IV. JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. [752]…

IV. JESUS AS THE MESSIAH. [752]

§ 61.

JESUS, THE SON OF MAN.

In treating of the relation in which Jesus conceived himself to stand to the messianic idea, we can distinguish his dicta concerning his own person from those concerning the work he had undertaken.

The appellation which Jesus commonly gives himself in the Gospels is, the Son of man, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. The exactly corresponding Hebrew expression ‏בֶּן־אָדָם‎ is in the Old Testament a frequent designation of man in general, and thus we might be induced to understand it in the mouth of Jesus. This interpretation would suit some passages; for example, Matt. xii. 8, where Jesus says: The Son of man is lord also of the Sabbath day, κύριος γάρ ἐστι τοῦ σαββάτου ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου,—words which will fitly enough take a general meaning, such as Grotius affixes to them, namely, that man is lord of the Sabbath, especially if we compare Mark (ii. 27), who introduces them by the proposition, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, τὸ σάββατον διὰ τὸν ἄθρωπον ἐγένετο, οὐχ ὁ ἄνθρωπος διὰ τὸ σάββατον. But in the majority of cases, the phrase in question is evidently used as a special designation. Thus, Matt. viii. 20, a scribe volunteers to become a disciple of Jesus, and is admonished to count the cost in the words, The Son of man hath not where to lay his head, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἔχει, ποῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν κλἱνῃ: here some particular man must be intended, nay, the particular man into whose companionship the scribe wished to enter, that is, Jesus himself. As a reason for the self-application of this term by Jesus, it has been suggested that he used the third person after the oriental manner, to avoid the I. [753] But for a speaker to use the third person in reference to himself, is only admissible, if he would be understood, when the designation he employs is precise, and inapplicable to any other person present, as when a father or a king uses his appropriate title of himself; or when, if the designation be not precise, its relation is made clear by a demonstrative pronoun, which limitation is eminently indispensable if an individual speak of himself under the universal designation man. We grant that occasionally a gesture might supply the place of the demonstrative pronoun; but that Jesus in every instance of his using this habitual expression had recourse to some visible explanatory sign, or that the Evangelists would not, in that case, have supplied its necessary absence from a written document by some demonstrative addition, is inconceivable. If both Jesus and the Evangelists held such an elucidation superfluous, they must have seen in the expression itself the key to its precise application. Some are of opinion that Jesus intended by it to point himself out as the ideal man—man in the noblest sense of the word; [754] but this is a modern theory, not an historical inference, for there is no trace of such an interpretation of the expression in the time of Jesus, [755] and it would be more easy to show, as others have attempted, that the appellation, Son of Man, so frequently used by Jesus, had reference to his lowly and despised condition. [756] Apart however from the objection that this acceptation also would require the addition of the demonstrative pronoun, though it might be adapted to many passages, as Matt. viii. 20; John i. 51, there are others (such as Matt. xvii. 22, where Jesus, foretelling his violent death, designates himself ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) which demand the contrast of high dignity with an ignominious fate. So in Matt. x. 23, the assurance given to the commissioned disciples that before they had gone over the cities of Israel the Son of Man would come, could have no weight unless this expression denoted a person of importance; and that such was its significance is proved by a comparison of Matt. xvi. 28, where there is also a mention of an ἔρχεσθαι, a coming of the Son of man, but with the addition ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ. As this addition can only refer to the messianic kingdom, the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου must be the Messiah.

How so apparently vague an appellation came to be appropriated to the Messiah, we gather from Matt. xxvi. 64 parall., where the Son of man is depicted as coming in the clouds of heaven. This is evidently an allusion to Dan. vii. 13 f. where after having treated of the fall of the four beasts, the writer says: I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man (‏כְּבַר אֱנָשׁ‎ ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου, LXX.) came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion. The four beasts (v. 17 ff.) were symbolical of the four great empires, the last of which was the Macedonian, with its offshoot, Syria. After their fall, the kingdom was to be given in perpetuity to the People of God, the saints of the Most High: hence, he who was to come with clouds of heaven could only be, either a personification of the holy people, [757] or a leader of heavenly origin under whom they were to achieve their destined triumph—in a word, the Messiah; and this was the customary interpretation among the Jews. [758] Two things are predicated of this personage,—that he was like the Son of man, and that he came with the clouds of heaven; but the former particular is his distinctive characteristic, and imports either that he had not a superhuman form, that of an angel for instance, though descending from heaven, or else that the kingdom about to be established presented in its humanity a contrast to the inhumanity of its predecessors, of which ferocious beasts were the fitting emblems. [759] At a later period, it is true, the Jews regarded the coming with the clouds of heaven ‏עִס־עֲנָנִי שְׁמַיָא‎ as the more essential attribute of the Messiah, and hence gave him the name Anani, after the Jewish taste of making a merely accessory circumstance the permanent epithet of a person or thing. [760] If, then, the expression ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου necessarily recalled the above passage in Daniel, generally believed to relate to the Messiah, it is impossible that Jesus could so often use it, and in connexion with declarations evidently referring to the Messiah, without intending it as the designation of that personage.

That by the expression in question Jesus meant himself, without relation to the messianic dignity, is less probable than the contrary supposition, that he might often mean the Messiah when he spoke of the Son of Man, without relation to his own person. When, Matt. x. 23, on the first mission of the twelve apostles to announce the kingdom of heaven, he comforts them under the prospect of their future persecutions by the assurance that they would not have gone over all the cities of Israel before the coming of the Son of Man, we should rather, taking this declaration alone, think of a third person, whose speedy messianic appearance Jesus was promising, than of the speaker himself, seeing that he was already come, and it would not be antecedently clear how he could represent his own coming as one still in anticipation. So also when Jesus (Matt. xiii. 37 ff.) interprets the Sower of the parable to be the Son of Man, who at the end of the world will have a harvest and a tribunal, he might be supposed to refer to the Messiah as a third person distinct from himself. This is equally the case, xvi. 27 f., where, to prove the proposition that the loss of the soul is not to be compensated by the gain of the whole world, he urges the speedy coming of the Son of Man, to administer retribution. Lastly, in the connected discourses, Matt. xxiv., xxv. parall., many particulars would be more easily conceived, if the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου whose παρουσία Jesus describes, were understood to mean another than himself.

But this explanation is far from being applicable to the majority of instances in which Jesus uses this expression. When he represents the Son of Man, not as one still to be expected, but as one already come and actually present, for example, in Matt xviii. 11, where he says: The Son of Man is come to save that which was lost; when he justifies his own acts by the authority with which the Son of Man was invested, as in Matt. ix. 6; when, Mark viii. 31 ff. comp. Matt. xvi. 22, he speaks of the approaching sufferings and death of the Son of Man, so as to elicit from Peter the exclamation, οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο, this shall not be unto thee; in these and similar cases he can only, by the υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, have intended himself. And even those passages, which, taken singly, we might have found capable of application to a messianic person, distinct from Jesus, lose this capability when considered in their entire connexion. It is possible, however, either that the writer may have misplaced certain expressions, or that the ultimately prevalent conviction that Jesus was the Son of Man caused what was originally said merely of the latter, to be viewed in immediate relation to the former.

Thus besides the fact that Jesus on many occasions called himself the Son of Man, there remains the possibility that on many others, he may have designed another person; and if so, the latter would in the order of time naturally precede the former. Whether this possibility can be heightened ta a reality, must depend on the answer to the following question: Is there, in the period of the life of Jesus, from which all his recorded declarations are taken, any fragment which indicates that he had not yet conceived himself to be the Messiah?

§ 62.

HOW SOON DID JESUS CONCEIVE HIMSELF TO BE THE MESSIAH, AND FIND RECOGNITION AS SUCH FROM OTHERS?

Jesus held and expressed the conviction that he was the Messiah; this is an indisputable fact. Not only did he, according to the Evangelists, receive with satisfaction the confession of the disciples that he was the Χριστὸς (Matt. xvi. 16 f.) and the salutation of the people, Hosanna to the Son of David (xxi. 15 f.); not only did he before a public tribunal (Matt. xxvi. 64, comp. John xviii. 37) as well as to private individuals (John iv. 26, ix. 37, x. 25) repeatedly declare himself to be the Messiah; but the fact that his disciples after his death believed and proclaimed that he was the Messiah, is not to be comprehended, unless, when living, he had implanted the conviction in their minds.

To the more searching question, how soon Jesus began to declare himself the Messiah and to be regarded as such by others, the Evangelists almost unanimously reply, that he assumed that character from the time of his baptism. All of them attach to his baptism circumstances which must have convinced himself, if yet uncertain, and all others who witnessed or credited them, that he was no less than the Messiah; John makes his earliest disciples recognise his right to that dignity on their first interview (i. 42 ff.), and Matthew attributes to him at the very beginning of his ministry, in the sermon on the mount, a representation of himself as the Judge of the world (vii. 21 ff.) and therefore the Messiah.

Nevertheless, on a closer examination, there appears a remarkable divergency on this subject between the synoptical statement and that of John. While, namely, in John, Jesus remains throughout true to his assertion, and the disciples and his followers among the populace to their conviction, that he is the Messiah; in the synoptical gospels there is a vacillation discernible—the previously expressed persuasion on the part of the disciples and people that Jesus was the Messiah, sometimes vanishes and gives place to a much lower view of him, and even Jesus himself becomes more reserved in his declarations. This is particularly striking when the synoptical statement is compared with that of John; but even when they are separately considered, the result is the same.

According to John (vi. 15), after the miracle of the loaves the people were inclined to constitute Jesus their (messianic) King; on the contrary, according to the other three Evangelists, either about the same time (Luke ix. 18 f.) or still later (Matt. xvi. 13 f.; Mark viii. 27 f.) the disciples could only report, on the opinions of the people respecting their master, that some said he was the resuscitated Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah or one of the old prophets: in reference to that passage of John, however, as also to the synoptical one, Matt. xiv. 33, according to which, some time before Jesus elicited the above report of the popular opinion, the people who were with him in the ship [761] when he had allayed the storm, fell at his feet and worshipped him as the Son of God, it may be observed that when Jesus had spoken or acted with peculiar impressiveness, individuals, in the exaltation of the moment, might be penetrated with a conviction that he was the Messiah, while the general and calm voice of the people yet pronounced him to be merely a prophet.

But there is a more troublesome divergency relative to the disciples. In John, Andrew, after his first interview with Jesus, says to his brother, we have found the Messiah, εὑρήκαμεν τὸν Μεσσίαν (i. 42); and Philip describes him to Nathanael as the person foretold by Moses and the prophets (v. 46); Nathanael salutes him as the Son of God and King of Israel (v. 50); and the subsequent confession of Peter appears merely a renewed avowal of what had been long a familiar truth. In the synoptical Evangelists it is only after prolonged intercourse with Jesus, and shortly before his sufferings, that the ardent Peter arrives at the conclusion that Jesus is the Χριστὸς, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος (Matt. xvi. 16, parall.). It is impossible that this confession should make so strong an impression on Jesus that, in consequence of it, he should pronounce Peter blessed, and his confession the fruit of immediate divine revelation, as Matthew narrates; or that, as all the three Evangelists inform us (xvi. 20, viii. 30, ix. 21), he should, as if alarmed, forbid the disciples to promulgate their conviction, unless it represented not an opinion long cherished in the circle of his disciples, but a new light, which had just flashed on the mind of Peter, and through him was communicated to his associates.

There is a third equally serious discrepancy, relative to the declarations of Jesus concerning his Messiahship. According to John he sanctions the homage which Nathanael renders to him as the Son of God and King of Israel, in the very commencement of his public career, and immediately proceeds to speak of himself under the messianic title, Son of Man (i. 51 f.): to the Samaritans also after his first visit to the passover (iv. 26, 39 ff.), and to the Jews on the second (v. 46), he makes himself known as the Messiah predicted by Moses. According to the synoptical writers, on the contrary, he prohibits, in the instance above cited and in many others, the dissemination of the doctrine of his Messiahship, beyond the circle of his adherents. Farther, when he asks his disciples, Whom do men say that I am? (Matt. xvi. 15) he seems to wish [762] that they should derive their conviction of his Messiahship from his discourses and actions, and when he ascribes the avowed faith of Peter to a revelation from his heavenly Father, he excludes the possibility of his having himself previously made this disclosure to his disciples, either in the manner described by John, or in the more indirect one attributed to him by Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount; unless we suppose that the disciples had not hitherto believed his assurance, and that hence Jesus referred the new-born faith of Peter to divine influence.

Thus, on the point under discussion the synoptical statement is contradictory, not only to that of John, but to itself; it appears therefore that it ought to be unconditionally surrendered before that of John, which is consistent with itself, and one of our critics has justly reproached it with deranging the messianic economy in the life of Jesus. [763] But here again we must not lose sight of our approved canon, that in glorifying narratives, such as our gospels, where various statements are confronted, that is the least probable which best subserves the object of glorification. Now this is the case with John’s statement; according to which, from the commencement to the close of the public life of Jesus, his Messiahship shines forth in unchanging splendour, while, according to the synoptical writers, it is liable to a variation in its light. But though this criterion of probability is in favour of the first three Evangelists, it is impossible that the order in which they make ignorance and concealment follow on plain declarations and recognitions of the Messiahship of Jesus can be correct; and we must suppose that they have mingled and confounded two separate periods of the life of Jesus, in the latter of which alone he presented himself as the Messiah. We find, in fact, that the watchword of Jesus on his first appearance differed not, even verbally, from that of John, who professed merely to be a forerunner; it is the same Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. iv. 17) with which John had roused the Jews (iii. 2); and indicates in neither the one nor the other an assumption of the character of Messiah, with whose coming the kingdom of heaven was actually to commence, but merely that of a teacher who points to it as yet future. [764] Hence the latest critic of the first gospel justly explains all those discourses and actions therein narrated, by which Jesus explicitly claims to be the Messiah, or, in consequence of which this dignity is attributed to him and accepted, if they occur before the manifestation of himself recorded in John v., or before the account of the apostolic confession (Matt. xvi.), as offences of the writer against chronology or literal truth. [765] We have only to premise, that as chronological confusion prevails throughout, the position of this confession shortly before the history of the Passion, in nowise obliges us to suppose that it was so late before Jesus was recognised as the Messiah among his disciples, since Peter’s avowal may have occurred in a much earlier period of their intercourse. This, however, is incomprehensible—that the same reproach should not attach even more strongly to the fourth gospel than to the first, or to the synoptical writers in general. For it is surely more pardonable that the first three Evangelists should give us the pre-messianic memoirs in the wrong place, than that the fourth should not give them at all; more endurable in the former, to mingle the two periods, than in the latter, quite to obliterate the earlier one.

If then Jesus did not lay claim to the Messiahship from the beginning of his public career, was this omission the result of uncertainty in his own mind; or had he from the first a conviction that he was the Messiah, but concealed it for certain reasons? In order to decide this question, a point already mentioned must be more carefully weighed. In the first three Evangelists, but not so exclusively that the fourth has nothing similar, when Jesus effects a miracle of healing he almost invariably forbids the person cured to promulgate the event, in these or similar words, ὅρα μηδενὶ εἴπῃς; e.g. the leper, Matt. viii. 4, parall.; the blind men, Matt. ix. 30; a multitude of the healed, Matt. xii. 16; the parents of the resuscitated damsel, Mark v. 43; above all he enjoins silence on the demoniacs, Mark i. 34, iii. 12; and John v. 13, it is said, after the cure of the man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Thus also he forbade the three who were with him on the mount of the Transfiguration, to publish the scene they had witnessed (Matt. xvii. 9); and after the confession of Peter, he charges the disciples to tell no man the conviction it expressed (Luke ix. 21). This prohibition of Jesus could hardly, as most commentators suppose, [766] be determined by various circumstantial motives, at one time having relation to the disposition of the person healed, at another to the humour of the people, at another to the situation of Jesus: rather, as there is an essential similarity in the conditions under which he lays this injunction on the people, if we discern a probable motive for it on any occasion, we are warranted in applying the same motive to the remaining cases. This motive is scarcely any other than the desire that the belief that he was the Messiah should not be too widely spread. When (Mark i. 34) Jesus would not allow the ejected demons to speak because they knew him, when he charged the multitudes that they should not make him known (Matt. xii. 16), he evidently intended that the former should not proclaim him in the character in which their more penetrative, demoniacal glance had viewed him, nor the latter in that revealed by the miraculous cure he had wrought on them—in short, they were not to betray their knowledge that he was the Messiah. As a reason for this wish on the part of Jesus, it has been alleged, on the strength of John vi. 15, that he sought to avoid awakening the political idea of the Messiah’s kingdom in the popular mind, with the disturbance which would be its inevitable result. [767] This would be a valid reason; but the synoptical writers represent the wish, partly as the effect of humility; [768] Matthew, in connexion with a prohibition of the kind alluded to, applying to Jesus a passage in Isaiah (xlii. 1 f.) where the servant of God is said to be distinguished by his stillness and unobtrusiveness: partly, and in a greater degree, as the effect of an apprehension that the Messiah, at least such an one as Jesus, would be at once proscribed by the Jewish hierarchy.

From all this it might appear that Jesus was restrained merely by external motives, from the open declaration of his Messiahship, and that his own conviction of it existed from the first in equal strength; but this conclusion cannot be maintained in the face of the consideration above mentioned, that Jesus began his career with the same announcement as the Baptist, an announcement which can scarcely have more than one import—an exhortation to prepare for a coming Messiah. The most natural supposition is that Jesus, first the disciple of the Baptist, and afterwards his successor, in preaching repentance and the approach of the kingdom of heaven, took originally the same position as his former master in relation to the messianic kingdom, notwithstanding the greater reach and liberality of his mind, and only gradually attained the elevation of thinking himself the Messiah. This supposition explains in the simplest manner the prohibition we have been considering, especially that annexed to the confession of Peter. For as often as the thought that he might be the Messiah suggested itself to others, and was presented to him from without, Jesus must have shrunk, as if appalled, to hear confidently uttered that which he scarcely ventured to surmise, or which had but recently become clear to himself. As, however, the Evangelist often put such prohibitions into the mouth of Jesus unseasonably (witness the occasion mentioned, Matt. viii. 4, when, after a cure effected before a crowd of spectators, it was of little avail to enjoin secrecy on the cured), [769] it is probable that evangelical tradition, enamoured of the mysteriousness that lay in this incognito of Jesus, [770] unhistorically multiplied the instances of its adoption.

