consequently, that Jesus, when he produced wine out of water, did the same thing, only more quickly, which is repeated every year as a gradual process: on the contrary, here again there is a confusion of essentially distinct logical categories. For we may place the relation of the product to the producing agent, which is here treated of, under the category of power and manifestation, or of cause and effect: never can it be said that water is the power or the cause, which produces grapes and wine, for the power which gives existence to them is strictly the vegetable individuality of the vine-plant, to which water, with the rest of the elementary agencies, is related only as the solicitation to the power, as the stimulus to the cause. That is, without the co-operation of water, air, etc., grapes certainly cannot be produced, any more than without the vine plant; but the distinction is, that in the vine the grape, in itself or in its germ, is already present, and water, air, etc., only assist in its development; whereas in these elementary substances, the grape is present neither actu nor potcntiâ; they can in no way produce the fruit out of themselves, but only out of something else — the vine. To turn water into wine is not then to make a cause act more rapidly than it would act in a natural way, but it is to make the effect appear without a cause, out of a mere accessory circumstance; or, to refer more particularly to organic nature, it is to call forth the organic product without the producing organism, out of the simple inorganic materials, or rather out of one of these materials only. This is about the same thing as to make bread out of earth without the intervention of the com plant, flesh out of bread without a previous assimilation of it by an animal body, or in the same immediate manner, blood out of wine. If the supranaturalist is not here contented with appealing to the incomprehensibleness of an omnipotent word of Jesus, but also endeavours, with Olshausen, to bring the process which must have been contained in the miracle in question nearer to his conception, by regarding it in the light of a natural process; he must not, in order to render the matter more probable, suppress a part of the necessary stages in that process, but exhibit them all. They would then present the following series: 1st, to the water, as one only of the elementary agents, Jesus must have added the power of the other elements above named; 2ndly (and this is the chief point), he must have procured, in an equally invisible manner, the organic individuality of the vine; 3rdly, he must have accelerated, to the degree of instantaneousness, the natural process resulting from the reciprocal action of these objects upon one another, the blooming and fructification of the vine, together with the ripening of the grape; 4thly, he must have caused the artificial process of pressing, 4 — Thus Augustine, ut sup approved by Olshausen: sicut enim, quod mtserunt minisiri in kydrias in vinum conversum est opere Domini, sic et quod nubes fundunt, in vinum couver- titurejusdem opere Dominù and so forth, to occur invisibly and suddenly; and lastly, he must again have accelerated the further natural process of fermentation, so as to render it momentary. Thus, here again, the designation of the miracle as an accelerated natural process, would apply to two stages only out of five, the other three being such as cannot possibly be brought under this point of view, though the two first, especially the second, are of greater importance even than belonged to the stages which were neglected in the application of this view to the history of the miraculous feeding: so that the definition of an accelerated natural process is as inadequate here as there. As, however, this is the only, or the extreme category, under which we can bring such operations nearer to our conception and comprehension; it follows that if this category be shown to be inapplicable, the event itself is inconceivable.

Not only, however, has the miracle before us been impeached in relation to possibility, but also in relation to utility and fitness. It has been urged both in ancient and modern times, that it was unworthy of Jesus that he should not only remain in the society of drunkards, but even further their intemperance by an exercise of his miraculous power. But this objection should be discarded as an exaggeration, since, as expositors justly observe, from the words after men have well drunk, orav /ieûv<r0<o<ri (v. 10), which the ruler of the feast àpxwpiK\Lvos uses with reference to the usual course of things at such feasts, nothing can with certainty be deduced with respect to the occasion in question. We must however still regard as valid an objection, which is not only pointed out by Paulus and the author of the Probabilia, But admitted even by Liicke and Olshausen to be at the first glance a pressing difficulty: namely, that by this miracle Jesus did not, as was usual with him, relieve any want, any real need, but only furnished an additional incitement to pleasure; showed himself not so much helpful as courteous; rather, so to speak, performed a miracle of luxury, than of true beneficence. If it be here said that it was a sufficient object for the miracle to confirm the faith of the disciples, which according to v. 11 was its actual effect; it must be remembered that, as a general rule, not only had the miracles of Jesus, considered with regard to their form, i e as extraordinary results, something desirable as their consequence, for instance, the faith of the spectators; but also, considered with regard to their matter, i e as consisting of cures, multiplications of loaves, and the like, were directed to some really beneficent end. In the present miracle this characteristic is wanting, and hence Paulus is not wrong when he points out the contradiction which would lie in the conduct of Jesus, if towards the tempter he rejected every challenge to such miracles as, without being materially beneficent, or called for by any pressing necessity, could only formally produce faith and astonishment, and yet in this instance performed a miracle of that very nature.

The supranaturalist was therefore driven to maintain that it was not faith in general which Jesus here intended to produce, but a conviction entirely special, and only to be wrought by this particular miracle. Proceeding on this supposition, nothing was more natural than to be reminded by the opposition of water and wine on which the miracle turns, of the opposition between him who baptized with water (Matt iii n), who at the same time — Even Liicke, I, s. 405, thinks the analogy with the above natural process deficient and unintelligible, and does not know how to console himself better than by the consideration, that a similar inconvenience exists in relation to the miracle of the loaves.

6 — Chrysost hom in Joann. 21.

7 — Woolston, Disc. 4.

 — P. 42.

 — Tholuck, in loc.

