Outlines of the life of Christ

Prefatory Note

The Publishers are of opinion that the time has now come when it would be right to accede to a wish that has been expressed in various quarters for a separate issue of the article Jesus Christ in vol. ii. of Dr. Hast¬ ings’ Dictionary of the Bible. This volume appeared in 1899; and it has been thought best to reprint the article much as it stood, with such amount of change as is neces¬ sary to carry out the principle of mutatis mutandis, and to convert it into a book. The writer is engaged upon a larger work on the same subject, which is not likely to appear for some years; and he thinks it better not to attempt to bring his first experiment more strictly up to date, but rather to leave it as an expression of his own mind and of such a view as he was able to form of the general position at the time when it was written, i.e. in the years preceding 1899. The principal addition to the present issue is the map, which has been carefully pre¬ pared by Messrs. W. & A. K. Johnston, on the basis mainly of the map in the writer’s Sacred Sites of the Gospels (Oxford, 1903), with improvements and with some additions suggested by the map to illustrate the article

VI

PREFATORY NOTE

Roads and Travel, by Professors Buhl and W. M. Ram¬ say, in the Extra Volume of the Dictionary; and also by the map accompanying an article on the ‘ Onomasticon ’ of Eusebius published in the Zeitschrift d. Deutschen Ealdstina- Vereins, vol. xxvi. part 4 (Leipzig, 1903). The map further embodies the writer’s changed opinion as to the site of Capernaum, explained in the Journal of Theological Studies for October 1903. It will be under¬ stood that the purpose was to illustrate the state of Palestine in or near the time of our Lord, and in part to connect it with the Palestine of the present day. For this reason a few crusading or modern sites are given where there are still notable ruins. The free use that has been made of the map in Sacred Sites is with the kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.

Oxford, December 1904.

N.B. — The abbreviations in this book are those adopted in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).

Chapter I. Introductory

§ 1 . Method. — What method is fittest for a Christian writer to use in approaching the Life of Christ ? There is a tendency at the present moment, on the Continent perhaps rather than in England, to approach it from the side of the consciousness of Jesus as the Messiah. A conspicuous instance of this would be Baldensperger’s Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu (Strassburg, 1888 ; 2nd ed. 1892), a work which attracted considerable attention when it first appeared. No doubt such a method has its advantages. It places the inquirer at once at the centre of the position, and enables him to look down the various roads by which he will have to travel. The advantage, however, is more apparent than real. It would hold good only if we could be sure of obtain¬ ing a far more adequate grasp of the consciousness 1 1

INTRODUCTORY to be investigated than on any hypothesis is likely to be obtained. On the Christian hypothesis, frankly held, any such grasp would seem to be excluded, and the attempt to reach it could hardly be made without irrever¬ ence.

It is on all grounds a safer and sounder, as well as a more promising method, to adopt a course which is the opposite of this — not to work from within outwards, but from without inwards ; to begin with that aspect of the Life which is most external, and only when we have realized this as well as we may to seek to penetrate deeper, allowing the facts to suggest their own inner meaning. We may then take in certain sidelights which our documents also afford us, which, because they come, as it were, from the side, are not therefore less valuable. And we may finally strengthen our con¬ clusions by following the history some little way into its sequel. In other words, we shall begin by placing our¬ selves at the standpoint of an observer, one of those who saw the public ministry of Jesus in its early stages, in its development, and to its close. When that has been fully unrolled before us, we can draw upon other data which are not of this public character; and we may further seek to argue backwards from effects to causes.

By pursuing this method we shall have the advantage of taking the facts in no imaginary order, but in the order of the history itself. We shall have them dis¬ closed to us in the same sort of sequence in which they were disclosed to the first generations of Christians — a method always advisable where it can be had, and in this instance peculiarly advisable, because both the

TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE MATERIALS 3

origins and the immediate sequel to the origins are of extreme interest and importance.