§ 63.

JESUS, THE SON OF GOD.

In Luke i. 35, we find the narrowest and most literal interpretation of the expression, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ; namely, as derived from his conception by means of the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, the widest moral and metaphorical sense is given to the expression in Matt. v. 45, where those who imitate the love of God towards his enemies are called the sons of the Father in heaven. There is an intermediate sense which we may term the metaphysical, because while it includes more than mere conformity of will, it is distinct from the notion of actual paternity, and implies a spiritual community of being. In this sense it is profusely employed and referred to in the fourth gospel; as when Jesus says that he speaks and does nothing of himself, but only what as a son he has learned from the Father (v. 19, xii. 49; and elsewhere), who, moreover, is in him (xvii. 21), and notwithstanding his exaltation over him (xiv. 28), is yet one with him (x. 30). There is yet a fourth sense in which the expression is presented. When (Matt. iv. 3) the devil challenges Jesus to change the stones into bread, making the supposition, If thou be the Son of God; when Nathanael says to Jesus, Thou art the Son of God, the King of Israel (John i. 49); when Peter confesses, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xvi. 16; comp. John vi. 69); when Martha thus expresses her faith in Jesus, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God (John xi. 27); when the high priest adjures Jesus to tell him if he be the Christ, the Son of God (Matt. xxvi. 63): it is obvious that the devil means nothing more than, If thou be the Messiah; and that in the other passages the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, united as it is with Χριστὸς and βασιλεὺς, is but an appellation of the Messiah.

In Hos. xi. 1; Exod. iv. 22, the people of Israel, and in 2 Sam, vii. 14; Ps. ii. 7 (comp. lxxxix. 28), the king of that people, are called the son and the first-born of God. The kings (as also the people) of Israel had this appellation, in virtue of the love which Jehovah bore them, and the tutelary care which he exercised over them (2 Sam. vii. 14); and from the second psalm we gather the farther reason, that as earthly kings choose their sons to reign with or under them, so the Israelitish kings were invested by Jehovah, the supreme ruler, with the government of his favourite province. Thus the designation was originally applicable to every Israelitish king who adhered to the principle of the theocracy; but when the messianic idea was developed, it was pre-eminently assigned to the Messiah, as the best-beloved Son, and the most powerful vicegerent of God on earth. [771]

If, then, such was the original historical signification of the epithet, Son of God, as applied to the Messiah, we have to ask: is it possible that Jesus used it of himself in this signification only, or did he use it also in either of the three senses previously adduced? The narrowest, the merely physical import of the term is not put into the mouth of Jesus, but into that of the annunciating angel, Luke i. 35; and for this the Evangelist alone is responsible. In the intermediate, metaphysical sense, implying unity of essence and community of existence with God, it might possibly have been understood by Jesus, supposing him to have remodelled in his own conceptions the theocratic interpretation current among his compatriots. It is true that the abundant expressions having this tendency in the Gospel of John, appear to contradict those of Jesus on an occasion recorded by the synoptical writers (Mark x. 17 f.; Luke xviii. 18 f.), when to a disciple who accosts him as Good Master, he replies: Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God. Here Jesus so tenaciously maintains the distinction between himself and God, that he renounces the predicate of (perfect) goodness, and insists on its appropriation to God alone. [772] Olshausen supposes that this rejection related solely to the particular circumstances of the disciple addressed, who, regarding Jesus as a merely human teacher, ought not from his point of view to have given him a divine epithet, and that it was not intended by Jesus as a denial that he was, according to a just estimate of his character, actually the ἀγαθὸς in whom the one good Being was reflected as in a mirror; but this is to take for granted what is first to be proved, namely, that the declarations of Jesus concerning himself in the fourth gospel are on a level as to credibility with those recorded by the synoptical writers. Two of these writers cite some words of Jesus which have an important bearing on our present subject: All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son but the Father: neither knoweth any man the Father, but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him, Matt. xi. 27. Taking this passage in connexion with the one before quoted, we must infer that Jesus had indeed an intimate communion of thought and will with God, but under such limitations, that the attribute of perfect goodness, as well as of absolute knowledge (e.g., of the day and hour of the last day, Mark xiii. 32 parall.) belonged exclusively to God, and hence the boundary line between divine and human was strictly preserved. Even in the fourth gospel Jesus declares, My Father is greater than I, ὁ πατήρ μον μείζων μου ἐστὶ (xiv. 28), but this slight echo of the synoptical statement does not remove the difficulty of conciliating the numerous discourses of a totally different tenor in the former, with the rejection of the epithet ἀγαθὸς in the latter. It is surprising, too, that Jesus in the fourth gospel appears altogether ignorant of the theocratic sense of the expression υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, and can only vindicate his use of it in the metaphysical sense, by retreating to its vague and metaphorical application. When, namely (John x. 34 ff.), to justify his assumption of this title, he adduces the scriptural application of the term θεοὶ to other men, such as princes and magistrates, we are at a loss to understand why Jesus should resort to this remote and precarious argument, when close at hand lay the far more cogent one, that in the Old Testament, a theocratic king of Israel, or according to the customary interpretation of the most striking passages, the Messiah, is called the Son of Jehovah, and that therefore he, having declared himself to be the Messiah (v. 25), might consistently claim this appellation.

With respect to the light in which Jesus was viewed as the Son of God by others, we may remark that in the addresses of well-affected persons the title is often so associated as to be obviously a mere synonym of Χριστὸς, and this even in the fourth gospel; while on the other hand the contentious Ἰουδαῖοι of this gospel seem in their objections as ignorant as Jesus in his defence, of the theocratic, and only notice the metaphysical meaning of the expression. It is true that, even in the synoptical gospels, when Jesus answers affirmatively the question whether he be the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. xxvi. 65, parall.), the high priest taxes him with blasphemy; but he refers merely to what he considers the unwarranted arrogation of the theocratic dignity of the Messiah, whereas in the fourth gospel, when Jesus represents himself as the Son of God (v. 17 f., x. 30 ff.), the Jews seek to kill him for the express reason that he thereby makes himself ἴσον τῷ θεῷ, nay even ἑαυτὸν θεὸν. According to the synoptical writers, the high priest so unhesitatingly considers the idea of the Son of God to pertain to that of the Messiah, that he associates the two titles as if they were interchangeable, in the question he addresses to Jesus: on the contrary the Jews in the Gospel of John regard the one idea as so far transcending the other, that they listen patiently to the declaration of Jesus that he is the Messiah (x. 25), but as soon as he begins to claim to be the Son of God, they take up stones to stone him. In the synoptical gospels the reproach cast on Jesus is, that being a common man, he gives himself out for the Messiah; in the fourth gospel, that being a mere man, he gives himself out for a divine being. Hence Olshausen and others have justly insisted that in those passages of the latter gospel to which our remarks have reference, the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ is not synonymous with Messiah, but is a name far transcending the ordinary idea of the Messiah; [773] they are not, however, warranted in concluding that therefore in the first three Evangelists also [774] the same expression imports more than the Messiah. For the only legitimate interpretation of the high priest’s question in Matthew makes ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ a synonym of ὁ Χριστὸς, and though in the parallel passage of Luke, the judges first ask Jesus if he be the Christ (xxii. 67)? and when he declines a direct answer,—predicting that they will behold the Son of man seated at the right hand of God,—hastily interrupt him with the question, Art thou the Son of God? (v. 70); yet, after receiving what they consider an affirmative answer, they accuse him before Pilate as one who pretends to be Christ, a king (xxiii. 2), thus clearly showing that Son of man, Son of God, and Messiah, must have been regarded as interchangeable terms. It must therefore be conceded that there is a discrepancy on this point between the synoptical writers and John, and perhaps also an inconsistency of the latter with himself; for in several addresses to Jesus he retains the customary form, which associated Son of God with Christ or King of Israel, without being conscious of the distinction between the signification which υἱὸς τ. θ. must have in such a connexion, and that in which he used it elsewhere—a want of perception which habitual forms of expression are calculated to induce. We have before cited examples of this oversight in the fourth Evangelist (John i. 49, vi. 69, xi. 27).

The author of the Probabilia reasonably considers it suspicious that, in the fourth gospel, Jesus and his opponents should appear entirely ignorant of the theocratic sense which is elsewhere attached to the expression ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, and which must have been more familiar to the Jews than any other, unless we suppose some of them to have partaken of Alexandrian culture. To such, we grant, as well as to the fourth Evangelist, judging from his prologue, the metaphysical relation of the λόγος μονογενὴς to God would be the most cherished association.

§ 64.

THE DIVINE MISSION AND AUTHORITY OF JESUS. HIS PRE-EXISTENCE.

The four Evangelists are in unison as to the declaration of Jesus concerning his divine mission and authority. Like every prophet, he is sent by God (Matt. x. 40; John v. 23 f., 56 f.), acts and speaks by the authority, and under the immediate guidance of God (John v. 19 ff.), and exclusively possesses an adequate knowledge of God, which it is his office to impart to men (Matt xi. 27; John iii. 13). To him, as the Messiah, all power is given (Matt. xi. 27); first, over the kingdom which he is appointed to found and to rule with all its members (John x. 29, xvii. 6); next, over mankind in general (John xvii. 2), and even external nature (Matt, xxviii. 18); consequently, should the interests of the messianic kingdom demand it, power to effect a thorough revolution in the whole world. At the future commencement of his reign, Jesus, as Messiah, is authorized to awake the dead (John v. 28), and to sit as a judge, separating those worthy to partake of the heavenly kingdom from the unworthy (Matt. xxv. 31 ff.; John v. 22, 29); offices which Jewish opinion attributed to the Messiah, [775] and which Jesus, once convinced of his Messiahship, would necessarily transfer to himself.

The Evangelists are not equally unanimous on another point. According to the synoptical writers, Jesus claims, it is true, the highest human dignity, and the most exalted relation with God, for the present and future, but he never refers to an existence anterior to his earthly career: in the fourth gospel, on the contrary, we find several discourses of Jesus which contain the repeated assertion of such a pre-existence. We grant that when Jesus describes himself as coming down from heaven (John iii. 13, xvi. 28), the expression, taken alone, may be understood as a merely figurative intimation of his superhuman origin. It is more difficult, but perhaps admissible, to interpret, with the Socinian Crell, the declaration of Jesus, Before Abraham was, I am, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγω εἰμι (John viii. 58), as referring to a purely ideal existence in the pre-determination of God; but scarcely possible to consider the prayer to the Father (John xvii. 5) to confirm the δόξα (glory) which Jesus had with Him before the world was, πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι, as an entreaty for the communication of a glory predestined for Jesus from eternity. But the language of Jesus, John vi. 62, where he speaks of the Son of man reascending αναβαίνειν where he was before ὅπου ἦν τὸ πρότερον, is in its intrinsic meaning, as well as in that which is reflected on it from other passages, unequivocally significative of actual, not merely ideal, pre-existence.

It has been already conjectured [776] that these expressions, or at least the adaptation of them to a real pre-existence, are derived, not from Jesus, but from the author of the fourth gospel, with whose opinions, as propounded in his introduction, they specifically agree; for if the Word was in the beginning with God (ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θέον), Jesus, in whom it was made flesh, might attribute to himself an existence before Abraham, and a participation of glory with the Father before the foundation of the world. Nevertheless, we are not warranted in adopting this view, unless it can be shown that neither was the idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah extant among the Jews of Palestine before the time of Jesus, nor is it probable that Jesus attained such a notion, independently of the ideas peculiar to his age and nation.

The latter supposition, that Jesus spoke from his own memory of his pre-human and pre-mundane existence, is liable to comparison with dangerous parallels in the history of Pythagoras, Ennius, and Apollonius of Tyana, whose alleged reminiscences of individual states which they had experienced prior to their birth, [777] are now generally regarded either as subsequent fables, or as enthusiastic self-delusions of those celebrated men. For the other alternative, that the idea in question was common to the Jewish nation, a presumption may be found in the description, already quoted from Daniel, of the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, since the author, possibly, and, at all events, many readers, imagined that personage to be a superhuman being, dwelling beforehand with God, like the angels. But that every one who referred this passage to the Messiah, or that Jesus in particular, associated with it the notion of a pre-existence, is not to be proved; for, if we exclude the representation of John, Jesus depicts his coming in the clouds of heaven, not as if he had come as a visitant to earth from his home in heaven, but, according to Matt. xxvi. 65 (comp. xxiv. 25), as if he, the earth-born, after the completion of his earthly course, would be received into heaven, and from thence would return to establish his kingdom: thus making the coming from heaven not necessarily include the idea of pre-existence. We find in the Proverbs, in Sirach, and the Book of Wisdom, the idea of a personified and even hypostasized Wisdom of God, and in the Psalms and Prophets, strongly marked personifications of the Divine word; [778] and it is especially worthy of note, that the later Jews, in their horror of anthropomorphism in the idea of the Divine being, attributed his speech, appearance, and immediate agency, to the Word (‏מימרא‎) or the dwelling place (‏שׁכינתא‎) of Jehovah, as may be seen in the venerable [779] Targum of Onkelos. [780] These expressions, at first mere paraphrases of the name of God, soon received the mystical signification of a veritable hypostasis, of a being at once distinct from, and one with God. As most of the revelations and interpositions of God, whose organ this personified Word was considered to be, were designed in favour of the Israelitish people, it was natural for them to assign to the manifestation which was still awaited from Him, and which was to be the crowning benefit of Israel,—the manifestation, namely, of the Messiah,—a peculiar relation with the Word or Shechina. [781] From this germ sprang the opinion that with the Messiah the Shechina would appear, and that what was ascribed to the Shechina pertained equally to the Messiah: an opinion not confined to the Rabbins, but sanctioned by the Apostle Paul. According to it, the Messiah was, even in the wilderness, the invisible guide and benefactor of God’s people (1 Cor. x. 4, 9); [782] he was with our first parents in Paradise; [783] he was the agent in creation (Col. i. 16); he even existed before the creation, [784] and prior to his incarnation in Jesus, was in a glorious fellowship with God (Phil. ii. 6).

As it is thus evident that, immediately after the time of Jesus, the idea of a pre-existence of the Messiah was incorporated in the higher Jewish theology, it is no far-fetched conjecture, that the same idea was afloat when the mind of Jesus was maturing, and that in his conception of himself as the Messiah, this attribute was included. But whether Jesus were as deeply initiated in the speculations of the Jewish schools as Paul, is yet a question, and as the author of the fourth gospel, versed in the Alexandrian doctrine of the λόγος, stands alone in ascribing to Jesus the assertion of a pre-existence, we are unable to decide whether we are to put the dogma to the account of Jesus, or of his biographer.

§ 65.

THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. INDICATIONS OF A POLITICAL ELEMENT.

The Baptist pointed to a future individual, and Jesus to himself, as the founder of the kingdom of heaven. The idea of that messianic kingdom belonged to the Israelitish nation; did Jesus hold it in the form in which it existed among his cotemporaries, or under modifications of his own?

The idea of the Messiah grew up amongst the Jews in soil half religious, half political: it was nurtured by national adversity, and in the time of Jesus, according to the testimony of the gospels, it was embodied in the expectation that the Messiah would ascend the throne of his ancestor David, free the Jewish people from the Roman yoke, and found a kingdom which would last for ever (Luke i. 32 f., 68 ff.; Acts i. 6). Hence our first question must be this. Did Jesus include this political element in his messianic plan?

That Jesus aspired to be a temporal ruler, has at all times been an allegation of the adversaries of Christianity, but has been maintained by none with so much exegetical acumen as by the author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, [785] who, be it observed, by no means denies to Jesus the praise of aiming at the moral reformation of his nation. According to this writer, the first indication of a political plan on the part of Jesus is, that he unambiguously announced the approaching messianic kingdom, and laid down the conditions on which it was to be entered, without explaining what this kingdom was, and wherein it consisted, [786] as if he supposed the current idea of its nature to be correct. Now the fact is, that the prevalent conception of the messianic reign had a strong political bias; hence, when Jesus spoke of the Messiah’s kingdom without a definition, the Jews could only think of an earthly dominion, and as Jesus could not have presupposed any other interpretation of his words, he must have wished to be so understood. But in opposition to this it may be remarked, that in the Parables by which Jesus shadowed forth the kingdom of heaven; in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he illustrates the duties of its citizens; and lastly, in his whole demeanour and course of action, we have sufficient evidence, that his idea of the messianic kingdom was peculiar to himself. There is not so ready a counterpoise for the difficulty, that Jesus sent the apostles, with whose conceptions he could not be unacquainted, to announce the Messiah’s kingdom throughout the land (Matt. x.). These, who disputed which of them should be greatest in the kingdom of their master (Matt, xviii. 1; Luke xxii. 24); of whom two petitioned for the seats at the right and left of the messianic king (Mark x. 35 ff.); who, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus, expected a restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts i. 6);—these had clearly from the beginning to the end of their intercourse with Jesus, no other than the popular notion of the Messiah; when, therefore, Jesus despatched them as heralds of his kingdom, it seems necessarily a part of his design, that they should disseminate in all places their political messianic idea.

Among the discourses of Jesus there is one especially worthy of note in Matt. xix. 28 (comp. Luke xxii. 30). In reply to the question of Peter, We have left all and followed thee; what shall we have therefore? Jesus promises to his disciples that in the παλιγγενεσία, when the Son of man shall sit on his throne, they also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. That the literal import of this promise formed part of the tissue of the messianic hopes cherished by the Jews of that period, is not to be controverted. It is argued, however, that Jesus spoke figuratively on this occasion, and only employed familiar Jewish images to convey to the apostles an assurance, that the sacrifices they had made here would be richly compensated in their future life by a participation in his glory. [787] But the disciples must have understood the promise literally, when, even after the resurrection of Jesus, they harboured anticipations of worldly greatness; and as Jesus had had many proofs of this propensity, he would hardly have adopted such language, had he not intended to nourish their temporal hopes. The supposition that he did so merely to animate the courage of his disciples, without himself sharing their views, imputes duplicity to Jesus;—a duplicity in this case quite gratuitous, since, as Olshausen justly observes, Peter’s question would have been satisfactorily answered by any other laudatory acknowledgment of the devotion of the disciples. Hence it appears a fair inference, that Jesus himself shared the Jewish expectations which he here sanctions: but expositors have made the most desperate efforts to escape from this unwelcome conclusion. Some have resorted to an arbitrary alteration of the reading; [788] others to the detection of irony, directed against the disproportion between the pretensions of the disciples, and their trivial services, [789] others to different expedients, but all more unnatural than the admission, that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish ideas, here promises his disciples the dignity of being his assessors in his visible messianic judgment, and that he thus indicates the existence of a national element in his notion of the Messiah’s kingdom. It is observable, too, that in the Acts (i. 7), Jesus, even after his resurrection, does not deny that he will restore the kingdom to Israel, but merely discourages curiosity as to the times and seasons of its restoration.