10 — Comm. 4, s. 151 f. came neither eating nor drinking (Luke i. 15; Matt xi. 18), and him who, as he baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, so he did not deny himself the ardent, animating fruit of the vine, and was hence reproached with being a wine-bibber olvonroTTJS (Matt xi. 19); especially as the fourth gospel, in which the narrative of the wedding at Cana is contained, manifests in a peculiar degree the tendency to lead over the contemplation from the Baptist to Jesus. On these grounds Herder,  and after him some others,  have held the opinion, that Jesus by the above miraculous act intended to symbolize to his disciples, several of whom had been disciples of the Baptist, the relation of his spirit and office to those of John, and by this proof of his superior power, to put an end to the offence which they might take at his more liberal mode of life. But here the reflection obtrudes itself, that Jesus does not avail himself of this symbolical miracle, to enlighten his disciples by explanatory discourses concerning his relation to the Baptist; an omission which even the friends of this interpretation pronounce to be surprising.  How needful such an exposition was, if the miracle were not to fail of its special object, is evident from the fact, that the narrator himself, according to v. 11, understood it not at all in this light, as a symbolization of a particular maxim of Jesus, but quite generally, as a manifestation ÿavipwrts of his glory.  Thus if that special lesson were the object of Jesus in performing the miracle before us, then the author of the fourth gospel, that is, according to the supposition of the above theologians, his most apprehensive pupil, misunderstood him, and Jesus delayed in an injudicious manner to prevent this misunderstanding; or if both these conclusions are rejected, there still subsists the difficulty, that Jesus, contrary to the prevailing tendency of his conduct, sought to attain the general object of proving his miraculous power, by an act for which apparently he might have substituted a more useful one.

Again, the disproportionate quantity of wine with which Jesus supplies the guests, must excite astonishment. Six vessels, each containing from two to three /xer/oiyràç, supposing the Attic perpTp-rjs, corresponding to the Hebrew bath, to be equivalent to i£ Roman amphorœ, or twenty-one Wirtemberg measures,* would yield 252-378 measures.  What a quantity for a company who had already drunk freely! What enormous vessels I exclaims Dr. Paulus, and leaves no effort untried to reduce the statement of measures in the text. With a total disregard of the rules of the language, he gives to the preposition àva a collective meaning, instead of its proper distributive one, so as to make the six water pots (vSpCai) contain, not each, but altogether, from two to three fierpvjràç; and even Olshausen consoles himself, after Semler, with the fact, that it is nowhere remarked that the water in all the vessels was turned into wine. But these are subterfuges; they to whom the supply of so extravagant and dangerous a quantity of wine on the part of Jesus is incredible, must conclude that the narrative is unhistorical.

Peculiar difficulty is occasioned by the relation in which this narrative places Jesus to his mother, and his mother to him. According to the express statement of the Evangelist, the turning of water into wine was the beginning of the miracles of Jesus, T”v <ny/xcta>v; and yet his mother reckons so confidently on his performing a miracle here, that she believes it only necessary to point out to him the deficiency of wine, in order to induce him to afford supernatural aid; and even when she receives a discouraging answer, she is so far from losing hope, that she enjoins the servants to be obedient to the directions of her son (v. 3, 5). How is this expectation of a miracle on the part of the mother of Jesus to be explained? Are we to refer the declaration of John, that the metamorphosis of the water was the first miracle of Jesus, merely to the period of his public life, and to presuppose as real events, for his previous years, the apocryphal miracles of the Gospels of the Infancy? Or believing that Chrysostom was right in regarding this as too uncritical, are we rather to conjecture that Mary, in consequence of her conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, a conviction wrought in her by the signs that attended his birth, expected miracles from him, and as perhaps on some earlier occasions, so now on this, when the perplexity was great, desired from him a proof of his power? Were only that early conviction of the relatives of Jesus that he was the Messiah somewhat more probable, and especially the extraordinary events of the childhood, by which it is supposed to have been produced, better accredited! Moreover, even presupposing the belief of Mary in the miraculous power of her son, it is still not at all clear how, notwithstanding his discouraging answer, she could yet confidently expect that he would just on this occasion perform his first miracle, and feel assured that she positively knew that he would act precisely so as to require the assistance of the servants. This decided knowledge on the part of Mary, even respecting the manner of the miracle about to be wrought, appears to indicate an antecedent disclosure of Jesus to her, and hence Olshausen supposes that Jesus had given his mother an intimation concerning the miracle on which he had resolved. But when could this disclosure have been made? Already as they were going to the feast? Then Jesus must have foreseen that there would be a want of wine, in which case Mary could not have apprised him of it as of an unexpected embarrassment. Or did Jesus make the disclosure after her appeal, and consequently in connexion with the words: What have I to do with thee, woman, etc.? But with this answer, it is impossible to conceive so opposite a declaration to have been united; it would therefore be necessary, on Olshausen’s view, to imagine that Jesus uttered the negative words aloud, the affirmative in an undertone, merely for Mary: a supposition which would give the scene the appearance of a comedy. Thus it is on no supposition to be understood how Mary could expect a miracle at all, still less precisely such an one. The first difficulty might indeed be plausibly evaded, by maintaining that Mary did not here apply to Jesus in expectation of a miracle, but simply that she might obtain her son’s advice in the case, as she was wont to do in all difficult circumstances: his reply however shows that he regarded the words of his mother as a summons to perform a miracle, and moreover the direction which Mary gave to the servants remains on this supposition totally unexplained.