We shall also have the incidental advantage of fol¬ lowing, not only the historical order, but the critical order suggested by the documents. It was natural that what was transacted in public should have the fullest and the earliest attestation: it lay in the nature of the case that some of the details which were most significant, just because of their private and intimate character, should become known only by degrees. This state of things is reflected in the Gospels as we have them. The common matter of the Synoptic Gospels is also the most public matter. It by no means follows that what is peculiar to a single Gospel is by that fact stamped as less historical: no one would think (e.g.) of affirming this of some of the parables peculiar to St. Luke; but it is fair to suppose that in the first instance it was less widely diffused. To this class would belong the narratives of the Nativity and of the Infancy. It will be in some ways a gain not to begin with these, but to let them enter into the story as they entered into it with the first Christians. More than one point which might otherwise perplex us will in this way suggest its own explanation.

§ 2 . Limits of space do not allow us to go elaborately into the question as to the trustworthiness of our materials. It may suffice to point to one undoubted fact which furnishes at least a considerable presumption in their favour. The apostolic age produced some strongly marked personalities, with well defined types of thought and phraseology. Now, broadly speaking,

INTRODUCTORY these types have left but little trace upon the Gospels. The special type characteristic of the Gospels them¬ selves stands out conspicuously over against them. We need hardly do more than refer to such very sig¬ nificant facts as that the Gospels alone contain specimens of teaching by parables; that the idea of the ‘ kingdom of heaven ’ (or ‘ of God ’), which is quite central in the Gospels, recedes into the background in the writings of the apostles; that the same holds good of that most significant title ‘ Son of Man ’; that, on the other hand, such a term as ‘ justify ’ is rare and hardly technical, while ‘ justification,’ ‘sanctification,’ ‘reconciliation’ (or ‘ atonement ’), and a number of others, are wholly absent. It may be said that the Fourth Gospel is an exception, that there we have a suspicious resemblance to the style and diction of the Epp. of St. John. Some resemblance there is, and we would not entirely reject the inference drawn from it. But even here the ex¬ ception is but partial. It has often been noticed that the evangelist scrupulously confines his doctrine of the Logos to the prologue.

The writer of this may be allowed once more to express the conviction,* which he believes that con¬ tinued investigation will confirm, that the great mass of the Synoptic Gospels had assumed its permanent shape not later than the decade 60-70 a.d., and that the changes which it underwent after the great catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem were but small, and can with¬ out difficulty be recognized.

But the task on which we are at present engaged must in the main supply its own vindication. The * See the Bampton Lectures for 1893, P* 286 ff.

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT picture which it is here attempted to draw will com¬ mend itself so far as it is consistent and coherent, and no further. No one, indeed, expects in these days the formal and external consistency aimed at in the older Harmonies ; but the writer himself believes that in their inner essence the Gospels are consistent and coherent, and if he fails to convey the impression of this, the failure will be his own. He is conscious of something tentative in the way in which he has sought to work in data derived from the Fourth Gospel with those derived from the other three. But here, again, he is giving expression to the best opinion he can form, and the value of that opinion must be judged by the result. Where he is not satisfied with his own success, he has not hesitated to say so.

§ 3 . To what has been said above it should be added, that if we assume the standpoint of a spectator, a brief preface will be needed to explain what that standpoint is. In other words, we shall have at the outset to take a rapid survey of the conditions under which the Life of Christ was lived, so that we may see to what His teach¬ ing had to attach itself, and what served for it as a foil, by way of contrast and antagonism.

The main divisions of our subject will thus be —

I. Survey of Conditions.

II. The Public Ministry of Jesus, preceded by that of the Baptist.

III. Supplemental Matter, not included in the Public Min¬

istry, and derived from special sources.