Among the actions of Jesus, his last entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 1 ff.) is especially appealed to as a proof that his plan was partly political. According to the Fragmentist, all the circumstances point to a political design: the time which Jesus chose,—after a sufficiently long preparation of the people in the provinces; the Passover, which they visited in great numbers; the animal on which he rode, and by which, from a popular interpretation of a passage in Zechariah, he announced himself as the destined King of Jerusalem; the approval which he pronounces when the people receive him with a royal greeting; the violent procedure which he hazards in the temple; and finally, his severe philippic on the higher class of the Jews (Matt. xxiii.), at the close of which he seeks to awe them into a reception of him as their messianic king, by the threat that he will show himself to them no more in any other guise.

§ 66.

DATA FOR THE PURE SPIRITUALITY OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. BALANCE.

Nowhere in our evangelical narratives is there a trace of Jesus having sought to form a political party. On the contrary, he withdraws from the eagerness of the people to make him a king (John vi. 15); he declares that the messianic kingdom comes not with observation, but is to be sought for in the recesses of the soul (Luke xvii. 20 f.); it is his principle to unite obedience to God with obedience to temporal authority, even when heathen (Matt. xxii. 21); on his solemn entry into the capital, he chooses to ride the animal of peace, and afterwards escapes from the multitude, instead of using their excitement for the purposes of his ambition; lastly, he maintains before his judge, that his kingdom is not from hence οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν, is not of this world οὐκ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου (John xvi. 36), and we have no reason in this instance to question either his or the Evangelist’s veracity.

Thus we have a series of indications to counterbalance those detailed in the preceding section. The adversaries of Christianity have held exclusively to the arguments for a political, or rather a revolutionary, project, on the part of Jesus, while the orthodox theologians adhere to those only which tell for the pure spirituality of his plan: [790] and each party has laboured to invalidate by hermeneutical skill the passages unfavourable to its theory. It has of late been acknowledged that both are equally partial, and that there is need of arbitration between them.

This has been attempted chiefly by supposing an earlier and a later form of the plan of Jesus. [791] Although, it has been said, the moral improvement and religious elevation of his people were from the first the primary object of Jesus, he nevertheless, in the beginning of his public life, cherished the hope of reviving, by means of this internal regeneration, the external glories of the theocracy, when he should be acknowledged by his nation as the Messiah, and thereby be constituted the supreme authority in the state. But in the disappointment of this hope, he recognised the divine rejection of every political element in his plan, and thenceforth refined it into pure spirituality. It is held to be a presumption in favour of such a change in the plan of Jesus, that there is a gladness diffused over his first appearance, which gives place to melancholy in the latter period of his ministry; that instead of the acceptable year of the Lord, announced in his initiative address at Nazareth, sorrow is the burthen of his later discourses, and he explicitly says of Jerusalem, that he had attempted to save it, but that now its fall, both religious and political, was inevitable, As, however, the evangelists do not keep the events and discourses proper to these distinct periods within their respective limits, but happen to give the two most important data for the imputation of a political design to Jesus (namely the promise of the twelve thrones and the public entrance into the capital), near the close of his life; we must attribute to these writers a chronological confusion, as in the case of the relation which the views of Jesus bore to the messianic idea in general: unless as an alternative it be conceivable, that Jesus uttered during the same period the declarations which seem to indicate, and those which disclaim, a political design.

This, in our apprehension, is not inconceivable; for Jesus might anticipate a καθίζεσθαι ἐπὶ θρόνους for himself and his disciples, not regarding the means of its attainment as a political revolution, but as a revolution to be effected by the immediate interposition of God. That such was his view may be inferred from his placing that judiciary appearance of his disciples in the παλιγγενεσία; for this was not a political revolution, any more than a spiritual regeneration,—it was a resurrection of the dead, which God was to effect through the agency of the Messiah, and which was to usher in the messianic times. [792] Jesus certainly expected to restore the throne of David, and with his disciples to govern a liberated people; in no degree, however, did he rest his hopes on the sword of human adherents (Luke xxii. 38; Matt. xxvi. 52), but on the legions of angels, which his heavenly Father could send him (Matt. xxvi. 53). Wherever he speaks of coming in his messianic glory, he depicts himself surrounded by angels and heavenly powers (Matt. xvi. 27, xxiv. 30 f., xxv. 31; John i. 52); before the majesty of the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven, all nations are to bow without the coercion of the sword, and at the sound of the angel’s trumpet, are to present themselves, with the awakened dead, before the judgment-seat of the Messiah and his twelve apostles. All this Jesus would not bring to pass of his own will, but he waited for a signal from his heavenly Father, who alone knew the appropriate time for this catastrophe (Mark xiii. 32), and he apparently was not disconcerted when his end approached without his having received the expected intimation. They who shrink from this view, merely because they conceive that it makes Jesus an enthusiast, [793] will do well to reflect how closely such hopes corresponded with the long cherished messianic idea of the Jews, [794] and how easily, in that day of supernaturalism, and in a nation segregated by the peculiarities of its faith, an idea, in itself extravagant, if only it were consistent, and had, in some of its aspects, truth and dignity, might allure even a reasonable man beneath its influence.

With respect to that which awaits the righteous after judgment,—everlasting life in the kingdom of the Father,—it is true that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish notions, [795] compares it to a feast (Matt. viii. 11, xxii. 2 ff.), at which he hopes himself to taste the fruit of the vine (Matt. xxvi. 29), and to celebrate the Passover (Luke xxii. 16); but his declaration that in the αἰὼν μέλλων the organic relation between the sexes will cease, and men will be like the angels (ἰσάγγελοι, Luke xx. 35 ff.), seems more or less to reduce the above discourses to a merely symbolical significance.

Thus we conclude that the messianic hope of Jesus was not political, nor even merely earthly, for he referred its fulfilment to supernatural means, and to a supermundane theatre (the regenerated earth): as little was it a purely spiritual hope, in the modern sense of the term, for it included important and unprecedented changes in the external condition of things: but it was the national, theocratic hope, spiritualized and ennobled by his own peculiar moral and religious views.

§ 67.

THE RELATION OF JESUS TO THE MOSAIC LAW.

The Mosaic institutions were actually extinguished in the church of which Jesus was the founder; hence it is natural to suppose that their abolition formed a part of his design:—a reach of vision, beyond the horizon of the ceremonial worship of his age and country, of which apologists have been ever anxious to prove that he was possessed. [796] Neither are there wanting speeches and actions of Jesus which seem to favour their effort. Whenever he details the conditions of participation in the kingdom of heaven, as in the Sermon on the Mount, he insists, not on the observance of the Mosaic ritual, but on the spirit of religion and morality; he attaches no value to fasting, praying, and almsgiving, unless accompanied by a corresponding bent of mind (Matt. vi. 1–18); the two main elements of the Mosaic worship, sacrifice and the keeping of sabbaths and feasts, he not only nowhere enjoins, but puts a marked slight on the former, by commending the scribe who declared that the love of God and one’s neighbour was more than whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, as one not far from the kingdom of God (Mark xii. 23 f.), [797] and he ran counter in action as well as in speech to the customary mode of celebrating the Sabbath (Matt. xii. 1–13; Mark ii. 23–28, iii. 1–5; Luke vi. 1–10, xiii. 10 ff., xiv. 1 ff.; John v. 5 ff., vii. 22, ix. 1 ff.), of which in his character of Son of Man he claimed to be Lord. The Jews, too, appear to have expected a revision of the Mosaic law by their Messiah. [798] A somewhat analogous sense is couched in the declarations attributed by the fourth Evangelist to Jesus (ii. 19); Matthew (xxvi. 61) and Mark (xiv. 58) represent him as being accused by false witnesses of saying, I am able to destroy (John, destroy) the temple of God (Mark, that is made with hands), and to build it in three days (Mark, I will build another made without hands). The author of the Acts has something similar as an article of accusation against Stephen, but instead of the latter half of the sentence it is thus added, and (he, i.e. Jesus) shall change the customs which Moses delivered us; and perhaps this may be regarded as an authentic comment on the less explicit text. In general it may be said that to one who, like Jesus, is so far alive to the absolute value of the internal compared with the external, of the bent of the entire disposition compared with isolated acts, that he pronounces the love of God and our neighbour to be the essence of the law (Matt. xxii. 36 ff.),—to him it cannot be a secret, that all precepts of the law which do not bear on these two points are unessential. But the argument apparently most decisive of a design on the part of Jesus to abolish the Mosaic worship, is furnished by his prediction that the temple, the centre of Jewish worship (Matt. xxiv. 2 parall.), would be destroyed, and that the adoration of God would be freed from local fetters, and become purely spiritual (John iv. 21 ff.).

The above, however, presents only one aspect of the position assumed by Jesus towards the Mosaic law; there are also data for the belief that he did not meditate the overthrow of the ancient constitution of his country. This side of the question has been, at a former period, and from easily-conceived reasons, the one which the enemies of Christianity in its ecclesiastical form, have chosen to exhibit; [799] but it is only in recent times that, the theological horizon being extended, the unprejudiced expositors of the church [800] have acknowledged its existence. In the first place, during his life Jesus remains faithful to the paternal law; he attends the synagogue on the sabbath, journeys to Jerusalem at the time of the feast, and eats of the paschal lamb with his disciples. It is true that he heals on the sabbath, allows his disciples to pluck ears of corn (Matt. xii. 1 ff.), and requires no fasting or washing before meat in his society (Matt. iv. 14, xv. 2). But the Mosaic law concerning the sabbath simply prescribed cessation from common labour, ‏מְלָאכָה‎ (Exod. xx. 8 ff., xxxi. 12 ff., Deut. v. 12 ff.), including ploughing, reaping (Exod. xxxiv. 21), gathering of sticks (Num. xv. 32 ff.), and similar work, and it was only the spirit of petty observance, the growth of a later age, that made it an offence to perform cures, or pluck a few ears of corn. [801] The washing of hands before eating was but a rabbinical custom; [802] in the law one general yearly fast was alone prescribed (Lev. xvi. 29 ff., xxiii. 27 ff.) and no private fasting required; hence Jesus cannot be convicted of infringing the precepts of Moses. [803] In that very Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus exalts spiritual religion so far above all ritual, he clearly presupposes the continuation of sacrifices (Matt. v. 23 f.), and declares that he is not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil (Matt. v. 17). Even if πληρῶσαι, in all probability, refers chiefly to the accomplishment of the Old Testament prophecies, οὐκ ἦλθον καταλῦσαι must at the same time be understood of the conservation of the Mosaic law, since in the context, perpetuity is promised to its smallest letter, and he who represents its lightest precept as not obligatory, is threatened with the lowest rank in the kingdom of heaven. [804] In accordance with this, the apostles adhered strictly to the Mosaic law, even after the feast of Pentecost; they went at the hour of prayer into the temple (Acts iii. 1), clung to the synagogues and to the Mosaic injunctions respecting food (x. 14), and were unable to appeal to any express declaration of Jesus as a sanction for the procedure of Barnabas and Paul, when the judaizing party complained of their baptizing Gentiles without laying on them the burthen of the Mosaic law.

This apparent contradiction in the conduct and language of Jesus has been apologetically explained by the supposition, that not only the personal obedience of Jesus to the law, but also his declarations in its favour, were a necessary concession to the views of his cotemporaries, who would at once have withdrawn their confidence from him, had he announced himself as the destroyer of their holy and venerated law. [805] We allow that the obedience of Jesus to the law in his own person, might be explained in the same way as that of Paul, which, on his own showing, was a measure of mere expediency (1 Cor. ix. 20, comp. Acts xvi. 3). But the strong declarations of Jesus concerning the perpetuity of the law, and the guilt of him who dares to violate its lightest precept, cannot possibly be derived from the principle of concession; for to pronounce that indispensable, which one secretly holds superfluous, and which one even seeks to bring gradually into disuse, would, leaving honesty out of the question, be in the last degree injudicious.

Hence others have made a distinction between the moral and the ritual law, and referred the declaration of Jesus that he wished not to abrogate the law, to the former alone, which he extricated from a web of trivial ceremonies, and embodied in his own example. [806] But such a distinction is not found in those striking passages from the Sermon on the Mount; rather in the νόμος and προφῆται, the law and the prophets, we have the most comprehensive designation of the whole religious constitution of the Old Testament, [807] and under the most trivial commandment, and the smallest letter of the law, alike pronounced imperishable, we cannot well understand anything else than the ceremonial precepts. [808]

A happier distinction is that between really Mosaic institutes, and their traditional amplifications. [809] It is certain that the sabbath cures of Jesus, his neglect of the pedantic ablutions before eating, and the like, ran counter, not to Moses, but to later rabbinical requirements, and several discourses of Jesus turn upon this distinction. Matt. xv. 3 ff., Jesus places the commandment of God in opposition to the tradition of the elders, and Matt. xxiii. 23, he declares that where they are compatible, the former may be observed without rejecting the latter, in which case he admonishes the people to do all that the scribes and Pharisees enjoin; where, on the contrary, either the one or the other only can be respected, he decides that it is better to transgress the tradition of the elders, than the commandment of God as given by Moses (Matt. xv. 3 ff.). He describes the mass of traditional precepts, as a burthen grievous to be borne, which he would remove from the oppressed people, substituting his own light burthen and easy yoke; whence it may be seen, that with all his forbearance towards existing institutions, so far as they were not positively pernicious, it was his intention that all these commandments of men, as plants which his heavenly Father had not planted, should be rooted up (xv. 9, 13). The majority of the Pharisaical precepts referred to externals, and had the effect of burying the noble morality of the Mosaic law under a heap of ceremonial observances; a gift to the temple sufficed to absolve the giver from his filial duties (xv. 5), and the payment of tithe of anise and cummin superseded justice, mercy, and faith (xxiii. 23). Hence this distinction is in some degree identical with the former, since in the rabbinical institutes it was their merely ceremonial tendency that Jesus censured, while, in the Mosaic law, it was the kernel of religion and morality that he chiefly valued. It must only not be contended that he regarded the Mosaic law as permanent solely in its spiritual part, for the passages quoted, especially from the Sermon on the Mount, clearly show that he did not contemplate the abolition of the merely ritual precepts.

Jesus, supposing that he had discerned morality and the spiritual worship of God to be the sole essentials in religion, must have rejected all which, being merely ritual and formal, had usurped the importance of a religious obligation, and under this description must fall a large proportion of the Mosaic precepts; but it is well known how slowly such consequences are deduced, when they come into collision with usages consecrated by antiquity. Even Samuel, apparently, was aware that obedience is better than sacrifice (1 Sam. xv. 22), and Asaph, that an offering of thanksgiving is more acceptable to God than one of slain animals (Ps. 1.); yet how long after were sacrifices retained together with true obedience, or in its stead! Jesus was more thoroughly penetrated with this conviction than those ancients; with him, the true commandments of God in the Mosaic law were simply, Honour thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not kill, etc., and above all, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. But his deep-rooted respect for the sacred book of the law, caused him, for the sake of these essential contents, to honour the unessential; which was the more natural, as in comparison with the absurdly exaggerated pedantry of the traditional observances, the ritual of the Pentateuch must have appeared highly simple. To honour this latter part of the law as of Divine origin, but to declare it abrogated on the principle, that in the education of the human race, God finds necessary for an earlier period an arrangement which is superfluous for a later one, implies that idea of the law as a schoolmaster, νόμος παιδαγωγὸς (Gal. iii. 24), which seems first to have been developed by the Apostle Paul; nevertheless, its germ lies in the declaration of Jesus, that God had permitted to the early Hebrews, on account of the hardness of their hearts (Matt. xix. 8 f.), many things which, in a more advanced state of culture, were inadmissible.

A similar limitation of the duration of the law is involved in the predictions of Jesus (if indeed they were uttered by Jesus, a point which we have to discuss), that the temple would be destroyed at his approaching advent (Matt. xxiv. parall.), and that devotion would be freed from all local restrictions (John iv.); for with these must fall the entire Mosaic system of external worship. This is not contradicted by the declaration that the law would endure until heaven and earth should pass away (Matt. v. 18), for the Hebrew associated the fall of his state and sanctuary with the end of the old world or dispensation, so that the expressions, so long as the temple stands, and so long as the world stands, were equivalent. [810] It is true that the words of Jesus, Luke xvi. 16, ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται ἕως Ἰωάννου, seem to imply, that the appearance of the Baptist put an end to the validity of the law; but this passage loses its depreciatory sense when compared with its parallel, Matt xi. 13. On the other hand, Luke xvi. 17 controls Matt. v. 18, and reduces it to a mere comparison between the stability of the law, and that of heaven and earth. The only question then is, in which of the gospels are the two passages more correctly stated? As given in the first, they intimate that the law would retain its supremacy until, and not after, the close of the old dispensation. With this agrees the prediction, that the temple would be destroyed; for the spiritualization of religion, and, according to Stephen’s interpretation, the abolition of the Mosaic law, which were to be the results of that event, were undoubtedly identified by Jesus with the commencement of the αἰὼν μέλλων of the Messiah. Hence it appears, that the only difference between the view of Paul and that of Jesus is this: that the latter anticipated the extinction of the Mosaic system as a concomitant of his glorious advent or return to the regenerated earth, while the former believed its abolition permissible on the old, unregenerated earth, in virtue of the Messiah’s first advent. [811]

§ 68.

SCOPE OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS. RELATION TO THE GENTILES.