The answer of Jesus to the intimation of his mother (v. 4) has been just as often blamed with exaggeration  as justified on insufficient grounds. However truly it may be urged that the Hebrew phrase, — to which the Greek rl ipol #cat aol corresponds, appears elsewhere as an expression of gentle blame, e g. 2 Sam xvi. 10; or that with the entrance of Jesus on his special office his relation to his mother as regarded his actions was dissolved: it nevertheless remains undeniable, that it was fitting for Jesus to be modestly apprised of opportunities for the exercise of his miraculous power, and if one who pointed out to him a case of disease and added an entreaty for help, did not deserve reprehension, as little and even less did Mary, when she brought to his knowledge a want which had arisen, with a merely implied entreaty for assistance. The case would have been different had Jesus considered the occasion not adapted, or even unworthy to have a miracle connected with it; he might then have repelled with severity the implied summons, as an incitement to a false use of miraculous power (instanced in the history of the temptation); as, on the contrary, he immediately after showed by his actions that he held the occasion worthy of a miracle, it is absolutely incomprehensible how he could blame his mother for her information, which perhaps only came to him a few moments too soon ss Here again it has been attempted to escape from the numerous difficulties of the supranatural view, by a natural interpretation of the history. The commentators who advance this explanation set out from the fact, that it was the custom among the Jews to make presents of oil or wine at marriage feasts. Now Jesus, it is said, having brought with him five new disciples as uninvited guests, might foresee a deficiency of wine, and wished out of pleasantry to present his gift in an unexpected and mysterious manner. The 8o$a (glory) which he manifested by this proceeding, is said to be merely his humanity, which in the proper place did not disdain to pass a jest; the wtoriç, (faith) which he thereby excited in his disciples, was a joyful adherence to a man who exhibited none of the oppressive severity which had been anticipated in the Messiah. Mary was aware of her son’s project, and warned him when it appeared to her time to put it in execution; but he reminded her playfully not to spoil his jest by over-haste. His causing water to be drawn, seems to have belonged to the playful deception which he intended; that all at once wine was found in the vessels instead of water, and that this was regarded as a miraculous metamorphosis, might easily happen at a late hour of the night, when there had already been considerable drinking; lastly, that Jesus did not enlighten the wedding party as to the true state of the case, was the natural consequence of his wish not himself to dissipate the delusion which he had playfully caused.* For the rest, how the plan was effected, by what arrangements on the part of Jesus the wine was conveyed in the place of the water, this, Paulus thinks, is not now to be ascertained; it is enough for us to know that all happened naturally. As however, according to the opinion of this expositor, the Evangelist was aware, in a general manner, that the whole occurrence was natural, why has he given us no intimation to that effect? Did he wish to prepare for the reader the same surprise that Jesus had prepared for the spectators? still he must afterwards have solved the enigma, if he did not intend the delusion to be permanent. Above all, he ought not to have used the misleading expression, that Jesus by this act manifested forth his glory (ri/v — avrov, v. 11), which, in the phraseology of this gospel, can only mean his superior dignity; he ought not to have called the incident a sign (<rrnUiov), by which something supernatural is implied; lastly, he ought not, by the expression, the water that was made wine (TO v&op olvov yeytvTjjjLevov, v. 9), and still less by the subsequent designation of Cana as the place where he made the water wine (ovov hrotrfo-or v&op otvov), to have occasioned the impression, that he approved the miraculous conception of the event.  The author of the Natural History sought to elude these difficulties by the admission, that the narrator himself, John, regarded the event as a miracle, and meant to describe it as such. Not to mention, however, the unworthy manner in which he explains this error on the part of the Evangelist, it is not easy to conceive of Jesus that he should have kept his disciples in the same delusion as the rest of the guests, and not have given to them at least an explanation concerning the real course of the event. It would therefore be necessary to suppose that the narrator of this event was not one of the disciples of Jesus: a supposition which goes beyond the sphere of this system of interpretation. But even admitting that the narrator himself, whoever he may have been, was included in the same deception with those who regarded the affair as a miracle, in which case his mode of representation and the expressions which he uses would be accounted for; still the procedure of Jesus, and his mode of acting, are all the more inconceivable, if no real miracle were on foot. Why did he with refined assiduity arrange the presentation of the wine, so that it might appear to be a miraculous gift? Why, in particular, did he cause the vessels in which he intended forthwith to present the wine, to be filled beforehand with water, the necessary removal of which could only be a hindrance to the secret execution of his plan? unless indeed it be supposed, with Woolston, that he merely imparted to the water the taste of wine, by pouring into it some liquor. Thus there is a double difficulty; on the one hand, that of imagining how the wine could be introduced into the vessels already filled with water; on the other, that of freeing Jesus from the suspicion of having wished to create the appearance of a miraculous transmutation of the water. It may have been the perception of these difficulties which induced the author of the Natural History entirely to sever the connexion between the water which was poured in, and the wine which subsequently appeared, by the supposition that Jesus had caused the water to be fetched, because there was a deficiency of this also, and Jesus wished to recommend the beneficial practice of washing before and after meals, but that he afterwards caused the wine to be brought out of an adjoining room where he had placed it: — a conception of the matter which requires us either to suppose the intoxication of all the guests, and especially of the narrator, as so considerable, that they mistook the wine brought out of the adjoining room, for wine drawn out of the water vessels; or else that the deceptive arrangements of Jesus were contrived with very great art, which is inconsistent with the straightforwardness of character elsewhere ascribed to him.