IV. The Verdict of History.

Chapter II. Survey Of Conditions

§ 4 . The picture which we form for ourselves of Palestine in the time of our Lord is apt to be want¬ ing in play and variety. A few strong and simple colours are all that are used; we do not allow enough for their blending, or for the finer and subtler tones which mingle with them. We see the worldly ambition of the Sadducees, the self-seeking and for¬ malism of the Pharisees; over both, the rough stern rule of the Roman; and under both, the chafing tide of popular passion, working itself up to its out¬ burst of fury in the Great War. Perhaps we throw in somewhere in a comer the cloistered communities of the Essenes; but if so, it is rather as standing apart by themselves than as entering into the general life.

It is not so much that this picture is wrong as that it needs to be supplemented, and it needs a little toning down of the light and shade. This is the case especially with the internal conditions, the state of thought and of the religious life.

A . External Conditions : Government, Sects, and Parties.

§ 5 . The external conditions are so comparatively simple and so well known that a rapid glance at them will suffice.

At the time of our Lord’s public ministry, Judaea and Samaria were directly subject to the Romans, and were governed by a procurator (Pontius Pilate, a.d. 26-36), who was to some extent subordinate to the legatus of Syria. Pilate had a character for cruelty (cf. Lk 13 1 ). And the Roman rule was no doubt as a whole harsh and unfeeling: we read of wholesale executions, which took the horrible form of crucifixion. But the people whom Rome had to govern were turbulent in the extreme; and so far as the Roman authorities come before us in NT, we cannot refuse them the credit of a desire to do a sort of rough justice.

The odious duty of collecting tolls and taxes for the Romans led to the employment of a class of underlings (7reXwmt, publicani ), who were regarded almost as out¬ casts by their Jewish countrymen.

The north and east of Palestine were still in the hands of sons of Herod. Antipas (4 b.c. to 39 a.d.) held Galilee and Peraea; and his brother Philip (4 b.c. to 34 a.d.) , Ituraea and Trachonitis. The name given to the former, ‘ that fox ’ (Lk 13 32 ), will sufficiently describe him; he was living in open sin with Herodias, the wife of another brother, but was not wholly unvisited by re¬ morse, and had at least curiosity in matters of religion (Mk 6 20 !!, Lk 23 s ). His capital was at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, and he also held possession of the strong

SECTS AND PARTIES fortress of Machaerus * E. of the Dead Sea. Herod Philip governed his dominions quietly, and was the best and most popular of his father’s sons.

§ 6. The Sadducees (Zadokite priests) consisted mainly of certain aristocratic priestly families (Ac 4 6 ) who held almost a monopoly of the high priesthood, and who played an influential and active part in the Sanhedrin, which under the Romans wielded consider¬ able power. They were typical opportunists, and were bent above all things on keeping their own rights and privileges. Hence they were sensitive on the subject of popular disorder, which was likely to serve as an excuse to the Romans for displacing them (Jn n 48 ). It was a coalition of Pharisees and Sadducees which procured the death of our Lord, but in the period of the Acts the Sadducees were the more active persecutors. Religion with them was secondary, but they differed somewhat both in doctrine and in practice from the Pharisees (Ac 23 s ; cf. Edersheim, Life and Times , i. 314-321, etc.). They did not encumber themselves with the Pharisaic traditions, but took their stand upon the Pentateuch. They were notorious for strictness in judgment.

As contrasted with the Sadducees, the Pharisees (lit. Separatists or Purists) were essentially the religious party. They numbered more than 6000 (Ant. xvn. ii. 4), and were pledged to a high standard of life and scrupu-

* In Ant. xvin. v. 2 Machaerus is in the possession of Antipas, in the previous § it belongs to Aretas ; but the reading of this latter passage is questionable (cf. Schiirer, NTZG i. 362 n. 365 n. \_HJP 1. ii. 23, 25]).

lous performance of religious duties (Mt 23 s3 ). Un¬ fortunately, the high standard was outward rather than inward. The elaborate casuistry to which the Pharisees had recourse was used as a means of evading moral obligations (Mk 7 1_13 || 12 38_40 ll, Mt 23 13_33 ), and resulted in a spirit hard, narrow, and self-righteous.