Although the church founded by Jesus did, in fact, early extend itself beyond the limits of the Jewish people, there are yet indications which might induce a belief that he did not contemplate such an extension. [812] When he sends the twelve on their first mission, his command is, Go not into the way of the Gentiles—Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. x. 5 f.). That Matthew alone has this injunction, and not the two other synoptists, is less probably explained by the supposition that the Hebrew author of the first gospel interpolated it, than by the opposite one, namely, that it was wilfully omitted by the Hellenistic authors of the second and third gospels. For, as the judaizing tendency of Matthew is not so marked that he assigns to Jesus the intention of limiting the messianic kingdom to the Jews; as, on the contrary, he makes Jesus unequivocally foretell the calling of the Gentiles (viii. 11 f., xxi. 33 ff., xxii. 1 ff., xxviii. 19 f.): he had no motive for fabricating this particularizing addition; but the two other Evangelists had a strong one for its omission, in the offence which it would cause to the Gentiles already within the fold. Its presence in Matthew, however, demands an explanation, and expositors have thought to furnish one by supposing the injunction of Jesus to be a measure of prudence. [813] It is unquestionable that, even if the plan of Jesus comprehended the Gentiles as well as the Jews, he must at first, if he would not for ever ruin his cause with his fellow-countrymen, adopt, and prescribe to the disciples, a rule of national exclusiveness. This necessity on his part might account for his answer to the Canaanitish woman, whose daughter he refuses to heal, because he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. xv. 24), were it not that the boon which he here denies is not a reception into the messianic kingdom, but a temporal benefit, such as even Elijah and Elisha had conferred on those who were not Israelites (1 Kings xvii. 9 ff.; 2 Kings v. 1 ff.)—examples to which Jesus elsewhere appeals (Luke iv. 25 ff.). Hence the disciples thought it natural and unobjectionable to grant the woman’s petition, and it could not be prudential considerations that withheld Jesus, for a time, from compliance. That an aversion to the Gentiles may not appear to be his motive, it has been conjectured [814] that Jesus, wishing to preserve an incognito in that country, avoided the performance of any messianic work. But such a design of concealment is only mentioned by Mark (vii. 25), who represents it as being defeated by the entreaties of the woman, contrary to the inclinations of Jesus; and as this Evangelist omits the declaration of Jesus, that he was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, we must suspect that he was guided by the wish to supply a less offensive motive for the conduct of Jesus, rather than by historical accuracy. Had Jesus really been influenced by the motive which Mark assigns, he must at once have alleged it to his disciples instead of a merely ostensible one, calculated to strengthen their already rigid exclusiveness. We should therefore rather listen to the opinion that Jesus sought, by his repeated refusal, to prove the faith of the woman, and furnish an occasion for its exhibition, [815] if we could find in the text the slightest trace of mere dissimulation; and none of a real change of mind. [816] Even Mark, bent as he was on softening the features of the incident, cannot have thought of a dissimulation of this kind; otherwise, instead of omitting the harsh words and making the inadequate addition, and would have no man know it, he would have removed the offence in the most satisfactory manner, by an observation such as, he said this to prove her (comp. John vi. 6). Thus it must be allowed that Jesus in this case seems to share the antipathy of his countrymen towards the Gentiles, nay, his antipathy seems to be of a deeper stamp than that of his disciples; unless their advocacy of the woman be a touch from the pencil of tradition, for the sake of contrast and grouping.

This narrative, however, is neutralized by another, in which Jesus is said to act in a directly opposite manner. The centurion of Capernaum, also a Gentile (as we gather from the remarks of Jesus), has scarcely complained of a distress similar to that of the Canaanitish woman, when Jesus himself volunteers to go and heal his servant (Matt. viii. 5). If, then, Jesus has no hesitation, in this instance, to exercise his power of healing in favour of a heathen, how comes it that he refuses to do so in another quite analogous case? Truly if the relative position of the two narratives in the gospels have any weight, he must have shown himself more harsh and narrow at the later period than at the earlier one. Meanwhile, this single act of benevolence to a Gentile, standing as it does in inexplicable contradiction to the narrative above examined, cannot prove, in opposition to the command expressly given to the disciples, not to go to the Gentiles, that Jesus contemplated their admission as such into the messianic kingdom.

Even the prediction of Jesus that the kingdom of heaven would be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles, does not prove this. In the above interview with the centurion of Capernaum, Jesus declares that many shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with the patriarchs in the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom (obviously the Jews), for whom it was originally designed, will be cast out (Matt. viii. 11 f.). Yet more decidedly, when applying the parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard, he warns his countrymen that the kingdom of God shall be taken from them, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (Matt. xxi. 43). All this may be understood in the sense intended by the prophets, in their promises that the messianic kingdom would extend to all nations; namely, that the Gentiles would turn to the worship of Jehovah, embrace the Mosaic religion in its entire form, and afterwards be received into the Messiah’s kingdom. It would accord very well with this expectation, that, prior to such a conversion, Jesus should forbid his disciples to direct their announcement of his kingdom to the Gentiles.

But in the discourses concerning his re-appearance, Jesus regards the publication of the gospel to all nations as one of the circumstances that must precede that event (Matt. xxiv. 14; Mark xiii. 10); and after his resurrection, according to the synoptists, he gave his disciples the command, Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. (Matt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47); i.e. go to them with the offer of the Messiah’s kingdom, even though they may not beforehand have become Jews. Not only, however, do the disciples, after the first Pentecost, neglect to execute this command, but when a case is thrust on them which offers them an opportunity for compliance with it, they act as if they were altogether ignorant that such a direction had been given by Jesus (Acts x., xi.). The heathen centurion Cornelius, worthy, from his devout life, of a reception into the messianic community, is pointed out by an angel to the Apostle Peter. But because it was not hidden from God, with what difficulty the apostle would be induced to receive a heathen, without further preliminary, into the Messiah’s kingdom, he saw it needful to prepare him for such a step by a symbolical vision. In consequence of such an admonition Peter goes to Cornelius; but to impel him to baptize him and his family, he needs a second sign, the pouring out of the Holy Ghost on these uncircumcised. When, subsequently, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem call him to account for this reception of Gentiles, Peter appeals in his justification solely to the recent vision, and to the Holy Ghost given to the centurion’s family. Whatever judgment we may form of the credibility of this history, it is a memorial of the many deliberations and contentions which it cost the apostles after the departure of Jesus, to convince themselves of the eligibility of Gentiles for a participation in the kingdom of their Christ, and the reasons which at last brought them to a decision. Now if Jesus had given so explicit a command as that above quoted, what need was there of a vision to encourage Peter to its fulfilment? or, supposing the vision to be a legendary investiture of the natural deliberations of the disciples, why did they go about in search of the reflection, that all men ought to be baptized, because before God all men and all animals, as his creatures, are clean, if they could have appealed to an express injunction of Jesus? Here, then, is the alternative: if Jesus himself gave this command, the disciples cannot have been led to the admission of the Gentiles by the means narrated in Acts x., xi.; if, on the other hand, that narrative is authentic, the alleged command of Jesus cannot be historical. Our canon decides for the latter proposition. For that the subsequent practice and pre-eminent distinction of the Christian Church, its accessibility to all nations, and its indifference to circumcision or uncircumcision, should have lain in the mind of its founder, is the view best adapted to exalt and adorn Jesus; while that, after his death, and through the gradual development of relations, the church, which its Founder had designed for the Gentiles only in so far as they became Jews, should break through these limits, is in the simple, natural, and therefore the probable course of things.

§ 69.

RELATION OF THE MESSIANIC PLAN OF JESUS TO THE SAMARITANS. HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.

There is the same apparent contradiction in the position which Jesus took, and prescribed to his disciples, towards the inhabitants of Samaria. While in his instructions to his disciples (Matt. x. 5), he forbids them to visit any city of the Samaritans, we read in John (iv.) that Jesus himself in his journey through Samaria laboured as the Messiah with great effect, and ultimately stayed two days in a Samaritan town; and in the Acts (i. 8), that before his ascension he charged the disciples to be his witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and in all Judea, but also in Samaria. That Jesus did not entirely shun Samaria, as that prohibition might appear to intimate, is evident from Luke ix. 52 (comp. xvii. 11), where his disciples bespeak lodgings for him in a Samaritan village, when he has determined to go to Jerusalem; a circumstance which accords with the information of Josephus, that those Galileans who journeyed to the feasts usually went through Samaria. [817] That Jesus was not unfavourable to the Samaritans, nay, that in many respects he acknowledged their superiority to the Jews, is evident from his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 30 ff.); he also bestows a marked notice on the case of a Samaritan, who, among ten cleansed, was the only one that testified his gratitude (Luke xvii. 16); and, if we may venture on such a conclusion from John iv. 25, and subsequent records, [818] the inhabitants of Samaria themselves had some tincture of the messianic idea.

However natural it may appear that Jesus should avail himself of this susceptible side of the Samaritans, by opportunely announcing to them the messianic kingdom; the aspect which the four Evangelists bear to each other on this subject must excite surprise. Matthew has no occasion on which Jesus comes in contact with the Samaritans, or even mentions them, except in the prohibition above quoted; Mark is more neutral than Matthew, and has not even that prohibition; Luke has two instances of contact, one of them unfavourable, the other favourable, together with the parable in which Jesus presents a Samaritan as a model, and his approving notice of the gratitude of one whom he had healed; John, finally, has a narrative in which Jesus appears in a very intimate and highly favourable relation to the Samaritans. Are all these various accounts well founded? If so, how could Jesus at one time prohibit his disciples from including the Samaritans in the messianic plan, and at another time, himself receive them without hesitation? Moreover, if the chronological order of the Evangelists deserve regard, the ministry of Jesus in Samaria must have preceded the prohibition contained in his instructions to his disciples on their first mission. For the scene of that mission being Galilee, and there being no space for its occurrence during the short stay which, according to the fourth Evangelist, Jesus made in that province before the first Passover (ii. 1–13), it must be placed after that Passover; and, as the visit to Samaria was made on his journey, after that visit also. How, then, could Jesus, after having with the most desirable issue, personally taught in Samaria, and presented himself as the Messiah, forbid his disciples to carry thither their messianic tidings? On the other hand, if the scenes narrated by John occurred after the command recorded by Matthew, the disciples, instead of wondering that Jesus talked so earnestly with a woman (John iv. 27), ought rather to have wondered that he held any converse with a Samaritan. [819]

Since then of the two extreme narratives at least, in Matthew and John, neither presupposes the other, we must either doubt the authenticity of the exclusive command of Jesus, or of his connexion with the inhabitants of Samaria.

In this conflict between the gospels, we have again the advantage of appealing to the Book of Acts as an umpire. Before Peter, at the divine instigation, had received the firstfruits of the Gentiles into the Messiah’s kingdom, Philip the deacon, being driven from Jerusalem by the persecution of which Stephen’s death was the commencement, journeyed to the city of Samaria, where he preached Christ, and by miracles of all kinds won the Samaritans to the faith, and to the reception of baptism (Acts viii. 5 ff.). This narrative is a complete contrast to that of the first admission of the Gentiles: while in the one there was need of a vision, and a special intimation from the Spirit, to bring Peter into communication with the heathens; in the other, Philip, without any precedent, unhesitatingly baptizes the Samaritans. And lest it should be said that the deacon was perhaps of a more liberal spirit than the apostle, we have Peter himself coming forthwith to Samaria in company with John,—an incident which forms another point of opposition between the two narratives; for, while the first admission of the Gentiles makes a highly unfavourable impression on the mother church at Jerusalem, the report that Samaria had received the word of God meets with so warm an approval there, that the two most distinguished apostles are commissioned to confirm and consummate the work begun by Philip. The tenor of this proceeding makes it not improbable that there was a precedent for it in the conduct of Jesus, or at least a sanction in his expressions.

The narrative in the fourth Gospel (iv.) would form a perfect precedent in the conduct of Jesus, but we have yet to examine whether it bears the stamp of historical credibility. We do not, with the author of the Probabilia, stumble at the designation of the locality, and the opening of the conversation between Jesus and the woman; [820] but from v. 16 inclusively, there are, as impartial expositors confess, [821] many grave difficulties. The woman had entreated Jesus to give her of the water which was for ever to extinguish thirst, and Jesus immediately says, Go, call thy husband. Why so? It has been said that Jesus, well knowing that the woman had no lawful husband, sought to shame her, and bring her to repentance. [822] Lücke, disapproving the imputation of dissimulation to Jesus, conjectures that, perceiving the woman’s dulness, he hoped by summoning her husband, possibly her superior in intelligence, to create an opportunity for a more beneficial conversation. But if Jesus, as it presently appears, knew that the woman had not at the time any proper husband, he could not in earnest desire her to summon him; and if, as Lücke allows, he had that knowledge in a supernatural manner, it could not be hidden from him, who knew what was in man, that she would be little inclined to comply with his injunction. If, however, he had a prescience that what he required would not be done, the injunction was a feint, and had some latent object. But that this object was the penitence of the woman there is no indication in the text, for the ultimate effect on her is not shame and penitence, but faith in the prophetic insight of Jesus (v. 19). And this was doubtless what Jesus wished, for the narrative proceeds as if he had attained his purpose with the woman, and the issue corresponded to the design. The difficulty here lies, not so much in what Lücke terms dissimulation,—since this comes under the category of blameless temptation (πειράζειν), elsewhere occurring,—as in the violence with which Jesus wrests an opportunity for the display of his prophetic gifts.

By a transition equally abrupt, the woman urges the conversation to a point at which the Messiahship of Jesus may become fully evident. As soon as she has recognised Jesus to be a prophet, she hastens to consult him on the controversy pending between the Jews and Samaritans, as to the place appropriated to the true worship of God (v. 20). That so vivid an interest in this national and religious question is not consistent with the limited mental and circumstantial condition of the woman, the majority of modern commentators virtually confess, by their adoption of the opinion, that her drift in this remark was to turn away the conversation from her own affairs. [823] If then the implied query concerning the place for the true worship of God, had no serious interest for the woman, but was prompted by a false shame calculated to hinder confession and repentance, those expositors should remember what they elsewhere repeat to satiety, [824] that in the Gospel of John the answers of Jesus refer not so much to the ostensible meaning of questions, as to the under current of feeling of which they are the indications. In accordance with this method, Jesus should not have answered the artificial question of the woman as if it had been one of deep seriousness; he ought rather to have evaded it, and recurred to the already detected stain on her conscience, which she was now seeking to hide, in order if possible to bring her to a full conviction and open avowal of her guilt. But the fact is that the object of the Evangelist was to show that Jesus had been recognised, not merely as a prophet, but as the Messiah, and he believed that to turn the conversation to the question of the legitimate place for the worship of God, the solution of which was expected from the Messiah, [825] would best conduce to that end.

Jesus evinces (v. 17) an acquaintance with the past history and present position of the woman. The rationalists have endeavoured to explain this by the supposition, that while Jesus sat at the well, and the woman was advancing from the city, some passer-by hinted to him that he had better not engage in conversation with her, as she was on the watch to obtain a sixth husband. [826] But not to insist on the improbability that a passer-by should hold a colloquy with Jesus on the character of an obscure woman, the friends as well as the enemies of the fourth gospel now agree, that every natural explanation of that knowledge on the part of Jesus, directly counteracts the design of the Evangelist. [827] For, according to him, the disclosure which Jesus makes of his privity to the woman’s intimate concerns, is the immediate cause, not only of her own faith in him, but of that of many inhabitants of the city (v. 39), and he obviously intends to imply that they were not too precipitate in receiving him as a prophet, on that ground alone. Thus in the view of the Evangelist, the knowledge in question was an effluence of the higher nature of Jesus, and modern supranaturalists adhere to this explanation, adducing in its support the power which John attributes to him (ii. 24 f.), of discerning what is in man without the aid of external testimony. [828] But this does not meet the case; for Jesus here not only knows what is in the woman,—her present equivocal state of mind towards him who is not her husband,—he has cognizance also of the extrinsic fact that she has had five husbands, of whom we cannot suppose that each had left a distinct image in her mind traceable by the observation of Jesus. That by means of the penetrative acumen with which he scrutinized the hearts of those with whom he had to do, Jesus should also have a prophetic insight into his own messianic destiny, and the fortunes of his kingdom, may under a certain view of his person appear probable, and in any case must be deemed in the highest degree dignified; but that he should be acquainted, even to the most trivial details, with the adventitious history of obscure individuals, is an idea that degrades him in proportion to the exaltation of his prophetic dignity. Such empirical knowingness (not omniscience) would moreover annihilate the human consciousness which the orthodox view supposes to co-exist in Jesus. [829] But the possession of this knowledge, however it may clash with our conception of dignity and wisdom, closely corresponds to the Jewish notion of a prophet, more especially of the Messiah; in the Old Testament, Daniel recites a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which that monarch himself had forgotten (Dan. ii.); in the Clementine Homilies, the true prophet is ὁ πάντοτε πάντα εἰδώς· τὰ μὲν γεγονότα ὡς ἐγένετο, τὰ δὲ γινόμενα ὡς γίνεται, τὰ δέ ἐσόμενα ὡς ἔσται; [830] and the rabbins number such a knowledge of personal secrets among the signs of the Messiah, and observe that from the want of it, Bar-Cocheba was detected to be a pseudo-Messiah. [831]

Farther on (v. 23) Jesus reveals to the woman what Hase terms the sublimest principle of his religion, namely, that the service of God consists in a life of piety; tells her that all ceremonial worship is about to be abolished; and that he is the personage who will effect this momentous change, that is, the Messiah. We have already shown it to be improbable that Jesus, who did not give his disciples to understand that he was the Messiah until a comparatively late period, should make an early and distinct disclosure on the subject to a Samaritan woman. In what respect was she worthy of a communication more explicit than ever fell to the lot of the disciples? What could induce Jesus to send roaming into the futurity of religious history, the contemplation of a woman, whom he should rather have induced to examine herself, and to ponder on the corruptions of her own heart? Nothing but the wish to elicit from her, at any cost, and without regard to her moral benefit, an acknowledgment, not only of his prophetic gifts, but of his Messiahship; to which end it was necessary to give the conversation the above direction. But so contracted a design can never be imputed to Jesus, who, on other occasions, exemplifies a more suitable mode of dealing with mankind: it is the design of the glorifying legend, or of an idealizing biographer.