In this dilemma between the supranatural and the natural interpretation?, of which, in this case again, the one is as insufficient as the other, we should be reduced, with one of the most recent commentators on the fourth gospel, to wait “until it pleased God, by further developments of judicious Christian reflection, to evolve a solution of the enigma to the general satisfaction;”  did we not discern an outlet in the fact, that the history in question is found in John’s gospel alone. Single in its kind as this miracle is, if it were also the first performed by Jesus, it must, even if all the twelve were not then with Jesus, have yet been known to them all; and even if among the rest of the * Compare on this point, Flatt, ut sup s. 77 ff and Liicke, in loc.

96 — He makes the word fuOfoKCffOai, v. 10, refer to John also.

97 — Liicke, s. 407.

Evangelists there were no apostle, still it must have passed into the general Christian tradiction, and from thence into the synoptical memoirs: consequently, as John alone has it, the supposition that it arose in a region of tradition unknown to the synoptists, seems easier than the alternative, that it so early disappeared out of that from which they drew; the only question is, whether we are in a condition to show how such a legend could arise without historical grounds. Kaiser points for this purpose to the extravagant spirit of the oriental legend, which has ever been so fertile in metamorphoses: but this source is so wide and indefinite, that Kaiser finds it necessary also to suppose a real jest on the part of Jesus, and thus remains uneasily suspended between the mythical and the natural explanations, a position which cannot be escaped from, until there can be produced points of mythical connexion and origin more definite and exact Now in the present case we need halt neither at the character of eastern legend in general, nor at metamorphoses in general, since transmutations of this particular element of water are to be found within the narrower circle of the ancient Hebrew history. Besides some narratives of Moses procuring for the Israelites water out of the flinty rock in the wilderness (Exod xvii. 1 ff.; Num xx. 1 ff.) — a bestowal of water which, after being repeated in a modified manner in the history of Samson (Judges xv i8f.), was made a feature in the messianic expectations; — the first transmutation of water ascribed to Moses, is the turning of all the water in Egypt into blood, which is enumerated among the so-called plagues (Exod vii. 17 ff.). Together with this mutatio in deterius, there is in the history of Moses a mutatio in melius, also effected in water, for he made bitter water sweet, under the direction of Jehovah (Exod xiv. 23 ff.); as at a later era, Elisha also is said to have made unhealthy water good and innoxious (2 Kings ii. 19 ff.). As, according to the rabbinical passage quoted, the bestowal of water, so also, according to this narrative in John, the transmutation of water appears to have been transferred from Moses and the prophets to the Messiah, with such modifications, however, as lay in the nature of the case. If namely, on the one hand, a change of water for the worse, like that Mosaic transmutation into blood — if a miracle of this retributive kind might not seem well suited to the mild spirit of the Messiah as recognised in Jesus: so on the other hand, such a change for the better as, like the removal of bitterness or noxiousness, did not go beyond the species of water, and did not, like the change into blood, alter the substance of the water itself, might appear insufficient for the Messiah; if then the two conditions be united, a change of water for the better, which should at the same time be a specific alteration of its substance, must almost of necessity be a change into wine. Now this is narrated by John, in a manner not indeed in accordance with reality, but which must be held all the more in accordance with the spirit of his gospel. For the harshness of Jesus towards his mother is, historically considered, incredible; but it is entirely in the spirit of the fourth gospel, to place in relief the exaltation of Jesus as the divine Logos by such demeanour towards suppliants (as in John iv. 48), and even towards his mother. Equally in the spirit of this gospel is it also, to exhibit the firm faith which Mary maintains notwithstanding the negative answer of Jesus, by making her give the direction to the servants above considered, as if she had a preconception even of the manner in which Jesus would perform his miracle, a preconception which is historically impossible.

§ i°4-

JESUS CURSES A BARREN FIG-TREE.

The anecdote of the fig-tree which Jesus caused to wither by his word, because when he was hungry he found no fruit on it, is peculiar to the two first gospels (Matt xxi. 18 ff.; Mark xl 12 ff.), but is narrated by them with divergencies which must affect our view of the fact. One of these divergencies of Mark from Matthew, appears so favourable to the natural explanation, that, chiefly in consideration of it, a tendency towards the natural view of the miracles of Jesus has been of late ascribed to this Evangelist; and for the sake of this one favourable divergency, he has been defended in relation to the other rather inconvenient one, which is found in the narrative before us.