Not exactly coextensive with the Pharisees, though largely to be identified with them (we read of ‘ scribes of the Pharisees,’ Mk 2 16 RV; i.e. ‘ scribes who belonged to the party of the Pharisees’), were the Scribes (ypa/x/xaTets, vo/xlkol, vo/xo 8 i 8 aaKaAoi), or professed students of the law, who supplied the Pharisees with their principles. They had to a large extent taken the place of the priests as the preachers and teachers of Judaism. Their chief fields of action were the syna¬ gogues and the Rabbinical schools. The most highly respected of the scribes were the great religious authori¬ ties of the day. It was their successors who built up the Talmud. There were differences of opinion within the body ( e.g . the rival schools of Hillel and Shammai, contemporaries of Herod the Great), but, without, their dicta were unquestioned. This veneration was, as a rule, only requited with contempt.

While the Pharisees at this date for the most part (though not entirely) held aloof from politics, on the ground that religion as they conceived it could be practised indifferently under any domination, and their own experiences under the national line, represented by Alexander Jannaeus, had been the reverse of happy, the mass of the people were burning to throw off the yoke of the stranger. The party of action, which was prepared to go all lengths, was known as the Zealots.

SECTS AND PARTIES

II

One member of this party was numbered among the apostles (Mt io 4 , Mk 3 18 , Lk 6 15 , Ac i 13 ). In the siege of Jerusalem they took the lead, and were distinguished at once by heroic courage and by horrible crimes.

The dynasty of the Herods had from the first claimed alliance with Hellenic culture. The founder of the dynasty had mixed with advantage to himself in the haute politique of his day; and he had signalized his reign by buildings in the Greek style, but on a scale of barbaric magnificence. The courts of the Herods must always have had a tincture of Hellenism about them. But the reaction against this was strong, and its influ¬ ence probably did not extend very far, though it inspired the historians Nicolaus of Damascus, Justus of Tiberias, and Josephus. More likely to affect the lower and middle strata of the population would be the ‘ Greek cities ’ founded by the Syrian kings before the Maccabaean rising, such as the cluster known as Decapolis, for the most part east of the Jordan, with later founda¬ tions like the flourishing port of Caesarea. But more important still would be the influence of the Jews of the Diaspora, constantly coming and going to the great feasts at Jerusalem, and with synagogues for their special use permanently established there (Ac 6 9 ). The greatest of the centres with which the Jews were thus brought in contact were Alexandria and Antioch. And there is reason to think that the amount of intellectual intercourse and interchange was by no means incon¬ siderable.

There must have been other foreign influences at work, but rather by what might be called underground channels. The connexion of Palestine with Babylonia and the East, which goes back to immemorial antiquity, had been revived and deepened by the Captivity. It was kept up by intercourse with the Jews who remained in those regions. But whether or not they had come precisely in this way, there can be no doubt that Oriental, and indeed specifically Persian influences were present in the sect of the Essenes. The ceremonial washings, and the reverence paid to the sun, can hardly have had any other origin. The asceticism and community of goods have a Pythagorean cast, and may have come from Greece by way of Egypt, while the rejection of sacrifice and what we know of the specu¬ lative tendencies of the Essenes may well be native to the soil of Palestine. The Essene settlements were congregated near the Dead Sea.

B. Internal Conditions: the State of Religious Thought and Life.

§ 7 . General Conditions. — To describe justly the state of Judaism in the time of Christ is a difficult and delicate thing. It is too apt to seem like an indictment of the Judaism of nineteen centuries, which not only on general grounds, but specially in view of the attitude of some Jewish apologists of the present day, a Christian theologian will be loth to bring. He will desire to make all the allowances that can rightly be made, and to state all the evidence (so far as he knows it) for as well as against. But at the same time he must not gloss over real faults and defects, without a statement of which Christianity itself can be but imper¬ fectly understood.

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND LIFE

Truth does not, as a rule, lie in compromises. And ts interests will be perhaps best served if we set down without reserve both the darker and the brighter sides, only asking the reader to remember while he has the one before him, that the other is also there. That we attempt this difficult task at all is due to no wanton assumption of a right to judge, but to the unavoidable necessity that what is so intimately bound up with history should be seen in the full light which history throws upon it.