Meanwhile, continues the narrative (v. 27), the disciples of Jesus returned from the city with provisions, and marvelled that he talked with a woman, contrary to rabbinical rule. [832] While the woman, excited by the last disclosure of Jesus, hastens homeward to invite her fellow-citizens to come and behold the Messiah-like stranger, the disciples entreat him to partake of the food they have procured; he answers, I have meat to eat that ye know not of (v. 32). They, misunderstanding his words, imagine that some person has supplied him with food in their absence: one of those carnal interpretations of expressions intended spiritually by Jesus, which are of perpetual recurrence in the fourth gospel, and are therefore suspicious. Then follows a discourse on sowing and reaping (v. 35 ff.), which, compared with v. 37, can only mean that what Jesus has sown, the disciples will reap. [833] We admit that this is susceptible of the general interpretation, that the germ of the kingdom of God, which blossomed and bore fruit under the cultivation of the apostles, was first deposited in the world by Jesus: but it cannot be denied that a special application is also intended. Jesus foresees that the woman, who is hastening towards the city, will procure him an opportunity of sowing the seed of the gospel in Samaria, and he promises the disciples that they at a future time shall reap the fruits of his labours. Who is not here reminded of the propagation of Christianity in Samaria by Philip and the apostles, as narrated in the Acts? [834] That, even abstracting all supernaturalism from our idea of the person of Jesus, he might have foreseen this progress of his cause in Samaria from his knowledge of its inhabitants, is not to be denied; but as the above figurative prediction forms part of a whole more than improbable in an historical point of view, it is equally liable to suspicion, especially as it is easy to show how it might originate without any foundation in fact. According to the prevalent tradition of the early church, as recorded in the synoptical gospels, Jesus laboured personally in Galilee, Judea, and Perea only,—not in Samaria, which, however, as we learn from the Acts, embraced the gospel at no remote period from his death. How natural the tendency to perfect the agency of Jesus, by representing him to have sown the heavenly seed in Samaria, thus extending his ministry through all parts of Palestine; to limit the glory of the apostles and other teachers to that of being the mere reapers of the harvest in Samaria; and to put this distinction, on a suitable occasion, into the mouth of Jesus!

The result, then, of our examination of John’s Samaritan narrative is, that we cannot receive it as a real history: and the impression which it leaves as a whole tends to the same conclusion. Since Heracleon and Origen, [835] the more ancient commentators have seldom refrained from giving the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria an allegorical interpretation, on the ground that the entire scene has a legendary and poetic colouring. Jesus is seated at a well,—that idyllic locality with which the old Hebrew legend associates so many critical incidents; at the identical well, moreover, which a tradition, founded on Gen. xxxiii. 19, xlviii. 22; Josh. xxiv. 32, reported to have been given by Jacob to his son Joseph; hence the spot, in addition to its idyllic interest, has the more decided consecration of national and patriarchal recollections, and is all the more worthy of being trodden by the Messiah. At the well Jesus meets with a woman who has come out to draw water, just as, in the Old Testament, the expectant Eliezer encounters Rebekah with her pitcher, and as Jacob meets with Rachel, the destined ancestress of Israel, or Moses with his future wife. Jesus begs of the woman to let him drink; so does Eliezer of Rebekah; after Jesus has made himself known to the woman as the Messiah, she runs back to the city, and fetches her neighbours: so Rebekah, after Eliezer has announced himself as Abraham’s steward, and Rachel, after she has discovered that Jacob is her kinsman, hasten homeward to call their friends to welcome the honoured guest. It is, certainly, not one blameless as those early mothers in Israel, whom Jesus here encounters; for this woman came forth as the representative of an impure people, who had been faithless to their marriage bond with Jehovah, and were then living in the practice of a false worship; while her good-will, her deficient moral strength, and her obtuseness in spiritual things, perfectly typify the actual state of the Samaritans. Thus, the interview of Jesus with the woman of Samaria is only a poetical representation of his ministry among the Samaritans narrated in the sequel; and this is itself a legendary prelude to the propagation of the gospel in Samaria after the death of Jesus.

Renouncing the event in question as unhistorical, we know nothing of any connexion formed by Jesus with the Samaritans, and there remain as indications of his views regarding them, only his favourable notice of an individual from among them (Luke xvii. 16); his unpropitious reception in one of their villages (Luke ix. 53); the prohibition with respect to them, addressed to his disciples (Matt. x. 5); the eulogistic parable (Luke x. 30 ff.); and his valedictory command, that the gospel should be preached in Samaria (Acts i. 8). This express command being subsequent to the resurrection of Jesus, its reality must remain problematical for us until we have examined the evidence for that capital fact; and it is to be questioned whether without it, and notwithstanding the alleged prohibition, the unhesitating conduct of the apostles, Acts viii., can be explained. Are we then to suppose on the part of the apostolic history, a cancelling of hesitations and deliberations that really occurred; or on the part of Matthew, an unwarranted ascription of national bigotry to Jesus; or, finally, on the part of Jesus, a progressive enlargement of view?

V. THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS

§ 70.

CALLING OF THE FIRST COMPANIONS OF JESUS. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FIRST TWO EVANGELISTS AND THE FOURTH.

The first two Evangelists agree in stating that Jesus, when walking by the sea of Galilee, called, first, the two brothers Andrew and Peter, and immediately after, James and John, to forsake their fishing nets, and to follow him (Matt. iv. 18–22; Mark i. 16–20). The fourth Evangelist also narrates (i. 35–51), how the first disciples came to attach themselves to Jesus, and among them we find Peter and Andrew, and, in all probability, John, for it is generally agreed that the nameless companion of Andrew was that ultimately favourite apostle. James is absent from this account, and instead of his vocation, we have that of Philip and Nathanael. But even when the persons are the same, all the particulars of their meeting with Jesus are variously detailed. In the two synoptical gospels, the scene is the coast of the Galilean sea: in the fourth, Andrew, Peter, and their anonymous friend, unite themselves to Jesus in the vicinity of the Jordan; Philip and Nathanael, on the way from thence into Galilee. In the former, again, Jesus in two instances calls a pair of brothers; in the latter, it is first Andrew and his companion, then Peter, and anon Philip and Nathanael, who meet with Jesus. But the most important difference is this: while, in Matthew and Mark, the brethren are called from their fishing immediately by Jesus; in John, nothing more is said of the respective situations of those who were summoned, than that they come, and are found, and Jesus himself calls only Philip; Andrew and his nameless companion being directed to him by the Baptist, Peter brought by Andrew, and Nathanael by Philip.

Thus the two narratives appear to refer to separate events; and if it be asked which of those events was prior to the other, we must reply that John seems to assign the earlier date to his incidents, for he represents them as taking place before the return of Jesus from the scene of his baptism into Galilee; while the synoptists place theirs after that journey, especially if, according to a calculation often adopted, we regard the return into Galilee, which they make so important an epoch, as being that from the first Passover, not from the baptism. It is evident, too, from the intrinsic nature of the occurrences reported by the fourth Evangelist, that they could not have succeeded those in Matthew and Mark. For if, as these writers tells us, Andrew and John had already followed Jesus, they could not again be in the train of the Baptist, as we see them in the fourth gospel, nor would it have been necessary for that teacher to have directed their attention to Jesus; neither if Peter had already been called by Jesus himself to become a fisher of men, was there any need for his brother Andrew to bring him to his already elected master. Nevertheless, expositors with one voice declare that the two narratives are equally adapted to precede, or follow, each other. The fourth gospel, say they, [836] recounts merely the first introduction of these men to Jesus; they did not forthwith become his constant followers, but were first installed by Jesus in their proper discipleship on the occasion which the synoptists have preserved.

Let us test the justness of their view. In the synoptical narrative Jesus says to his future disciples, Come after me, δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου, and the result is that they follow him (ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ). If we understand from this that the disciples thenceforth constantly followed Jesus, how can we give a different interpretation to the similar expression in the fourth gospel, Follow me, ἀκολούθει μοι? It is therefore a laudable consistency in Paulus, to see, in both instances, merely an invitation to a temporary companionship during a walk in the immediate neighbourhood. [837] But this interpretation is incompatible with the synoptical history. How could Peter, at a later period, say so emphatically to Jesus, We have left all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?—how could Jesus promise to him and to every one who had forsaken houses, etc., a hundredfold recompense (Matt. xix. 27 ff.), if this forsaking and following had been so transient and interrupted? From these considerations alone it is probable that the ἀκολούθει μοι in John also denotes the commencement of a permanent connexion; but there are besides the plainest indications that this is the case in the context to the narrative. Precisely as in the synoptical gospels, Jesus appears alone before the scene of the vocation, but after this on every fit occasion the attendance of his disciples is mentioned: so in the fourth gospel, from the time of the occurrence in question, the previously solitary Jesus appears in the company of his disciples (ii. 2, xii. 17, iii. 22, iv. 8, 27, etc.). To say that these disciples, acquired in Peræa, again dispersed themselves after the return of Jesus into Galilee, [838] is to do violence to the gospels out of harmonistic zeal. But even supposing such a dispersion, they could not, in the short time which it is possible to allow for their separation from Jesus, have become so completely strangers to him, that he would have been obliged to re-open an acquaintance with them after the manner narrated by the synoptical writers. Still less probable is it that Jesus, after having distinguished Simon in the most individual manner by the surname Cephas on their first interview, would on a later occasion address to him the summons to be a fisher of men—a destination which was common to all the disciples.

The rationalistic commentators perceive a special advantage in their position of the two narratives. It accounts, say they, for what must otherwise be in the highest degree surprising, namely, that Jesus merely in passing, and at the first glance, should choose four fishermen for his disciples, and that among them he should have alighted on the two most distinguished apostles; that, moreover, these four men, actively employed in their business, should leave it on the instant of their receiving an enigmatical summons from a man with whom they had no intimate acquaintance, and devote themselves to him as his followers. Now on comparing the fourth gospel, we see that Jesus had learned to know these men long before, and that they, too, had had demonstration of his excellence, whence it is easy to understand the felicity of his choice, and their readiness to follow him. But this apparent advantage is the condemning circumstance in the above position: for nothing can more directly counteract the intention of the first two Evangelists, than to suppose a previous acquaintance between Jesus and the brethren whom he summons to follow him. In both Gospels, great stress is laid on the fact that they immediately εὐθέως left their nets, resolved to follow Jesus: the writers must therefore have deemed this something extraordinary, which it certainly was not, if these men had previously been in his train. In relation to Jesus also, the point of the narrative lies in his having, with a prophetic spirit, and at the first glance, selected the right individuals, not needing that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man, according to John ii. 25, and thus presenting one of the characteristics which the Jews expected in their Messiah.

If, then, each of these two diverse narratives professes to describe the first acquaintance of Jesus with his most distinguished disciples, it follows that one only can be correct, while the other is necessarily erroneous. [839] It is our task to inquire which has the more intrinsic proofs of veracity. With respect to the synoptical representation, we share the difficulty which is felt by Paulus, in regarding it as a true account of the first interview between the parties. A penetration into the character of men at the first glance, such as is here supposed to have been evinced by Jesus, transcends all that is naturally possible to the most fortunate and practised knowledge of mankind. The nature of man is only revealed by his words and actions; the gift of discerning it without these means, belongs to the visionary, or to that species of intuition for which the rabbinical designation of this messianic attribute, odorando judicare, [840] is not at all too monstrous. Scarcely less improbable is the unhesitating obedience of the disciples, for Jesus had not yet acquired his Galilean fame; and to account for this promptitude we must suppose that the voice and will of Jesus had a coercive influence over minds, independently of preparation and motives, [841] which would be to complete the incredibility of the narrative by adding a magical trait to the visionary one already exposed.

If these negative arguments are deemed strong enough to annul the pretensions of the narrative to an historical character, the alternative is to assign to it a mythical interpretation, if we can show on positive grounds that it might have been constructed in a traditional manner without historical foundation. As adequate inducements to the formation of such a legend, we may point, not only to the above cited Jewish notion of the Messiah as the searcher of hearts, but to a specific type of this vocation of the apostles, contained in the narrative (1 Kings xix. 19–21) of the mode in which the prophet Elijah summoned Elisha to become his follower. Here Jesus calls the brethren from their nets and their fishing; there the prophet calls his future disciple from the oxen and the plough; in both cases there is a transition from simple physical labour to the highest spiritual office—a contrast which, as is exemplified in the Roman history, tradition is apt either to cherish or to create. Further, the fishermen, at the call of Jesus, forsake their nets and follow him; so Elisha, when Elijah cast his mantle over him, left the oxen, and ran after Elijah. This is one apparent divergency, which is a yet more striking proof of the relation between the two narratives, than is their general similarity. The prophet’s disciple entreated that before he attached himself entirely to Elijah, he might be permitted to take leave of his father and mother; and the prophet does not hesitate to grant him this request, on the understood condition that Elisha should return to him. Similar petitions are offered to Jesus (Luke ix. 59 ff.; Matt. viii. 21 f.) by some whom he had called, or who had volunteered to follow him; but Jesus does not accede to these requests: on the contrary, he enjoins the one who wished previously to bury his father, to enter on his discipleship without delay; and the other, who had begged permission to bid farewell to his friends, he at once dismisses as unfit for the kingdom of God. In strong contrast with the divided spirit manifested by these feeble proselytes, it is said of the apostles, that they, without asking any delay, immediately forsook their occupation, and, in the case of James and John, their father. Could anything betray more clearly than this one feature, that the narrative is an embellished imitation of that in the Old Testament intended to show that Jesus, in his character of Messiah, exacted a more decided adhesion, accompanied with greater sacrifices, than Elijah, in his character of Prophet merely, required or was authorized to require? [842] The historical germ of the narrative may be this: several of the most eminent disciples of Jesus, particularly Peter, dwelling on the shores of the sea of Galilee, had been fishermen, whence Jesus during their subsequent apostolic agency may have sometimes styled them fishers of men. But without doubt, their relation with Jesus was formed gradually, like other human relations, and is only elevated into a marvel through the obliviousness of tradition.

By removing the synoptical narrative we make room for that of John; but whether we are to receive it as historical, can only be decided by an examination of its matter. At the very outset, it excites no favourable prejudice, that John the Baptist is the one who directs the first two disciples to Jesus; for if there be any truth in the representation given in a former chapter of the relation between Jesus and the Baptist, some disciples of the latter might, indeed, of their own accord attach themselves to Jesus, formerly their fellow-disciple, but nothing could be farther from the intention of the Baptist than to resign his own adherents to Jesus. This particular seems indebted for its existence to the apologetic interest of the fourth gospel, which seeks to strengthen the cause of Jesus by the testimony of the Baptist. Further, that Andrew, after one evening’s intercourse with Jesus, should announce him to his brother with the words, We have found the Messiah (i. 42); that Philip too, immediately after his call, should speak of him in a similar manner to Nathanael (v. 46); is an improbability which I know not how to put strongly enough. We gather from the synoptical statement, which we have above decided to be trustworthy, that some time was necessary for the disciples to recognise Jesus as the Messiah, and openly confess their belief through their spokesman Peter, whose tardy discernment Jesus would have been incorrect in panegyrizing as a divine revelation, if it amounted to no more than what was communicated to him by his brother Andrew at the commencement of his discipleship. Equally unnatural is the manner in which Jesus is said to have received Simon. He accosts him with the words, Thou art Simon, the son of Jona,—a mode of salutation which seems, as Bengel has well remarked, [843] to imply that Jesus had a supernatural acquaintance with the name and origin of a man previously unknown to him, analogous to his cognizance of the number of the Samaritan woman’s husbands, and of Nathanael’s presence under the fig-tree. Jesus then proceeds to bestow on Simon the significant surname of Cephas or Peter. If we are not inclined to degrade the speech of Jesus into buffoonery, by referring this appellation to the bodily organization of the disciple, [844] we must suppose that Jesus at the first glance, with the eye of him who knew hearts, penetrated into the inmost nature of Simon, and discovered not only his general fitness for the apostleship, but also the special, individual qualities which rendered him comparable to a rock. According to Matthew, it was not until after long intercourse with Jesus, and after he had given many manifestations of his peculiar character, that this surname was conferred on Simon, accompanied by an explanation of its meaning (xvi. 18): evidently a much more natural account of the matter than that of the fourth Evangelist, who makes Jesus discern at the first glance the future value of Simon to his cause, an odorando judicare which transcends the synoptical representation in the same ratio as the declaration, Thou shalt be called Cephas, presupposes a more intimate knowledge, than the proposal, I will make you fishers of men. Even after a more lengthened conversation with Peter, such as Lücke supposes, [845] Jesus could not pronounce so decidedly on his character, without being a searcher of hearts, or falling under the imputation of forming too precipitate a judgment. It is indeed possible that the Christian legend, attracted by the significance of the name, may have represented Jesus as its author, while, in fact, Simon had borne it from his birth.