If we were restricted to the manner in which the first Evangelist states the consequence of the curse of Jesus: and immediately the fig-tree withered away #cal ifrjpdvOrj irapaxprjfm y crv#o), it would be difficult here to carry out a natural explanation; for even the forced interpretation of Paulus, which makes the word irapaxprjfjia (immediately) only exclude flirther human accession to the fact, and not a longer space of time, rests only on an unwarranted transference of Mark’s particulars into the narrative of Matthew. In Mark, Jesus curses the fig-tree on the morning after His entrance into Jerusalem, and not till the following morning the disciples remark, in passing, that the tree is withered. Through this interim, which Mark leaves open between the declaration of Jesus and the withering of the tree, the natural explanation of the whole narrative insinuates itself, taking its stand on the possibility, that in this interval the tree might have withered from natural causes. Accordingly, Jesus is supposed to have remarked in the tree, besides the lack of fruit, a condition from which he prognosticated that it would soon wither away, and to have uttered this prediction in the words: No one will ever again gather fruit from thee. The heat of the day having realized the prediction of Jesus with unexpected rapidity, and the disciples remarking this the next morning, they then first connected this result with the words of Jesus on the previous morning, and began to regard them as a curse: an interpretation which, indeed, Jesus does not confirm, but impresses on the disciples, that if they have only some self-reliance, they will be able, not only to predict such physiologically evident results, but also to know and effect things far more difficult But even admitting Mark’s statement to be the correct one, the natural explan-

 De Wette thinks the analogies adduced from the Old Testament too remote; according to him, the metamorphosis of wine into water by Bacchus, instanced by Wetstein, would be nearer to the subject, and not far from the region of Greek thought, out of which the gospel of John arose. The most analogous mythical derivation of the narrative would be to regard this supply of wine as the counterpart to the supply of bread, and both as corresponding to the bread and wine in the last supper. But, he continues, the mythical view is opposed, I, by the not yet overthrown authenticity of the fourth gospel; 2, by the fact that the narrative bears less of a legendary than a subjective impress, by the obscurity that rests upon it, and its want of one presiding idea, together with the abundance of practical ideas worthy of Jesus which it embodies. By these observations De Wette -seems to intimate his approval of a natural explanation, built on the self-deception of John; an explanation which is encumbered with the difficulties above noticed.

1 — Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, s. 157 ff. ation still remains impossible. For the words of Jesus in Mark (v. 14): fJLT]K€TL €K (TOV €tÇ TOV aUûVCL flTjfeIÇ KCLpTTOV <f>àyOl, No fMM €üt fruit ûf tkte hereafter for ever, if they had been meant to imply a mere conjecture as to what would probably happen, must necessarily have had a potential signification given to them by the addition of &v; and in the expression of Matthew: firfK€TL €K <rov Kapkov ycvrjrai, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforitfàrd for ever,} the command is not to be mistaken, although Paulus would only find in this also the expression of a possibility. Moreover the circumstance that Jesus addresses the tree itself, as also the solemn cfc rov alS>va9for ever, which he adds, speaks against the idea of a mere prediction, and in favour of a curse; Paulus perceives this fully, and hence with unwarrantable violence he interprets the words Xeyei avrfj he saith to it, as if they introduced a saying merely in reference to the tree, while he depreciates the expression cfe tov atûva, by the translation: in time to come. But even if we grant that the Evangelists, owing to their erroneous conception of the incident, may have somewhat altered the words of Jesus, and that he in reality only prognosticated the withering of the tree; still, when the prediction was fulfilled, Jesus did nevertheless ascribe the result to his own supernatural influence. For in speaking of what he has done in relation to the fig-tree, he uses the verb icm&v (v. 21 Matt.); which cannot except by a forced interpretation, be referred to a mere prediction. But more than this, he compares what he has done in relation to the fig-tree, with the removal of mountains; and hence, as this, according to every possible interpretation, is an act of causation, so the other must be regarded as an influence on the tree. In any case, when Peter spoke of the fig-tree as having been cursed by Jesus (v. 21 Mark), either the latter must have contradicted the construction thus put on his words, or his silence must have implied his acquiescence. If then Jesus in the issue ascribes the withering of the tree to his influence, he either by his address to it designed to produce an effect, or he ambitiously misused the accidental result for the sake of deluding his disciples; a dilemma, in which the words of Jesus, as they are given by the Evangelists, decidedly direct us to the former alternative.

Thus we are inexorably thrown back from the naturalistic attempt at an explanation, to the conception of the supranaturalists, pre-eminently difficult as this is in the history before us. We pass over what might be said against the physical possibility of such an influence as is there presupposed; not, indeed, because, with Hase, we could comprehend it through the medium of natural magic, but because another difficulty beforehand excludes the inquiry, and does not allow us to come to the consideration of the physical possibility. This decisive difficulty relates to the moral possibility of such an act on the part of Jesus. The miracle he here performs is of a punitive character. Another example of the kind is not found in the canonical accounts of the life of Jesus; the apocryphal gospels alone, as has been above remarked, are full of such miracles. In one of the synoptical gospels there is, on the contrary, a passage often quoted already (Luke ix. 55 f.), in which it is declared, as the profound conviction of Jesus, that the employment of miraculous power in order to execute punishment or to take vengeance, is contrary to the spirit of his vocation; and the same sentiment is attributed to Jesus by the Evangelist, when he applies to him the words of Isaiah: He shall not break a bruised reed, etc. (Matt xii. 20). Agreeably to this principle, and to his prevalent mode of action, Jesus must rather have given new life to a withered tree, than have made a green one wither; and in order to comprehend his conduct on this occasion, we must be able to show reasons which » L. J. § 128. he might possibly have had, for departing in this instance from the above principle, which has no mark of unauthenticity. The occasion on which he enunciated that principle was when, on the refusal of a Samaritan village to exercise hospitality towards Jesus and his disciples, the sons of Zebedee asked him whether they should not rain down fire on the village, after the example of Elijah. Jesis replied by reminding them of the nature of the spirit to which they belonged, a spirit with which so destructive an act was incompatible. In our present case Jesus had not to deal with men who had treated him with injustice, but with a tree which he happened not to find in the desired state. Now, there is here no special reason for departing from the above rule; on the contrary, the chief reason which in the first case might possibly have moved Jesus to determine on a judicial miracle, is not present in the second. The moral end of punishment, namely, to bring the punished person to a conviction and acknowledgment of his error, can have no existence in relation to a tree; and even punishment in the light of retribution is out of the question when we are treating of natural objects destitute of volition. For one to be irritated against an inanimate object, which does not happen to be found just in the desired state, is with reason pronounced to be a proof of an uncultivated mind; to carry such indignation to the destruction of the object is regarded as barbarous, and unworthy of a reasonable being; and hence Woolston is not wrong in maintaining, that in any other person than Jesus, such an act would be severely blamed. It is true that when a natural object is intrinsically and habitually defective, it may very well happen, that it may be removed out of the way, in order to put a better in its place; a measure, however, for which, in every case, only the owner has the adequate motive and authority (comp. Luke xiii. 7). But that this tree, because just at that time it presented no fruit, would not have borne any in succeeding years, was by no means self-evident: — nay, the contrary is implied in the narrative, since the form in which the curse of Jesus is expressed, that fruit shall never more grow on the tree, presupposes, that without this curse the tree might yet have been fruitful.