(a) The Darker Side of the Contemporary Judaism. — As we look broadly at the religious condition of Pales¬ tine in the time of our Lord, there can be little doubt that it was in need of a drastic reformation. This is the impression inevitably conveyed by the Gospels, and by the searching criticisms of St. Paul. Nor is it belied by the witness of Josephus, and in particular by the outbreak of untamed passion, with the horrors to which it gave rise, in the Jewish War. And although it may be easy to make a selection from the Talmud of sayings of a different character, it can hardly be ques¬ tioned that the same source supplies proof enough that the denunciations of the Gospels were not without foundation. There is too evident a connexion between the inherent principles of Judaism and the defects charged against it to permit us to regard these as devoid of truth.

(i.) The idea of God was perhaps the strongest side of Judaism, but it was too exclusively transcendent. It had no adequate means of spanning the gulf between God and man. The faults of Judaism were those of Deism. It had one tender place, the love of Jehovah for

Israel. But this fell some way short of the Christian idea of the Father in heaven, the God who not only loves a single people, but whose essence is love. Judaism also largely wanted the mystical element which has played such an important part in Christi¬ anity. The Johannean allegory of the Vine and the Branches, which agrees so closely with the teaching of St. Paul, the whole conception of immanent divine forces circulating through the organism, has no true analogy in it.* (ii.) But the most disastrous feature of Rabbinical Judaism was its identification of morality with obedience to written law. ‘ Duty, goodness, piety, — all these are to the Jew equivalent terms. They are mere synonyms for the same conception — the fulfilment of the law. A man therefore is good who knows the law and obeys it; a man is wicked who is ignorant of it and transgresses it ’ (Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures , p. 479). This identification of morality with law led to a number of serious evils, (iii.) Law can deal only with overt action. Hence there was an inevitable tendency to restrict the field of morals to overt action. Motive was comparatively disregarded. It is doubtless true that the Rabbis frequently insist on rightness of motive. A religion which in its Sacred Books included the Prophets as well as the Law could not do otherwise. But the legal conception was too deeply ingrained not to tell its tale. If it had not been so, there would have been no need for the Sermon on the Mount; and the address, ‘ Scribes and Pharisees,

* The comparison of Israel to a vine is not unknown to Judaism, but in a wholly different application (see Wunsche, Erlaut . d. Evang. on Jn 15 1 ).

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND LIFE hypocrites,’ would have had no point, (iv.) Another consequence of the stress laid on overt acts was the development of an elaborate doctrine of salvation by works. We need not suppose that this doctrine was universally held and always consciously acted upon; but it cannot be denied that there was in Judaism a widespread opinion that might be expressed in the terms, ‘ so much keeping of the law, so much merit ’; and the idea of a ‘treasure of merit,’ which each man stores up for himself, is constantly met with, (v.) In one sense the keeping of the law was very hard. The labours of the scribes had added to the original and primary laws an immense mass of inferential law, which was placed on the same footing of authority. This portentous accumulation of precepts was a burden ‘grievous to be borne.’ (vi.) Not only so, but a great part of this additional law was bad law. It was law inferred by a faulty system of exegesis. Even where the exegesis was bond fide , it was in a large proportion of cases unreal and artificial. But there was a great temptation to dishonesty, for which the way was left open by the exaggerated stress laid on acts, and the comparative ignoring of motive. In the dead level of "written law the relative degrees of obliga¬ tion were disregarded. Hence there were a number of precepts which were positively immoral ( e.g . Corban, Mk 7 U12 ||). (vii.) A further defect in the legal con¬ ception of religion was its intellectualism. The Talmud bears witness to what is little less than an idolatry of learning, and that, we must remember, Rabbinical learning. With religion converted into science, and the science in great part no science, we may well say,