The entire narrative concerning Nathanael is a tissue of improbabilities. When Philip speaks to him of a Messiah from Nazareth, he makes the celebrated answer, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth (v. 47)? There is no historical datum for supposing that Nazareth, when Jesus began his ministry, was the object of particular odium or contempt, [846] and there is every probability that the adversaries of Christianity were the first to cast an aspersion on the native city of the Messiah whom they rejected. In the time of Jesus, Nazareth was only depreciated by the Jews, as being a Galilean city—a stigma which it bore in common with many others: but in this sense it could not be despised by Nathanael, for he was himself a Galilean (xxi. 2). The only probable explanation is that a derisive question, which, at the time of the composition of the fourth gospel, the Christians had often to hear from their opponents, was put into the mouth of a cotemporary of Jesus, that by the manner in which he was divested of his doubt, others might be induced to comply with the invitation, to come and see. As Nathanael approaches Jesus, the latter pronounces this judgment on his character, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile (v. 48)! Paulus is of opinion that Jesus might have previously gathered some intimations concerning Nathanael at Cana, where he had just been attending a marriage of some relations. [847] But if Jesus had become acquainted with Nathanael’s character in a natural way, he must, in answer to the question Whence knowest thou me? either have reminded him of the occasion on which they had had an earlier interview, or referred to the favourable report of others. Instead of this he speaks of his knowledge that Nathanael had been tarrying under a fig-tree: a knowledge which from its result is evidently intended to appear supernatural. Now to use information, obtained by ordinary means, so as to induce a belief that it has been communicated supernaturally, is charlatanism, if anything deserve the name. As, however, the narrator certainly did not mean to impute such artifice to Jesus, it is undeniably his intention to ascribe to him a supernatural knowledge of Nathanael’s character. As little are the words, When thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee, explained by the exclamation of Paulus, “How often one sees and observes a man who is unconscious of one’s gaze!” Lücke and Tholuck are also of opinion, that Jesus observed Nathanael under the fig-tree in a natural manner; they add, however, the conjecture, that the latter was engaged in some occupation, such as prayer or the study of the law, which afforded Jesus a key to his character. But if Jesus meant to imply, “How can I fail to be convinced of thy virtue, having watched thee during thy earnest study of the law, and thy fervent prayer under the fig-tree?” he would not have omitted the word προσευχόμενον (praying), or ἀναγινώσκοντα (reading), for want of which we can extract no other sense from his declaration than this: “Thou mayest be assured of my power to penetrate into thy inmost soul, from the fact that I beheld thee when thou wast in a situation from which all merely human observers were excluded.” Here the whole stress is thrown not on any peculiarity in the situation of the person seen, but on the fact that Jesus saw him, whence it is necessarily inferred that he did so by no ordinary, natural means. To imagine that Jesus possessed such a second sight, is, we grant, not a little extravagant; but for that very reason, it is the more accordant with the then existing notions of a prophet, and of the Messiah. A like power of seeing and hearing beyond the limits assigned to human organs, is attributed to Elisha in the Old Testament. When (2 Kings vi. 8, ff.) the king of Syria makes war against Israel, Elisha indicates to the king of Israel every position of the enemy’s camp; and when the king of Syria expresses his suspicion that he is betrayed by deserters, he is told that the Israelitish prophet knows all the words that he, the king of Syria, speaks in his private chamber. Thus also (xxi. 32), Elisha knows that Joram has sent out messengers to murder him. How could it be endured that the Messiah should fall short of the prophet in his powers of vision? This particular, too, enables our Evangelist to form a climax, in which Jesus ascends from the penetration of one immediately present (v. 42), to that of one approaching for the first time (v. 48), and finally, to the perception of one out of the reach of human eyesight. That Jesus goes a step farther in the climax, and says, that this proof of his messianic second sight is a trifle compared with what Nathanael has yet to see,—that on him, the Son of man, the angels of God shall descend from the opened heavens (v. 51),—in nowise shows, as Paulus thinks, that there was nothing miraculous in that first proof, for there is a gradation even in miracles.

Thus in the narrative of John we stumble at every step on difficulties, in some instances greater than those with which the synoptical accounts are encumbered: hence we learn as little from the one as the other, concerning the manner in which the first disciples attached themselves to Jesus. I cannot agree with the author of the Probabilia, [848] in deriving the divergency of the fourth Evangelist from his predecessors, from the wish to avoid mentioning the derided fishing trade of the most distinguished apostles; since in chap. xxi., which Bretschneider allows to be by the same hand as the rest of the gospel, he unhesitatingly introduces the obnoxious employment. I rather surmise that the idea of their having received their decisive apostolic call while actually engaged with their fishing-nets, was not afloat in the tradition from which the fourth Evangelist drew; and that this writer formed his scenes, partly on the probably historical report that some disciples of Jesus had belonged to the school of the Baptist, and partly from the wish to represent in the most favourable light the relation between Jesus and the Baptist, and the supernatural gifts of the former.

§ 71.

PETER’S DRAUGHT OF FISHES.

We have hitherto examined only two accounts of the vocation of Peter and his companions; there is a third given by Luke (v. 1–11). I shall not dilate on the minor points of difference [849] between his narrative and that of the first two Evangelists; the essential distinction is, that in Luke the disciples do not, as in Matthew and Mark, unite themselves to Jesus on a simple invitation, but in consequence of a plentiful draught of fishes, to which Jesus has assisted Simon. If this feature be allowed to constitute Luke’s narrative a separate one from that of his predecessors, we have next to inquire into its intrinsic credibility, and then to ascertain its relation to that of Matthew and Mark.

Jesus, oppressed by the throng of people on the shore of the Galilean sea, enters into a ship, that he may address them with more ease at a little distance from land. Having brought his discourse to a close, he desires Simon, the owner of the boat, to launch out into the deep, and let down his nets for a draught. Simon, although little encouraged by the poor result of the last night’s fishing, declares himself willing, and is rewarded by so extraordinary a draught, that Peter and his partners, James and John (Andrew is not here mentioned), are struck with astonishment, the former even with awe, before Jesus, as a superior being. Jesus then says to Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men, and the issue is that the three fishermen forsake all, and follow him.

The rationalistic commentators take pains to show that what is above narrated might occur in a natural way. According to them, the astonishing consequence of letting down the net was the result of an accurate observation on the part of Jesus, assisted by a happy fortuity. Paulus [850] supposes that Jesus at first wished to launch out farther into the deep merely to escape from the crowd, and that it was not until after sailing to some distance, that, descrying a place where the fish were abundant, he desired Peter to let down the net. But he has fallen into a twofold contradiction of the evangelical narrative. In close connexion with the command to launch out into the deep, Jesus adds, Let down your nets for a draught (ἐπανάγαγε εἰς τὸ βάθος, καὶ χαλάσατε τὰ δίκτυα, κ.τ.λ.), as if this were one of his objects in changing the locality; and if he spoke thus when at a little distance only from the shore, his hope of a successful draught could not be the effect of his having observed a place abundant in fish on the main sea, which the vessel had not yet reached. Our rationalists must therefore take refuge in the opinion of the author of the Natural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth, who says, Jesus conjectured on general grounds, that under existing circumstances (indicative probably of an approaching storm), fishing in the middle of the sea would succeed better than it had done in the night. But, proceeding from the natural point of view, how could Jesus be a better judge in this matter than the men who had spent half their life on the sea in the employment of fishing? Certainly if the fishermen observed nothing which could give them hope of a plentiful draught, neither in a natural manner could Jesus; and the agreement between his words and the result, must, adhering to the natural point of view, be put down wholly to the account of chance. But what senseless audacity, to promise at random a success, which, judging from the occurrences of the past night, was little likely to follow! It is said, however, that Jesus only desires Peter to make another attempt, without giving any definite promise. But, we must rejoin, in the emphatic injunction, which Peter’s remark on the inauspicious aspect of circumstances for fishing does not induce him to revoke, there is a latent promise, and the words, Let down your nets, etc., in the present passage, can hardly have any other meaning than that plainly expressed in the similar scene, John xxi. 6, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. When, moreover, Peter retracts his objection in the words, Nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net, ἐπὶ δὲ τῷ ῥήματί σου χαλάσω τὸ δίκτυον, though ῥῆμα may be translated by command rather than by promise, in either case he implies a hope that what Jesus enjoins will not be without result. If Jesus had not intended to excite this hope, he must immediately have put an end to it, if he would not expose himself to disgrace in the event of failure; and on no account ought he to have accepted the attitude and expressions of Peter as his due, if he had only merited them by a piece of lucky advice given at a venture.

The drift of the narrative, then, obliges us to admit that the writer intended to signalize a miracle. This miracle may be viewed either as one of power, or of knowledge. If the former, we are to conceive that Jesus by his supernatural power, caused the fish to congregate in that part of the sea where he commanded Peter to cast in his net. Now that Jesus should be able, by the immediate action of his will, to influence men, in the nature of whose minds his spiritual energy might find a fulcrum, may to a certain extent be conceived, without any wide deviation from psychological laws; but that he could thus influence irrational beings, and those not isolated animals immediately present to him, but shoals of fish in the depths of the sea, it is impossible to imagine out of the domain of magic. Olshausen compares this operation of Jesus to that of the divine omnipotence in the annual migrations of fish and birds; [851] but the comparison is worse than lame,—it lacks all parallelism; for the latter is an effect of the divine agency, linked in the closest manner with all the other operations of God in external nature, with the change of seasons, etc.; while the former, even presupposing Jesus to be actually God, would be an isolated act, interrupting the chain of natural phenomena; a distinction that removes any semblance of parallelism between the two cases. Allowing the possibility of such a miracle (and from the supranaturalistic point of view, nothing is in itself impossible), did it subserve any apparent object, adequate to determine Jesus to so extravagant a use of his miraculous powers? Was it so important that Peter should be inspired by this incident with a superstitious fear, not accordant with the spirit of the New Testament? Was this the only preparation for engrafting the true faith? or did Jesus believe that it was only by such signs that he could win disciples? How little faith must he then have had in the force of mind and of truth! how much too meanly must he have estimated Peter, who, at a later period at least (John vi. 68), clung to his society, not on account of the miracles which he beheld Jesus perform, but for the sake of the words of eternal life which came from his lips!

Under the pressure of these difficulties, refuge may be sought in the other supposition as the more facile one; namely, that Jesus, by means of his superhuman knowledge, was merely aware that in a certain place there was then to be found a multitude of fishes, and that he communicated this information to Peter. If by this it be meant that Jesus, through the possession of an omniscience such as is commonly attributed to God, knew at all times, all the fish, in all seas, rivers and lakes; there is an end to his human consciousness. If, however, it be merely meant that when he crossed any water he became cognizant of its various tribes of fish, with their relative position; even this would be quite enough to encumber the space in his mind that was due to more weighty thoughts. Lastly, if it be meant that he knew this, not constantly and necessarily, but as often as he wished; it is impossible to understand how, in a mind like that of Jesus, a desire for such knowledge should arise,—how he, whose vocation had reference to the depths of the human heart, should be tempted to occupy himself with the fish-frequented depths of the waters.

But before we pronounce on this narrative of Luke, we must consider it in relation to the cognate histories in the first two synoptical gospels. The chronological relation of the respective events is the first point. The supposition that the miraculous draught of fishes in Luke was prior to the vocation narrated by the two other Evangelists, is excluded by the consideration, that the firm attachment which that miracle awakened in the disciples, would render a new call superfluous; or by the still stronger objection, that if an invitation, accompanied by a miracle, had not sufficed to ally the men to Jesus, he could hardly flatter himself that a subsequent bare summons, unsupported by any miracle, would have a better issue. The contrary chronological position presents a better climax; but why a second invitation, if the first had succeeded? For to suppose that the brethren who followed him on the first summons, again left him until the second, is to cut the knot, instead of untying it. Still more complicated is the difficulty, when we take in addition the narrative of the fourth Evangelist: for what shall we think of the connexion between Jesus and his disciples, if it began in the manner described by John; if, after this, the disciples having from some unknown cause separated from their master, he again called them, as if nothing of the kind had before occurred, on the shore of the Galilean sea; and if, this invitation also producing no permanent adherence, he for the third time summoned them to follow him, fortifying this final experiment by a miracle? The entire drift of Luke’s narrative is such as to exclude, rather than to imply, any earlier and more intimate relation between Jesus and his ultimate disciples. For the indifferent mention of two ships on the shore, whose owners were gone out of them to wash their nets, Simon being unnamed until Jesus chooses to avail himself of his boat, seems, as Schleiermacher has convincingly shown, [852] to convey the idea that the two parties were entire strangers to each other, and that these incidents were preparatory to a relation yet to be formed, not indicative of one already existing: so that the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, previously recounted by Luke, either occurred, like many other cures of Jesus, without producing any intimate connexion, or has too early a date assigned to it by that Evangelist. The latter conjecture is supported by the fact that Matthew places the miracle later.

Thus, it fares with the narrative of Luke, when viewed in relation to that of Matthew and Mark, as it did with that of John, when placed in the same light; neither will bear the other to precede, or to follow it,—in short, they exclude each other. [853] Which then is the correct narrative? Schleiermacher prefers that of the Evangelist on whom he has commented, because it is more particular [854]; and Sieffert [855] has recently asserted with great emphasis, that no one has ever yet doubted the superiority of Luke’s narrative, as a faithful picture of the entire occurrence, the number of its special, dramatic, and intrinsically authenticated details, advantageously distinguishing it from the account in the first (and second) gospel, which by its omission of the critical incident, the turning point in the narrative (the draught of fishes), is characterized as the recital of one who was not an eye-witness. I have already presented myself elsewhere [856] to this critic, as one hardy enough to express the doubt of which he denies the existence, and I here repeat the question: supposing one only of the two narratives to have been modified by oral tradition, which alternative is more in accordance with the nature of that means of transmission,—that the tangible fact of a draught of fishes should evaporate into a mere saying respecting fishers of men, or that this figurative expression should be condensed into a literal history? The answer to this question cannot be dubious; for when was it in the nature of the legend to spiritualize? to change the real, such as the story of a miracle, into the ideal, such as a mere verbal image? The stage of human culture to which the legend belongs, and the mental faculty in which it originates, demand that it should give a stable body to fleeting thought, that it should counteract the ambiguity and changeableness of words, by affixing them to the permanent and universally understood symbol of action.

It is easy to show how, out of the expression preserved by the first Evangelist, the miraculous story of the third might be formed. If Jesus, in allusion to the former occupation of some of his apostles, had called them fishers of men; if he had compared the kingdom of heaven to a net cast into the sea, in which all kinds of fish were taken (Matt. xiii. 47); it was but a following out of these ideas to represent the apostles as those who, at the word of Jesus, cast out the net, and gathered in the miraculous multitude of fishes. [857] If we add to this, that the ancient legend was fond of occupying its wonder-workers with affairs of fishing, as we see in the story related of Pythagoras by Jamblichus and Porphyry; [858] it will no longer appear improbable, that Peter’s miraculous draught of fishes is but the expression about the fishers of men, transmuted into the history of a miracle, and this view will at once set us free from all the difficulties that attend the natural, as well as the supranatural interpretation of the narrative.

A similar miraculous draught of fishes is recorded in the appendix to the fourth gospel, as having occurred after the resurrection (ch. xxi.). Here again Peter is fishing on the Galilean sea, in company with the sons of Zebedee and some other disciples, and again he has been toiling all night, and has taken nothing. [859] Early in the morning, Jesus comes to the shore, and asks, without their recognising him, if they have any meat? On their answering in the negative, he directs them to cast the net on the right side of the ship, whereupon they have an extremely rich draught, and are led by this sign to recognise Jesus. That this history is distinct from the one given by Luke, is, from its great similarity, scarcely conceivable; the same narrative has doubtless been placed by tradition in different periods of the life of Jesus. [860]

Let us now compare these three fishing histories,—the two narrated of Jesus, and that narrated of Pythagoras,—and their mythical character will be obvious. That which, in Luke, is indubitably intended as a miracle of power, is, in the history of Jamblichus, a miracle of knowledge; for Pythagoras merely tells in a supernatural manner the number of fish already caught by natural means. The narrative of John holds a middle place, for in it also the number of the fish (153) plays a part; but instead of being predetermined by the worker of the miracle, it is simply stated by the narrator. One legendary feature common to all the three narratives, is the manner in which the multitude and weight of the fishes are described; especially as this sameness of manner accompanies a diversity in particulars. According to Luke, the multitude is so great that the net is broken, one ship will not hold them, and after they have been divided between the two vessels, both threaten to sink. In the view of the tradition given in the fourth gospel, it was not calculated to magnify the power of the miraculous agent, that the net which he had so marvellously filled should break; but as here also the aim is to exalt the miracle by celebrating the number and weight of the fishes, they are said to be μεγάλοι (great), and it is added that the men were not able to draw the net for the multitude of fishes: instead, however, of lapsing out of the miraculous into the common by the breaking of the net, a second miracle is ingeniously made,—that for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jamblichus presents a further wonder (the only one he has, besides the knowledge of Pythagoras as to the number of the fish): namely, that while the fish were being counted, a process that must have required a considerable time, not one of them died. If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the finger-marks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural.

§ 72.

CALLING OF MATTHEW. CONNEXION OF JESUS WITH THE PUBLICANS.

The first gospel (ix. 9 ff.) tells of a man named Matthew, to whom, when sitting at the receipt of custom, Jesus said, Follow me. Instead of Matthew, the second and third gospels have Levi, and Mark adds he that was the son of Alphæus (Mark ii. 14 ff.; Luke v. 27 ff.). At the call of Jesus, Luke says that he left all; Matthew merely states, that he followed Jesus and prepared a meal, of which many publicans and sinners partook, to the great scandal of the Pharisees.

From the difference of the names it has been conjectured that the Evangelists refer to two different events; [861] but this difference of the name is more than counterbalanced by the similarity of the circumstances. In all the three cases the call of the publican is preceded and followed by the same occurrences; the subject of the narrative is in the same situation; Jesus addresses him in the same words; and the issue is the same. [862] Hence the opinion is pretty general, that the three synoptists have in this instance detailed only one event. But did they also understand only one person under different names, and was that person the Apostle Matthew?

This is commonly represented as conceivable on the supposition that Levi was the proper name of the individual, and Matthew merely a surname; [863] or that after he had attached himself to Jesus, he exchanged the former for the latter. [864] To substantiate such an opinion, there should be some indication that the Evangelists who name the chosen publican Levi, intend under that designation no other than the Matthew mentioned in their catalogues of the apostles (Mark iii. 18; Luke vi. 15; Acts i. 13). On the contrary, in these catalogues, where many surnames and double names occur, not only do they omit the name of Levi as the earlier or more proper appellation of Matthew, but they leave him undistinguished by the epithet, ὁ τελώνης (the publican), added by the first Evangelist in his catalogue (x. 3); thus proving that they do not consider the Apostle Matthew to be identical with the Levi summoned from the receipt of custom. [865]

If then the Evangelists describe the vocation of two different men in a precisely similar way, it is improbable that there is accuracy on both sides, since an event could hardly be repeated in its minute particulars. One of the narratives, therefore, is in error; and the burthen has been thrown on the first Evangelist, because he places the calling of Matthew considerably after the Sermon on the Mount; while according to Luke (vi. 13 ff.), all the twelve had been chosen before that discourse was delivered. [866] But this would only prove, at the most, that the first gospel gives a wrong position to the history; not that it narrates that history incorrectly. It is therefore unjust to impute special difficulties to the narrative of the first Evangelist: neither are such to be found in that of Mark and Luke, unless it be thought an inconsistency in the latter to attribute a forsaking of all, καταλιπὼν ἅπαντα, to one whom he does not include among the constant followers of Jesus. [867] The only question is, do they not labour under a common difficulty, sufficient to stamp both accounts as unhistorical?