Thus the evil condition of the tree was not habitual but temporary; still further, if we follow Mark, it was not even objective, or existing intrinsically in the tree, but purely subjective, that is, a result of the accidental relation of the tree to the momentary wish and want of Jesus. For according to an addition which forms the second feature peculiar to Mark in this narrative, it was not then the time of figs (v. 13); it was not therefore a defect, but, on the contrary, quite in due order, that this tree, as well as others, had no figs on it, and Jesus (in whom it is already enough to excite surprise that he expected to find figs on the tree so out of season) might at least have reflected, when he found none; on the groundlessness of his expectation, and have forborne so wholly unjust an act as the cursing of the tree. Even some of the fathers stumbled at this addition of Mark’s and felt that it rendered the conductor “Jesus enigmatical; and to descend to later times, Woolston’s ridicule is not unfounded, when he says that if a Kentish countryman were to seek for fruit in his garden in spring, and were to cut down the trees which had none, he would be a common laughing-stock. Expositors have attempted to free themselves from the difficulty which this addition introduces, by a motley series of conjectures and interpretations. One the one hand, the wish that the perplexing words did not stand in the text, has been turned into the hypothesis that they may probably be a subsequent gloss. On the other hand, as, if an addition of this kind must stand there, the contrary statement, namely, that it was then the time of figs, were rather to be desired, in order to render intelligible the expectation of Jesus, and his displeasure when he found it deceived; it has been attempted in various ways to remove the negative out of the proposition. One expedient is altogether violent, ov being read instead of ov, a point inserted after ty, and a second rjv supplied after CTVKCJV, so that the translation runs thus: ubi enitn turn versabatur (Jesus), tempus ficuutn erat\ another expedient, the transformation of the sentence into an interrogatory one, nonne enim, etc., is absurd. A third expedient is to understand the words *cupoç ctvkwv as implying the time of the fig- gathering, and thus to take Mark’s addition as a statement that the figs were not yet gathered, i e were still on the trees, in support of which interpretation, appeal is made to the phrase iccupoç rS>v «capnw (Matt xxi. 34). But this expression strictly refers only to the antecedent of the harvest, the existence of the fruits in the fields or on the trees; when it stands in an affirmative proposition, it can only be understood as referring to the consequent, namely, the possible gathering of the fruit, in so far as it also includes the antecedent; the existence of the fruits in the field: hence «m *<upoç Kapwwv can only mean thus much: the (ripe) fruits stand in the fields, and are therefore ready to be gathered. In like manner, when the above expression stands in a negative proposition, the antecedent, the existence of the fruits in the field, on the trees, etc., is primarily denied, that of the consequent only secondarily and by implication; thus ovk «rri kcu/dos o-ukwv, means: the figs are not on the trees, and therefore not ready to be gathered; by no means the reverse: they are not yet gathered, and therefore are still on the trees. But this unexampled figure of speech, by which, while according to the words the antecedent is denied, according to the sense only the consequent is denied, and the antecedent affirmed, is not all which the above explanation entails upon us; it also requires the admission of another figure which is sometimes called synchisis, sometimes hyperbaton. For, as a statement that the figs were then still on the trees, the addition in question does not show the reason why Jesus found none on that tree, but why he expected the contrary; it ought therefore, say the advocates of this explanation, to stand, not after he found nothing but leaves, but after he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon; a transposition, however, which only proves that this whole explanation runs counter to the text. Convinced, on the one hand, that the addition of Mark denies the prevalence of circumstances favourable to the existence of figs on that tree, but, on the other hand, still labouring to justify the expectation of Jesus, other expositors have sought to give to that negation, instead of the general sense, that it was not the right season of the year for figs, a fact of which Jesus must unavoidably have been aware, the particular sense, that special circumstances only not necessarily known to Jesus, hindered the fruitfulness of the tree. It would have been a hindrance altogether special, 6 — Toupii emendd in Suidam, 1, p. 330 f.

T Heinsius and others, ap. Fritzsche, in loc.