‘ If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness ! ’ The. Scholasticism of the Middle Ages had no such unchallenged supremacy; it was not the one all-pervading ideal, (viii.) For the mass of the population the double law, traditional as well as original, could not but be a burden. The accumula¬ tion of precepts not possessed of moral value is always a thing to be deprecated. And however much we may allow for the fact that the observance of all these precepts was not expected of every one, there still remained enough to be a real incubus. And yet, on the other hand, the performance of the full Pharisaic standard was not so very difficult for persons of leisure, who deliberately made up their minds to it. It did not mean, or at least it might be understood as not meaning, more than a life mechanically regulated. But then it is easy to see that the existence of this class, consciously setting itself above its neighbours, and able, without any excessive strain, to make good its pretentions, must have inevitably engendered a feeling of self-righteousness or spiritual pride. The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Lk i8 11-13 ) must needs have been typical, (ix.) What the Pharisee was to the ordinary Jew, that the Jew was to the rest of mankind. However politically inferior, the Jew never lost his pride of race, and with him this pride of race was a pride of religious privilege. The Zealot sought to translate this into political domination, but the Pharisee was content to retire into the fortress of his inner consciousness, from which he could look with equanimity at the rise and fall of secular powers, (x.) This particular form of pride had a tendency to

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND LIFE I 1 /

aggravate itself as time went on. ‘To make a fence round the law ’ was a fundamental principle of Judaism. And in a like spirit the privileged people was tempted to make a fence round itself, and to dwell apart among the nations. Institutions which had had for their object to keep the nation clear of idolatry, were ex¬ tended when the dangers of idolatry were past, until it required a revolution to say with St. Paul, ‘ There is neither Jew nor Greek.’ (xi.) Worst and most dis¬ astrous of all was the tendency to fall back upon national privilege as a substitute for real reformation of life. We can see alike from the Gospels and from St. Paul how constantly the Jews had upon their lips, ‘We have Abraham to our father’ (Lk 3 s , Jn 8 s3 - 39 , Ro 2 17 " 20 ). It is admitted that ‘the Jews were some¬ what too confident of their assured participation in the blessedness of eternal life; all Israelites, except very exceptional and determined sinners, were believed to have their share in it ’ (Montefiore, Hibb. Led. p. 482).

(/?) The Brighter Side of the Contemporary Juda¬ ism .— The above is a long and a serious catalogue of charges, partly resting upon the logic of the creed, but also too much borne out by positive testimony. It seems conclusively to prove that not only reformation, but a thoroughgoing reformation, was needed.

And yet there is another side which the Christian teacher ought to emphasize more fully than it has been the custom to do.

(i.) In the first place, we have to remember that Judaism is professedly the religion of the OT. It is based upon a Book which includes the Prophets and the Psalms (to use the familiar description a potiori parte ) as well as the Law. And however much Judaism proper gave precedence to the Law, it could not forget the other parts of the volume, or run wholly counter to their spirit. It is not too much to say that even in the Talmud we can see at every turn how the spirit of legalism was corrected by an influence which is ultimately derived from what are rightly called the evangelical portions of OT. We shall see to what an extent Christianity itself is a direct development of these.

(ii.) The evidence of NT, severe as it is upon the whole, yet is not all of one tenor. Its pages are sprinkled over with Jewish characters, who are men¬ tioned in terms of praise: Zacharias and Elisabeth, Simeon and Anna, Nathanael, Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathaea, the young ruler, and the scribe who was pronounced to be ‘ not far from the kingdom of God 9 (Mk 12 34 ). We must not forget that there are parts of NT itself which in recent years have been claimed by Christian scholars as thinly veneered products of Judaism (Ep. of James, Apoc.). Whatever we may think of these particular instances, there are others (such as Didache and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs') in which it is highly probable that a Jewish original has been adapted to Christian purposes. And our present investigation will bring before us many examples in which, while Christianity corrects Jewish teaching, it nevertheless takes its start from it, and that not only from the purer original, but in its con¬ temporary form.