The close analogy between this call and that of the two pairs of brethren, must excite attention. They were summoned from their nets; he from the custom-house; as in their case, so here, nothing further is needed than a simple Follow me; and this call of the Messiah has so irresistible a power over the mind of the called, that the publican, like the fishermen, leaves all, and follows him. It is not to be denied, that as Jesus had been for a considerable time exercising his ministry in that country, Matthew must have long known him; and this is the argument with which Fritzsche repels the accusation of Julian and Porphyry, who maintain that Matthew here shows himself rash and inconsiderate. But the longer Jesus had observed him, the more easily might he have found opportunity for drawing him gradually and quietly into his train, instead of hurrying him in so tumultuary a manner from the midst of his business. Paulus indeed thinks that no call to discipleship, no sudden forsaking of a previous occupation, is here intended, but that Jesus having brought his teaching to a close, merely signified to the friend who had given him an invitation to dinner, that he was now ready to go home with him, and sit down to table. [868] But the meal appears, especially in Luke, to be the consequence, and not the cause, of the summons; moreover, a modest guest would say to the host who had invited him, I will follow thee, ἀκολουθήσω σοι, not Follow me, ἀκολούθηι μοι; and in fine, this interpretation renders the whole anecdote so trivial, that it would have been better omitted. [869] Hence the abruptness and impetuosity of the scene return upon us, and we are compelled to pronounce that such is not the course of real life, nor the procedure of a man who, like Jesus, respects the laws and formalities of human society; it is the procedure of legend and poetry, which love contrasts, and effective scenes, which aim to give a graphic conception of a man’s exit from an old sphere of life, and his entrance into a new one, by representing him as at once discarding the implements of his former trade, leaving the scene of his daily business, and straightway commencing a new life. The historical germ of the story may be, that Jesus actually had publicans among his disciples, and possibly that Matthew was one. These men had truly left the custom-house to follow Jesus; but only in the figurative sense of this concise expression, not in the literal one depicted by the legend.

It is not less astonishing that the publican should have a great feast in readiness for Jesus immediately after his call. For that this feast was not prepared until the following day, [870] is directly opposed to the narratives, the two first especially. But it is entirely in the tone of the legend to demonstrate the joy of the publican, and the condescension of Jesus, and to create an occasion for the reproaches cast on the latter on account of his intimacy with sinners, by inventing a great feast, given to the publicans at the house of their late associate immediately after his call.

Another circumstance connected with this narrative merits particular attention. According to the common opinion concerning the author of the first gospel, Matthew therein narrates his own call. We may consider it granted that there are no positive indications of this in the narrative; but it is not so clear that there are no negative indications which render it impossible or improbable. That the Evangelist does not here speak in the first person, nor when describing events in which he had a share in the first person plural, like the author of the Acts of the Apostles, proves nothing; for Josephus and other historians not less classical, write of themselves in the third person, and the we of the pseudo-Matthew in the Ebionite gospel has a very suspicious sound. The use of the expression, ἄνθρωπον, Ματθαῖον λεγόμενον, which the Manicheans made an objection, [871] as they did the above-mentioned circumstance, is not without a precedent in the writings of Xenophon, who in his Anabasis introduces himself as Xenophon, a certain Athenian, Ξενοφῶν τις Ἀθηναῖος. [872] The Greek, however, did not fall into this style from absorption in his subject, nor from unaffected freedom from egotism,—causes which Olshausen supposes in the Evangelist; but either from a wish not to pass for the author, as an old tradition states, [873] or from considerations of taste, neither of which motives will be attributed to Matthew. Whether we are therefore to consider that expression as a sign that the author of the first gospel was not Matthew, may be difficult to decide: [874] but it is certain that this history of the publican’s call is throughout less clearly narrated in that gospel than in the third. In the former, we are at a loss to understand why it is abruptly said that Jesus sat at meat in the house, if the Evangelist were himself the hospitable publican, since it would then seem most natural for him to let his joy on account of his call appear in the narrative, by telling, as Luke does, that he immediately made a great feast in his house. To say that he withheld this from modesty, is to invest a rude Galilean of that age with the affectation belonging to the most refined self-consciousness of modern days.

To this feast at the publican’s, of which many of the same obnoxious class partook, the Evangelists annex the reproaches cast at the disciples by the Pharisees and Scribes, because their master ate with publicans and sinners. Jesus, being within hearing of the censure, repelled it by the well-known text on the destination of the physician for the sick, and the Son of Man for sinners (Matt. ix. 11 ff. parall.). That Jesus should be frequently taunted by his pharisaical enemies with his too great predilection for the despised class of publicans (comp. Matt. xi. 19), accords fully with the nature of his position, and is therefore historical, if anything be so: the answer, too, which is here put into the mouth of Jesus, is from its pithy and concise character well adapted for literal transmission. Further, it is not improbable that the reproach in question may have been especially called forth, by the circumstance that Jesus ate with publicans and sinners, and went under their roofs. But that the cavils of his opponents should have been accompaniments of the publican’s dinner, as the evangelical account leads us to infer, especially that of Mark (v. 16), is not so easily conceivable. [875] For as the feast was in the house (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ), and as the disciples also partook of it, how could the Pharisees utter their reproaches to them, while the meal was going forward, without defiling themselves by becoming the guests of a man that was a sinner,—the very act which they reprehended in Jesus? (Luke xix. 7). It will hardly be supposed that they waited outside until the feast was ended. It is difficult for Schleiermacher to maintain, even on the representation of Luke taken singly, that the evangelical narrative only implies, that the publican’s feast was the cause of the Pharisees’ censure, and not that they were contemporary. [876] Their immediate connexion might easily originate in a legendary manner; in fact, one scarcely knows how tradition, in its process of transmuting the abstract into the concrete, could represent the general idea that the Pharisees had taken offence at the friendly intercourse of Jesus with the publicans, otherwise than thus: Jesus once feasted in a publican’s house, in company with many publicans; the Pharisees saw this, went to the disciples and expressed their censure, which Jesus also heard, and parried by a laconic answer.

After the Pharisees, Matthew makes the disciples of John approach Jesus with the question, why his disciples did not fast, as they did (v. 14 f.); in Luke (v. 33 ff.) it is still the Pharisees who vaunt their own fasts and those of John’s disciples, as contrasted with the eating and drinking of the disciples of Jesus; Mark’s account is not clear (v. 18). According to Schleiermacher, every unprejudiced person must perceive in the statement of Matthew compared with that of Luke, the confusing emendations of a second editor, who could not explain to himself how the Pharisees came to appeal to the disciples of John; whereas, thinks Schleiermacher, the question would have been puerile in the mouth of the latter; but it is easy to imagine that the Pharisees might avail themselves of an external resemblance to the disciples of John when opposing Jesus, who had himself received baptism of that teacher. It is certainly surprising that after the Pharisees, who were offended because Jesus ate with publicans, some disciples of John should step forth as if they had been cited for the purpose, to censure generally the unrestricted eating and drinking of Jesus and his disciples. The probable explanation is, that evangelical tradition associated the two circumstances from their intrinsic similarity, and that the first Evangelist erroneously gave them the additional connexion of time and place. But the manner in which the third Evangelist fuses the two particulars, appears a yet more artificial combination, and is certainly not historical, because the reply of Jesus could only be directed to John’s disciples, or to friendly inquirers: to Pharisees, he would have given another and a more severe answer. [877]

Another narrative, which is peculiar to Luke (xix. 1–10), treats of the same relation as that concerning Matthew or Levi. When Jesus, on his last journey to the feast, passes through Jericho, a chief among the publicans, ἀρχιτελώνης named Zacchæus, that he might, notwithstanding his short stature, get a sight of Jesus among the crowd, climbed a tree, where Jesus observed him, and immediately held him worthy to entertain the Messiah for the night. Here, again, the favour shown to a publican excites the discontent of the more rigid spectators; and when Zacchæus has made vows of atonement and beneficence, Jesus again justifies himself, on the ground that his office had reference to sinners. The whole scene is very dramatic, and this might be deemed by some an argument for its historical character; but there are certain internal obstacles to its reception. We are not led to infer that Jesus previously knew Zacchæus, or that some one pointed him out to Jesus by name; [878] but, as Olshausen truly says, the knowledge of Zacchæus that Jesus here suddenly evinced, is to be referred to his power of discerning what was in men without the aid of testimony. We have before decided that this power is a legendary attribute; hence the above particular, at least, cannot be historical, and the narrative is possibly a variation on the same theme as that treated of in connexion with the account of Matthew’s call, namely, the friendly relation of Jesus to the publicans.

§ 73.

THE TWELVE APOSTLES.

The men whose vocation we have been considering, namely, the sons of Jonas and Zebedee, with Philip and Matthew (Nathanael alone being excepted) form the half of that narrow circle of disciples which appears throughout the New Testament under the name of the twelve, οἱ δώδεκα, the twelve disciples or apostles, οἱ δώδεκα μαθήται or ἀπόστολοι. The fundamental idea of the New Testament writers concerning the twelve, is that Jesus himself chose them (Mark iii. 13 f.; Luke vi. 13; John vi. 70, xv. 16). Matthew does not give us the history of the choice of all the twelve, but he tacitly presupposes it by introducing them as a college already instituted (x. 1). Luke, on the contrary, narrates how, after a night spent on the mountain in vigils and prayer, Jesus selected twelve from the more extensive circle of his adherents, and then descended with them to the plain, to deliver what is called the Sermon on the Mount (vi. 12). Mark also tells us in the same connexion, that Jesus when on a mountain made a voluntary choice of twelve from the mass of his disciples (iii. 13). According to Luke, Jesus chose the twelve immediately before he delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and apparently with reference to it; but there is no discoverable motive which can explain this mode of associating the two events, for the discourse was not specially addressed to the apostles, [879] neither had they any office to execute during its delivery. Mark’s representation, with the exception of the vague tradition from which he sets out, that Jesus chose the twelve, seems to have been wrought out of his own imagination, and furnishes no distinct notion of the occasion and manner of the choice. [880] Matthew has adopted the best method in merely presupposing, without describing, the particular vocation of the apostles; and John pursues the same plan, beginning (vi. 67) to speak of the twelve, without any previous notice of their appointment.

Strictly speaking, therefore, it is merely presupposed in the gospels, that Jesus himself fixed the number of the apostles. Is this presupposition correct? There certainly is little doubt that this number was fixed during the lifetime of Jesus; for not only does the author of the Acts represent the twelve as so compact a body immediately after the ascension of their master, that they think it incumbent on them to fill up the breach made by the apostasy of Judas by the election of a new member (i. 15 ff.); but the Apostle Paul also notices an appearance of the risen Jesus, specially to the twelve (1 Cor. xv. 5). Schleiermacher, however, doubts whether Jesus himself chose the twelve, and he thinks it more probable that the peculiar relation ultimately borne to him by twelve from amongst his disciples, gradually and spontaneously formed itself. [881] We have, indeed, no warrant for supposing that the appointment of the twelve was a single solemn act; on the contrary, the gospels explicitly narrate, that six of them were called singly, or by pairs, and on separate occasions; but it is still a question whether the number twelve was not determined by Jesus, and whether he did not willingly abide by it as an expedient for checking the multiplication of his familiar companions. The number is the less likely to have been fortuitous, the more significant it is, and the more evident the inducements to its choice by Jesus. He himself, in promising the disciples (Matt. xix. 28) that they shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, gives their number a relation to that of the tribes of his people; and it was the opinion of the highest Christian antiquity that this relation determined his choice. [882] If he and his disciples were primarily sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. x. 6, xv. 24), it might seem appropriate that the number of the shepherds should correspond to that of the shepherdless tribes (Matt. ix. 36).

The destination of the twelve is only generally intimated in John (xv. 16); in Mark, on the contrary, it is particularly, and without doubt accurately, stated. He ordained twelve, it is here said, that they should be with him, that is, that he might not be without companionship, aid, and attendance on his journeys; and accordingly we find them helpful to him in procuring lodgings (Luke ix. 32; Matt. xxvi. 17 f.), food (John iv. 8), and other travelling requisites (Matt. xxi. 1 ff.); but above all they were in his society to become scribes well instructed unto the kingdom of heaven (Matt. xiii. 52). To this end they had the opportunity of being present at most of the discourses of Jesus, and even of obtaining private elucidations of their meaning (Matt. xiii. 10 ff., 36 ff.); of purifying their minds by his severe but friendly discipline (Matt. viii. 26, xvi. 23, xviii. 1 ff. 21 ff.; Luke ix. 50, 55 f.; John xiii. 12 ff. etc.), and of elevating their souls by the contemplation of his example (John xiv. 19). Another motive of Jesus in choosing the twelve, was, according to Mark, that he might send them forth to preach, that is, to preach the kingdom of heaven during his life, according to the immediate meaning of Mark; but the promulgation of his cause after his death, must be supposed as an additional object on the part of Jesus. (Mark proceeds to enumerate the powers of healing and of casting out devils; but on these points we cannot dilate until we reach a future stage of our inquiry.)

It was this latter destination that won for them the distinguished name of apostles, ἀπόστολοι (Matt. x. 2; Mark vi. 30; Luke vii. 13, etc.). It has been doubted whether Jesus himself conferred this name on the twelve, according to Luke vi. 13, and it has been suggested that it was not given them until later, ex eventu. [883] But that Jesus should have called them his envoys cannot be improbable, if he really sent them on a journey to announce the approaching kingdom of the Messiah. We grant that it is possible to regard this journey as an event transposed from the period after the death of Jesus to his lifetime, in order that a sort of rehearsal of the subsequent mission of the apostles might pass under the eye of Jesus; but as it is not improbable that Jesus, perhaps even before he had a full conviction of his own Messiahship, sent out messengers to announce the Messiah’s kingdom, we are not warranted to urge such a doubt.

John knows nothing of this mission, recorded by the synoptists. On the other hand, they are ignorant of a circumstance alleged by John, namely, that the disciples baptized during the life of Jesus (iv. 2). According to the synoptical Evangelists, it was not until after the resurrection, that Jesus gave his disciples authority to baptize (Matt. xxviii. 19, parall.). As, however, the rite of baptism was introduced by John, and we have reason to believe that Jesus, for a time, made that teacher his model, it is highly probable that he and his disciples also practised baptism, and hence that the positive statement of the fourth gospel is correct. But the negative statement that Jesus himself baptised not (iv. 2), has the appearance of an after-thought, intended to correct the import of the previous passages (iii. 22, iv. 1), and is most probably to be accounted for by the tendency of the fourth gospel to exalt Jesus above the Baptist, and by a corresponding dread of making Jesus exercise the function of the mere forerunner. The question whether Jesus did not baptize at least the apostles, afterwards occasioned much demur in the church.

With the exception of the mission mentioned above, the gospels speak of no important separation between Jesus and his twelve disciples, for there is nothing certain to be gathered from the resumption of their business after his death (John xxi. 2 ff.). No one could detect in our gospels any indications of a repeated interruption to the intercourse of Jesus with his disciples, but theologians, whose harmonistic zeal wished to find room for a second and third vocation; or expositors, who, in their unwearied application to details, cast about for a means of subsistence for so many indigent men, and thought it necessary to suppose that they were occasionally provided for by a return to their secular labours. As to the subsistence of Jesus and his disciples, we have sufficient sources for it in the hospitality of the East, which, among the Jews, was especially available to the rabbins; in the companionship of rich women who ministered unto him of their substance (Luke viii. 2 f.); and finally in the γλωσσόκομον, mentioned, it is true, only by the fourth Evangelist (xii. 6, xiii. 29), which was ample enough to furnish assistance to the poor, as well as to supply the wants of the society, and in which, it is probable, presents from wealthy friends of Jesus were deposited. They who do not hold these means adequate without the labour of the disciples, or who think, on more general grounds, that the total renunciation of their secular employment on the part of the twelve, is improbable, must not try to force their opinion on the Evangelists, who by the stress which they lay on the expression of the apostles, we have left all (Matt. xix. 27 ff.), plainly intimate the opposite view.

We gather, as to the rank of the twelve disciples of Jesus, that they all belonged to the lower class: four, or perhaps more (John xxi. 2), were fishermen, one a publican, and for the others, it is probable from the degree of cultivation they evince, and the preference always expressed by Jesus for the poor πτωχοὺς, and the little ones, νηπίους (Matt. v. 3, xi. 5, 25), that they were of a similar grade.

§ 74.

THE TWELVE CONSIDERED INDIVIDUALLY. THE THREE OR FOUR MOST CONFIDENTIAL DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

We have in the New Testament four catalogues of the apostles; one in each of the synoptical gospels, and one in the Acts (Matt. x. 2–4; Mark iii. 6–10; Luke vi. 14–16; Acts i. 13). Each of these four lists may be divided into three quaternions; in each corresponding quaternion the first member is the same; and in the last, the concluding member also, if we except Acts i. 13, where he is absent: but the intermediate members are differently arranged, and in the concluding quaternions there is a difference of names or of persons.

At the head of the first quaternion in all the catalogues, and in Matthew with the prefix πρῶτος (the first), stands Simon Peter, the son of Jonas (Matt. xvi. 17); according to the fourth gospel, of Bethsaida (i. 45); according to the synoptists, resident in Capernaum [884] (Matt. viii. 14, parall.). We hear an echo of the old polemical dispute, when Protestant expositors ascribe this position to mere chance,—an assumption which is opposed by the fact that all four of the catalogues agree in giving the precedence to Peter, though they differ in other points of arrangement; or when those expositors allege, in explanation, that Peter was first called, [885] which, according to the fourth gospel, was not the case. That this invariable priority is indicative of a certain pre-eminence of Peter among the twelve, is evident from the part he plays elsewhere in the evangelical history. Ardent by nature, he is always beforehand with the rest of the apostles, whether in speech (Matt. xv. 15, xvi. 16, 22, xvii. 4, xviii. 21, xxvi. 33; John vi. 68), or in action (Matt. xiv. 28, xxvi. 58; John xviii. 16); and if it is not seldom the case that the speech and action are faulty, and that his prompt courage quickly evaporates, as his denial shows, yet he is, according to the synoptical statement, the first who expresses a decided conviction of the Messiahship of Jesus (Matt. xvi. 16, parall.). It is true that of the eulogies and prerogatives bestowed on him on that occasion, that which is implied in his surname is the only one that remains peculiarly his; for the authority to bind and to loose, that is, to forbid and to permit, [886] in the newly-founded Messianic kingdom, is soon after extended to all the apostles (xviii. 18). Yet more decidedly does this pre-eminence of Peter among the original apostles appear in the Acts, and in the Epistles of Paul.