 Maii Obs., ib.

* — Dahme, in Henke’s n. Magazin, 2. Bd. 2. Heft, s. 252. Kuinol, in Marc, p. 150 f. if the soil in which the tree was rooted had been an unfruitful one; hence, according to some, the words Kaipos ovkwv actually signify a soil favourable to figs. Others with more regard to the verbal meaning of tcaipos, adhere it is true to the interpretation of it as favourable time, but instead of understanding the statement of Mark universally, as referring to a regular, annual season, in which figs were not to be obtained, they maintain it to mean that that particular year was from some incidental causes unfavourable to figs.  But the immediate signification of K<upbs is the right, in opposition to the wrong season, not a favourable season as opposed to an unfavourable one. Now, when any one, even in an unproductive year, seeks for fruits at the time in which they are wont to be ripe, it cannot be said that it is the wrong season for fruit; on the contrary,.the idea of a bad year might be at once conveyed by the statement, that when the time for fruit came, arc IjXQtv o /ccupoç rdtv Kopjrûv, there was none to be found. In any case, if the whole course of the year were unfavourable to figs, a fruit so abundant in Palestine, Jesus must almost as necessarily have known this as that it was the wrong season; so that the enigma remains, how Jesus could be so indignant that the tree was in a condition which, owing to circumstances known to him, was inevitable.

But let us only remember who it is to whom we owe that addition. It is Mark, who, in his efforts after the explanatory and the picturesque, so frequently draws on his own imagination; and in doing this, as it has been long ago perceived, and as we also have had sufficient opportunities of observing on our way, he does not always go to work in the most considerate manner. Thus, here, he is arrested by the first striking particular that presents itself, namely, that the tree was without fruit, and hastens to furnish the explanation, that it was not the time for figs, not observing that while he accounts physically for the barrenness of the tree, he makes the conduct of Jesus morally inexplicable. Again, the above-mentioned divergency from Matthew in relation to the time within which the tree withered, far from evincing more authentic information,  or a tendency to the natural explanation of the marvellous on the part of Mark, is only another product of the same dramatising effort as that which gave birth to the above addition. The idea of a tree suddenly withering at a word, is difficult for the imagination perfectly to fashion; whereas it cannot be called a bad dramatic contrivance, to lay the process of withering behind the scenes, and to make the result be first noticed by the subsequent passers by. For the rest, in the assertion that it was then (a few days before Easter) no time for figs, Mark is so far right, as it regards the conditions of climate in Palestine, that at so early a time of the year the new figs of the season were not yet ripe, for the early fig or boccore is not ripe until the middle or towards the end of June; while the proper fig, the kermus, ripens only in the month of August. On the other hand, there might about Easter still be met with here and there, hanging on the tree, the third fruit of the fig tree, the late kermus, which had remained from the previous autumn, and through the winter: as we read in Josephus that a part of Palestine (the shores of the Galilean sea, more fruitful, certainly, than the country around Jerusalem, where the history in question occurred, produces figs uninterruptedly during ten months of the year, uvkov 8c#ca fiijalv dâtaÀciVrtoç xoprrjyti.*

But even when we have thus set aside this perplexing addition of Mark’s* that the tree was not really defective, but only appeared so to Jesus in consequence of an erroneous expectation: there still subsists, even according to Matthew, the incongruity that Jesus appears to have destroyed a natural object on account of a deficiency which might possibly be merely temporary. He cannot have been prompted to this by economical considerations, since he was not the owner of the tree; still less can he have been actuated by moral views, in relation to an inanimate object of nature; hence the expedient has been adopted of substituting the disciples as the proper object on which Jesus here intended to act, and of regarding the tree, and what Jesus does to it, as a mere means to his ultimate design. This is the symbolical interpretation, by which first the fathers of the church, and of late the majority of orthodox theologians among the moderns, have thought to free Jesus from the charge of an unsuitable action. According to them, anger towards the tree which presented nothing to appease his hunger, was not the feeling of Jesus, in performing this action; his object not simply the extermination of the unfruitful plant: on the contrary, he judiciously availed himself of the occasion of finding a barren tree, in order to impress a truth on his disciples more vividly and indelibly than by words. This truth may either be conceived under a special form, namely, that the Jewish nation which persisted in rendering no pleasing fruit to God and to the Messiah, would be destroyed; or under the general form, that every one who was as destitute of good works as this tree was of fruit, had to look forward to a similar condemnation.  Other commentators however with reason maintain, that if Jesus had had such an end in view in the action, he must in some way have explained himself on the subject; for if an elucidation was necessary when he delivered a parable, it was the more indispensable when he performed a symbolical action, in proportion as this, without such an indication of an object lying beyond itself, was more likely to be mistaken for an object in itself; it is true that, here as well as elsewhere, it might be supposed, that Jesus probably enlarged on what he had done, for the instruction of his disciples, but that the narrators, content with the miracle, have omitted the illustrative discourse. If however Jesus gave an interpretation of his act in the alleged symbolical sense, the Evangelists have not merely been silent concerning this discourse, but have inserted a false one in its place; for they represent Jesus, after his procedure with respect to the tree, not as being silent, but as giving, in answer to an expression of astonishment on the part of his disciples, an explanation which is not the above symbolical one, but a different, nay, an opposite one. For when Jesus says to them that they need not wonder at the withering of the fig-tree, since with only a little faith they will be able to effect yet greater things, he lavs the chief stress on his agency in the matter, not on the condition and the fate of the tree as a symbol: therefore, if his design turned upon the latter, he would have spoken to his disciples so as to contravene that design; or rather, if he so spoke, that cannot have been his design. For the same reason, falls also Sieffert’s totally unsupported hypothesis, that Jesus, not indeed after, but before that act, when on the way to the fig-tree, had held a conversation with his disciples on the actual condition and future lot of the Jewish nation, and that to this conversation the symbolical cursing of the tree was a mere key-stone, which explained itself: for all comprehension of the act in question which that introduction might have facilitated, must, especially in that age when there was so strong a bias towards the miraculous, have been again obliterated by the subsequent declaration of Jesus, which regarded only the miraculous side of the fact. Hence Ullmann has judged rightly in preferring to the symbolical interpretation, although he considers it admissible, another which had previously been advanced:  namely, that Jesus by this miracle intended to give his followers a new proof of his perfect power, in order to strengthen their confidence in him under the approaching perils. Or rather, as a special reference to coming trial is nowhere exhibited, and as the words of Jesus contain nothing which he had not already said at an earlier period (Matt xvii. 20; Luke xvii. 6), Fritzsche is more correct in expressing the view of the Evangelists quite generally, thus: Jesus used his displeasure at the unfruitfulness of the tree, as an occasion for performing a miracle, the object of which was merely the general one of all his miracles, namely to attest his Messiahship.  Hence Euthymius speaks entirely in the spirit of the narrators, as described by Fritzsche,  when he forbids all investigation into the special end of the action, and exhorts the reader only to look at it in general as a miracle.  But it by no means follows from hence that we too should refrain from all reflection on the subject, and believingly receive the miracle without further question; on the contrary, we cannot avoid observing, that the particular miracle which we have now before us, does not admit of being explained a s a real act of Jesus, either upon the general ground of performing miracles, or from any peculiar object or motive whatever. Far from this, it is in every respect opposed both to his theory and his prevailing practice, and on this account, even apart from the question of its physical possibility, must be pronounced more decidedly, than any other, to be such a miracle as Jesus cannot really have performed.

It is incumbent on us, however, to adduce positive proof of the existence of such causes as, even without historical foundation, might give rise to a narrative of this kind. Now in our usual source, the Old Testament, we do, indeed, find many figurative discourses and narratives about trees, and fig- trees in particular; but none which has so specific an affinity to our narrative, that we could say the latter is an imitation of it. But we need not search long in the New Testament, before we find, first in the mouth of the Baptist (Matt iii. 10), then in that of Jesus (vii. 19), the apothegm of the tree, which, because it bears no good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire; and further on (Luke xiii. 6 ff.) this theme is dilated into the fictitious history of a man who for three years in vain seeks for fruit on a fig-tree in his vineyard, and on this account determines to cut it down, but that the gardener intercedes for another year’s respite. It was already an idea of some fathers of the church, that the cursing of the fig-tree was only the parable of the barren fig-tree carried out into action.  It is true that they held this opinion in the sense of the explanation before cited, namely, that Jesus himself, as he had previously exhibited the actual condition and the approaching catastrophe of the Jewish people in a figurative discourse, intended on the occasion in question to represent them by a symbolical action; which, as we have seen, is inconceivable. Nevertheless, we cannot help conjecturing, that we have before us one and the same theme under three different modifications: first, in the most concentrated form, as an apothegm; then expanded into a parable; and lastly realized as a history. But we do not suppose that what Jesus twice described in words, he at length represented by an action; in our opinion, it was tradition which converted what it met with as an apothegm and a parable into a real incident. That in the real history the end of the tree is somewhat different from that threatened in the apothegm and parable, namely, withering instead of being cut down, need not amount to a difficulty. For had the parable once become a real history, with Jesus for its subject, and consequently its whole didactic and symbolical significance passed into the external act, then must this, if it were to have any weight and interest, take the form of a miracle, and the natural destruction of the tree by means of the axe must be transformed into an immediate withering on the word of Jesus. It is true that there seems to be the very same objection to this conception of the narrative which allows its inmost kernel to be symbolical, as to the one above considered; namely, that it is contravened by the words of Jesus which are appended to the narrative. But on our view of the gospel histories we are warranted to say, that with the transformation of the parable into a history, its original sense also was lost, and as the miracle began to be regarded as constituting the pith of the matter, that discourse on miraculous power and faith, was erroneously annexed to it. Even the particular circumstance that led to the selection of the saying about the removal of the mountain for association with the narrative of the fig-tree, may be shown with probability. The power of faith, which is here represented by an effectual command to a mountain: Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, is elsewhere (Luke xvii. 6) symbolized by an equally effectual command to a species of fig-tree (ovKdfuvoç): Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea. Hence the cursing of the fig-tree, so soon as its withering was conceived to be an effect of the miraculous power of Jesus, brought to mind the tree or the mountain which was to be transported by the miraculous power of faith, and this saying became appended to that fact Thus, in this instance, praise is due to the third gospel for having preserved to us the parable of the barren ctwo}, and the apothegm of the ovKafuvoç to be transplanted by faith, distinct and pure, each in its original form and significance; while the two other synoptists have transformed the parable into a history, and have misapplied the apothegm (in a somewhat altered form) to a false explanation of that pretended history.