Next to Peter, the catalogue of the first and third gospels places his brother Andrew; that of the second gospel and the Acts, James, and after him, John. The first and third Evangelists are evidently guided by the propriety of uniting the couples of brethren; Mark and the author of the Acts, by that of preferring the two apostles next in distinction to Peter to the less conspicuous Andrew, whom they accordingly put last in the quaternion. We have already considered the manner in which these four apostles are signalized in the Christian legend by a special history of their vocation. They appear together in other passages of Mark; first (i. 29), where Jesus, in company with the sons of Zebedee, enters the house of Simon and Andrew: as, however, the other Evangelists only mention Peter on this occasion, Mark may have added the other names inferentially, concluding that the four fishermen, so recently called, would not be apart from Jesus, and that Andrew had a share in his brother’s house, a thing in itself probable. [887] Again, Mark xiii. 3, our four apostles concur in asking Jesus privately (κατ’ ἰδίαν) concerning the time of the destruction of the temple, and of his second advent. But the parallel passages in the other gospels do not thus particularize any of the disciples. Matthew says, The disciples came to him privately (xxiv. 3); hence it is probable that Mark’s limitation is an erroneous one. Possibly the words κατ’ ἰδίαν, being used in the document to which he referred to denote the separation of the twelve from the multitude, appeared to him, from association, an introductory form, of which there are other examples (Matt. xvii. 1; Mark ix. 2), to a private conference of Jesus with Peter, James and John, to whom he might add Andrew on account of the fraternity. Luke, on the other hand, in his account of the miraculous draught of fishes, and the vocation of the fishermen (v. 10), omits Andrew, though he is included in the corresponding narratives, probably because he does not elsewhere appear as one of the select apostles; for except on the occasions already noticed, he is only mentioned by John (vi. 9, xii. 22), and that in no very important connexion.

The two sons of Zebedee are the only disciples whose distinction rivals that of Peter. Like him, they evince an ardent and somewhat rash zeal (Luke ix. 54; once John is named alone, Mark ix. 38; Luke ix. 49); and it was to this disposition, apparently, that they owed the surname Sons of Thunder, ‏בני רנש‎ υἱοὶ βροντῆς (Mark iii. 17), [888] conferred on them by Jesus. So high did they stand among the twelve, that either they (Mark xi. 35 ff.), or their mother for them (Matt. xx. 20 ff.), thought they might claim the first place in the Messiah’s kingdom. It is worthy of notice that not only in the four catalogues, but elsewhere when the two brothers are named, as in Matt. iv. 21, xvii. 1; Mark i. 19, 29, v. 37, ix. 2, x. 35, xiii. 3, xiv. 33; Luke v. 10, ix. 54; with the exception of Luke viii. 51, ix. 28; James is always mentioned first, and John is appended to him as his brother (ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ). This is surprising; because, while we know nothing remarkable of James, John is memorable as the favourite disciple of Jesus. Hence it is supposed that this precedence cannot possibly denote a superiority of James to John, and an explanation has been sought in his seniority. [889] Nevertheless, it remains a doubt whether so constant a precedence do not intimate a pre-eminence on the part of James; at least, if, in the apprehension of the synoptists, John had been as decidedly preferred as he is represented to have been in the fourth gospel, we are inclined to think that they would have named him before his brother James, even allowing him to be the younger. This leads us to a difference between the first three Evangelists and the fourth which requires a closer examination.

In the synoptical gospels, as we have observed, Peter, James, and John, form the select circle of disciples whom Jesus admits to certain scenes, which the rest of the twelve were not spiritually mature enough to comprehend; as the transfiguration, the conflict in Gethsemane, and, according to Mark (v. 37), the raising of the daughter of Jairus. [890] After the death of Jesus, also, a James, Peter and John appear as the pillars of the church (Gal. ii. 9); this James, however, is not the son of Zebedee, who had been early put to death (Acts xii. 2), but James, the brother of the Lord (Gal. i. 19), who even in the first apostolic council appears to have possessed a predominant authority, and whom many hold to be the second James of the apostolic catalogue given in Acts i.. [891] It is observable from the beginning of the Acts, that James the son of Zebedee is eclipsed by Peter and John. As, then, this James the elder was not enough distinguished or even known in the primitive church, for his early martyrdom to have drawn much lustre on his name, tradition had no inducement, from subsequent events, to reflect an unhistorical splendour on his relation to Jesus; there is therefore no reason to doubt the statement as to the prominent position held by James, in conjunction with Peter and John, among the twelve apostles.

So much the more must it excite surprise to find, in the fourth gospel the triumvirate almost converted into a monarchy: James, like another Lepidus, is wholly cast out, while Peter and John are in the position of Antony and Octavius, the latter having nearly stripped his rival of all pretensions to an equal rank with himself, to say nothing of a higher. James is not even named in the fourth gospel; only in the appendix (xxi. 2) is there any mention of the sons of Zebedee; while several narratives of the vocations of different apostles are given, apparently including that of John himself, no James appears in them, neither is there any speech of his, as of many other apostles, throughout this gospel.

Quite differently does the fourth Evangelist treat Peter. He makes him one of the first who enter the society of Jesus, and gives him a prominent importance not less often than the synoptists; he does not conceal that Jesus bestowed on him an honourable surname (i. 42); he puts in his mouth (vi. 68 f.) a confession which seems but a new version of the celebrated one in Matt. xvi. 16; according to him, Peter once throws himself into the sea that he may more quickly reach Jesus (xxi. 7); at the last supper, and in the garden of Gethsemane, he makes Peter more active than even the synoptists represent him (xiii. 6 ff., xviii. 10 f.); he accords him the honour of following Jesus into the high priest’s palace (xviii. 15), and of being one of the first to visit the grave of Jesus after the resurrection (xx. 3 ff.); nay, he even details a special conversation between the risen Jesus and Peter (xxi. 15 ff.). But these advantages of Peter are in the fourth gospel invalidated in a peculiar manner, and put into the shade, in favour of John. The synoptists tell us that Peter and John were called to the apostleship in the same way, and the former somewhat before the latter; the fourth Evangelist prefers associating Andrew with the nameless disciple who is taken for John, and makes Peter come to him through the instrumentality of his brother. [892] He also admits the honourable interpretation of the surname Peter, and the panegyric on Peter’s confession; but this he does in common with Mark and Luke, while the speeches and the action attributed in the fourth gospel to Peter during the last supper and in the garden, are to be classed as only so many mistakes. The more we approach the catastrophe, the more marked is the subordination of Peter to John. At the last supper, indeed, Peter is particularly anxious for the discovery of the traitor: he cannot, however, apply immediately to Jesus (xiii. 23 ff.), but is obliged to make John, who was leaning on Jesus’ bosom, his medium of communication. While, according to the synoptists, Peter alone followed Jesus into the palace of the high priest; according to the fourth Evangelist, John accompanied him, and under such circumstances, that without him Peter could not have entered,—John, as one known to the high priest, having to obtain admission for him (xviii. 15 f.). In the synoptical gospels, not one of the disciples is bold enough to venture to the cross; but in the fourth, John is placed under it, and is there established in a new relation to the mother of his dying master: a relation of which we elsewhere find no trace (xix. 26 f.). On the appearance of the risen Jesus at the Galilean sea (xxi.), Peter, as the θερμότερος, casts himself into the sea; but it is not until after John, as the διορατικώτερος (Euthymius), has recognized the Lord in the person standing on the shore. In the ensuing conversation, Peter is indeed honoured with the commission, Feed my sheep; but this honour is overshadowed by the dubitative question, Lovest thou me? and while the prospect of martyrdom is held up to him, John is promised the distinction of tarrying till Jesus came again, an advantage which Peter is warned not to envy. Lastly, while, according to Luke (xxiv. 12), Peter, first among the apostles, and alone, comes to the vacant grave of his risen master, the fourth gospel (xx. 3), gives him a companion in John, who outruns Peter and arrives first at the grave. Peter goes into the grave before John, it is true; but it is the latter in whose honour it is recorded, that he saw and believed, almost in contradiction to the statement of Luke, that Peter went home wondering in himself at that which was come to pass. Thus in the fourth gospel, John, both literally and figuratively, outruns Peter, for the entire impression which the attentive reader must receive from the representation there given of the relative position of Peter and John, is that the writer wished a comparison to be drawn in favour of the latter. [893]

But John is moreover especially distinguished in the gospel which bears his name, by the constant epithet, the beloved disciple, the disciple whom Jesus loved, ὁ μαθητὴς ὅν ἠγάπα, or ἐφίλει ὁ Ἰησοῦς (xiii. 23, xix. 26, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20). It is true that we have no absolute proof from the contents of the fourth gospel, whether intrinsically or comparatively considered, that by the above formula, or the more indeterminate one, the other ὁ ἄλλος, or another disciple, ἄλλος μαθητὴς (x. 15 f., xx. 3, 4, 8), which, as it appears from xx. 2 f., is its equivalent, we are to understand the Apostle John. For neither is the designation in question anywhere used interchangeably with the name of the apostle, nor is there anything narrated in the fourth gospel of the favourite disciple, which in the three first is ascribed to John. Because in xxi. 2 the sons of Zebedee are named among the assistants, it does not follow that the disciple mentioned in v. 7 as the one whom Jesus loved must be John; James, or the one of the two other disciples mentioned in v. 2, might be meant. Nevertheless, it is the immemorial tradition of the church that the disciple whom Jesus loved was John, nor are all reasons for such a belief extinct even to us; for in the Greek circle from which the fourth gospel sprang, there could scarcely be among the apostles whom it leaves unnamed, one so well known as to be recognized under that description unless it were John, whose residence at Ephesus is hardly to be rejected as a mere fable.

It may appear more doubtful whether the author intended by this title to designate himself, and thus to announce himself as the Apostle John. The conclusion of the twenty-first chapter, v. 24, does certainly make the favourite disciple the testifier and writer of the preceding history; but we may assume it as granted that this passage is an addition by a strange hand. [894] When, however, in the genuine text of the gospel (xix. 35), the writer says of the effect produced by the piercing of the side of Jesus, he that saw bare record, ὁ ἑωρακὼς μεμαρτύρηκε, no other than the favourite disciple can be intended, because he alone among all the disciples (the only parties eligible as witnesses in the case), is supposed to be present at the cross. The probability that the author here speaks of himself is not at all affected by his use of the third person; but the preterite annexed to it may well excite a doubt whether an appeal be not here made to the testimony of John, as one distinct from the writer. [895] This mode of expression, however, may be explained also in accordance with the other supposition, [896] which is supported by the circumstance that the author in i. 14, 16, seems to announce himself as the eye-witness of the history he narrates.

Was that author, then, really the Apostle John, as he apparently wishes us to surmise? This is another question on which we can only pronounce when we shall have completed our investigation. We will merely allude to the difficulty of supposing that the Apostle John could give so unhistorical a sketch of the Baptist as that in the fourth gospel. But we ask, is it at all probable that the real John would so unbecomingly neglect the well-founded claims of his brother James to a special notice? and is not such an omission rather indicative of a late Hellenistic author, who scarcely had heard the name of the brother so early martyred? The designation, the disciple whom Jesus loved, which in xxi. 20 has the prolix addition, who also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord which is he that betrayeth thee? is not to be considered as an offence against modesty. [897] It is certainly far too laboured and embellished for one who, without any ulterior view, wishes to indicate himself, for such an one would, at least sometimes, have simply employed his name: but a venerator of John, issuing perhaps from one of his schools, might very naturally be induced to designate the revered apostle, under whose name he wished to write, in this half honourable, half mysterious manner. [898]

§ 75.

THE REST OF THE TWELVE, AND THE SEVENTY DISCIPLES.

The second quaternion in all the four catalogues begins with Philip. The three first gospels know nothing more of him than his name. The fourth alone gives his birth-place, Bethsaida, and narrates his vocation (i. 44 f.); in this gospel he is more than once an interlocutor, but his observations are founded on mistakes (vi. 7, xiv. 8); and he perhaps appears with most dignity, when the Ἕλληνες, who wish to see Jesus, apply immediately to him (xii. 21).

The next in the evangelical lists is Bartholomew; a name which is nowhere found out of the catalogues. In the synoptical gospels Bartholomew is coupled with Philip; in the history of the vocations given by the fourth Evangelist (i. 46), Nathanael appears in company with the latter and (xxi. 2) is again presented in the society of the apostles. Nathanael, however, finds no place among the twelve, unless he be identical with one otherwise named by the synoptists. If so, it is thought that Bartholomew is the most easily adapted to such an alias, as the three first gospels couple him with Philip, just as the fourth, which has no Bartholomew, does Nathanael; to which it may be added that ‏בר תלמי‎ is a mere patronymic, which must have been accompanied by a proper name, such as Nathanael. [899] But we have no adequate ground for such an identification, since the juxtaposition of Bartholomew and Philip is shown to be accidental, by our finding the former (Acts i. 13), as well as the latter (John xxi. 2), linked with different names; the absence of Bartholomew from the fourth gospel is not peculiar to him among the twelve; finally, second names as surnames were added to proper as well as to patronymic names, as Simon Peter, Joseph Caiaphas, John Mark, and the like; so that any other apostle not named by John might be equally well identified with Nathanael, and hence the supposed relation between the two appellations is altogether uncertain.

In the catalogue given in the Acts, Philip is followed, not by Bartholomew, but by Thomas, who in the list of the first gospel comes after Bartholomew, in that of the others, after Matthew. Thomas, in Greek Δίδυμος, appears in the fourth gospel, on one occasion, in the guise of mournful fidelity (xi. 16); on another, in the more noted one of incredulity (xx. 24 ff.); and once again in the appendix (xxi. 2). Matthew, the next in the series, is found nowhere else except in the history of his vocation.

The third quaternion is uniformly opened by James the son of Alpheus, of whom we have already spoken. After him comes in both Luke’s lists, Simon, whom he calls Zelotes, or the zealot, but whom Matthew and Mark (in whose catalogues he is placed one degree lower) distinguish as the Cannanite ὁ κανανίτης (from ‏קָנָא‎, to be zealous). This surname seems to mark him as a former adherent of the Jewish sect of zealots for religion, [900] a party which, it is true, did not attain consistence until the latest period of the Jewish state, but which was already in the process of formation. In all the lists that retain the name of Judas Iscariot, he occupies the last place, but of him we must not speak until we enter on the history of the Passion. Luke, in his filling up of the remaining places of this quaternion, differs from the two other Evangelists, and perhaps these also differ from each other; Luke has a second Judas, whom he styles the brother of James; Matthew, Lebbeus; and Mark, Thaddeus. It is true that we now commonly read in Matthew, Lebbeus, whose surname was Thaddeus; but the vacillation in the early readings seems to betray these words to be a later addition intended to reconcile the first two Evangelists; [901] an attempt which others have made by pointing out a similarity of meaning between the two names, though such a similarity does not exist. [902] But allowing validity to one or other of these harmonizing efforts, there yet remains a discrepancy between Matthew and Mark with their Lebbeus-Thaddeus, and Luke with his Judas, the brother of James. Schleiermacher justly disapproves the expedients, almost all of them constrained and unnatural, which have been resorted to for the sake of proving that here also, we have but one person under two different names. He seeks to explain the divergency, by supposing, that during the lifetime of Jesus, one of the two men died or left the circle of the apostles, and the other took his place; so that one list gives the earlier, the other the later member. [903] But it is scarcely possible to admit that any one of our catalogues was drawn up during the life of Jesus; and after that period, no writer would think of including a member who had previously retired from the college of apostles; those only would be enumerated who were ultimately attached to Jesus. It is the most reasonable to allow that there is a discrepancy between the lists, since it is easy to account for it by the probability that while the number of the apostles, and the names of the most distinguished among them, were well known, varying traditions supplied the place of more positive data concerning the less conspicuous.

Luke makes us acquainted with a circle of disciples, intermediate to the twelve and the mass of the partisans of Jesus. He tells us (x. 1 ff.) that besides the twelve, Jesus chose other seventy also, and sent them two and two before him into all the districts which he intended to visit on his last journey, that they might proclaim the approach of the kingdom of heaven. As the other Evangelists have no allusion to this event, the most recent critics have not hesitated to make their silence on this head a reproach to them, particularly to the first Evangelist, in his supposed character of apostle. [904] But the disfavour towards Matthew on this score ought to be moderated by the consideration, that neither in the other gospels, nor in the Acts, nor in any apostolic epistle, is there any trace of the seventy disciples, who could scarcely have passed thus unnoticed, had their mission been as fruitful in consequences, as it is commonly supposed. It is said, however, that the importance of this appointment lay in its significance, rather than in its effects. As the number of the twelve apostles, by its relation to that of the tribes of Israel, shadowed forth the destination of Jesus for the Jewish people; so the seventy, or as some authorities have it, the seventy-two disciples, were representatives of the seventy or seventy-two peoples, with as many different tongues, which, according to the Jewish and early Christian view, formed the sum of the earth’s inhabitants, [905] and hence they denoted the universal destination of Jesus and his kingdom. [906] Moreover, seventy was a sacred number with the Jewish nation; Moses deputed seventy elders (Num. xi. 16, 25); the Sanhedrim had seventy members; [907] the Old Testament, seventy translators.

Had Jesus, then, under the pressing circumstances that mark his public career, nothing more important to do than to cast about for significant numbers, and to surround himself with inner and outer circles of disciples, regulated by these mystic measures? or rather, is not this constant preference for sacred numbers, this assiduous development of an idea to which the number of the apostles furnished the suggestion, wholly in the spirit of the primitive Christian legend? This, supposing it imbued with Jewish prepossessions, would infer, that as Jesus had respect to the twelve tribes in fixing the number of his apostles, he would extend the parallel by appointing seventy subordinate disciples, corresponding to the seventy elders; or, supposing the legend animated by the more universal sentiments of Paul, it could not escape the persuasion that to the symbol of the relation of his office to the Israelitish people, Jesus would annex another, significative of its destination for all the kindreds of the earth. However agreeable this class of seventy disciples may have always been to the church, as a series of niches for the reception of men who, without belonging to the twelve, were yet of importance to her, as Mark, Luke and Matthew; we are compelled to pronounce the decision of our most recent critic precipitate, and to admit that the Gospel of Luke, by its acceptance of such a narrative, destitute as it is of all historical confirmation, and of any other apparent source than dogmatical interests, is placed in disadvantageous comparison with that of Matthew. We gather, indeed, from Acts i. 21 f. that Jesus had more than the twelve as his constant companions; but that these formed a body of exactly seventy, or that that number was selected from them, does not seem adequately warranted [908].